dawning at dawn at double trouble 
PARUSIA ((/pəˈruːziə/; Greek: παρουσία) is an ancient Greek word meaning presence, arrival, or official visit

the day wanted to come 
through the close opaque air
the silhouetted tree-line longed for depth
but the fog kept it to only two dimensions
while the geese and the ducks 
seemed at home on the dreamy waters
my soul wondered with me when
the mist would clear so I could 
welcome the breaking day

that is how The Day will come
not like the canvas on a painting
that has been peeled back to reveal
what has been underneath all along
but like the new Day dawning
its light will pierce the pigments
of all that is—burning, cleansing away
rearranging the old to make all things new

The Light even now shines through the life-scape
it’s brilliance bedazzles now and then
when the hungry are fed
the aching listened to
the cast out brought in
the nameless blessed
the weary rest
the sleepers awakened . . . 

my soul bids come away with me
through the incarnate fog
deeper into the liminal sabbath--
smooth, watery, womb-like, holding place
to be at home, like ducks and geese
who while waiting too glide freely 
on water through a place once thick
now made thin by the encroaching light
revealing dimensions once hidden
the new day at double trouble

For now we see in a mirror, dimly,
but then we will see face to face.
Now I know only in part;
then I will know fully,
​even as I have been fully known. 

Have you ever experienced the holiness of place? For two years I served as a pastor of a 900-year-old Scottish kirk. It was the church in which Robert Lewis Stevenson spent much of his childhood and where his grandfather Lewis Balfour was the minister. I experienced this church as a holy place. Something about its history and architecture engendered a heightened sense of nearness of the Spirit. 

While in Great Britain, my wife, Jan, and I visited the Tower of London. Part prison, part fortress, it oozes fascinating history. The oldest part of this auspicious structure is the White Tower built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Housed on the second floor of the Tower is a small chapel named the Chapel of Saint John. It is built entirely of stone with a vaulted ceiling supported by 12 pillars. It was used by the Knights of the Order of Bath to keep an all-night vigil over their armor before the King anointed them on coronation day. Except for the light that shines through the arched windows, the chapel is empty. It is very silent, very still. To me, this is a Sabbath place. The reverent prayers from over a thousand years of visitors to this holy place can almost be inhaled as the sacredness of the place fills one’s soul. Just below the Chapel of Saint John is the most appalling of all the Tower’s dungeons. Measuring four feet square by four feet high, it is impossible to stand upright or lie down full length in it. This stifling, cramped place is called Little Ease. 

​We are that White Tower. How much of our lives do we spend in the place of Little Ease when the Chapel of Saint John is so close and inviting? Howard Rice’s description of the spiritual life reminds me of the Knights in the Chapel of Saint John: “To be spiritual is to take seriously our consciousness of God’s presence and to live in such a way that the presence of God is central to all that we do.” 

And yet, there is a part of me finds the Divine Light too much to bear.  So I continue to find refuge in my ordinary (and beautiful) humanity, though I know the breath there is constricting, even though it sometimes feels like I am sitting in the ashes.  This is grief.  Yet in the grief there is some healing happening. Little by little, bit by bit, those parts of me that remain in Little Ease are being bathed in Love that comes from a Source like Saint John's Chapel, a holding place where the light of Love bathe all who linger there.  

I return again and again to the liminal space of worthiness and vulnerability, of love and acceptance as I venture, one heart beat at a time, from Little Ease to the Chapel of Light.  

Murray Grove
is a Universalist Unitarian Retreat and Conference  Center in Lanoka Harbor, NJ.

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