Sacred Texts

Recently, a friend told me she gets her news from the poets these days. Here’s some news that I’ve been tuned into from Wendell Berry: 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, 
we have come to our real work. 
And when we no longer know which way to go, 
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 
The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

This has been a sacred text for me amid lockdowns and global pandemics, the plague of racism, and political disorder. When we hear sacred text, we might think The Bible, The Torah, The Koran. But Wendell Berry has written sacred text too. And Mary Oliver, Sister Hildegard, Thomas Merton and Chief Seattle. 

In the New Testament, sometimes referred to as the Good News, John’s Gospel opens with this sacred text:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  All things came into being through God, and without God not one thing came into being. Word is God’s creative power. Some believe Word to be a mistranslation; that conversation is more accurate. In the beginning was conversation. A conversation between God and all creation. Between God and me. Between God and my neighbor. God and the earth. A conversation through which all things came into being.

This Conversation is what makes up the sacred text of our lives. In spiritual direction, whether individual or in a group, space is created in order that our sacred texts may be heard and known.  We trust that within each of us, the Spirit is writing us, and that there is a conversation happening we might not even have words for.  

We treasure the words of the Bible, Koran, or other sacred texts because they resonate with our own experiences; with what it means to be alive on the earth; with our felt sense of God’s presence with us. We recognize God and ourselves in these words.  Think of the story of the Samaritan woman who goes to the well to draw water, and realizes the ways she has tried to care for her thirst will never work. In this moment she encounters the real source that can quench the thirst within: sacred text.  

But we also know that it can be the words we hear spoken at our first AA meeting, when we hear our story told by someone else, and it becomes a life-giving word, reminding us we are not alone. 

On this one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, we know that there are sacred texts heard in community. George’s dying words, I can’t breathe, have become a Word we all are called to hear; a Holy Lament written on hearts across our land. It is not a new lament, and yet we are hearing it anew. This text is calling us to healing and justice for all who take breath on the earth. 

I can’t breathe, is a sacred text being spoken by Mother Earth as well. Are we hearing this sacred conversation across species? 

If we listen deeply, we will hear the word guiding us to our real work, our real journey. It is within us and waits to be heard. 

Who helps us listen to our sacred text? 

This sacred text, written by Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century, helps me to hear mine.

We cannot live a life interpreted for us by others.
An interrupted life is not a home. 
Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. 
To hear our own voice, 
To see our own light. 

Blessings for the Journey, 

Elizabeth+