– Black Elk
I’m working at a cafe this morning, and while contemplating the notion that the Holy Land is everywhere, I am sitting back and beginning to look around me with eyes and heart wide open. Now I find myself seeing much more than I did before: I am noticing the coworkers behind the counter working together in a truly friendly, happy way. I’m noticing the girl sitting by herself who is reading something on her phone; she looks like she is about to cry, and I’m wondering who is texting her and why she is so sad. I’m noticing the young man who just held the door for an older woman with a cane and then happily let her go ahead of him in line. Wherever we all are right now, we are in the presence of the sacred. All around us, there are people looking for love and struggling to find peace and remembering/forgetting/remembering again that we are all in this magnificent playground for learning and growing and changing together. We are all hurrying and worrying and dreaming and hoping. When we just stop and open our eyes, we see how sacred and beautiful even an ordinary morning in a cafe – or at work, the grocery store, at home, or anywhere – can be.