Walking on holy ground
“We drove for three days into the mountains in a car that struggled to go uphill. Still, we made it and I was finally back in my tribal homeland. In the beginning, it felt like coming home, even though I'd never lived there and rarely visited. My family members were welcoming, and the water and forest calmed the fluttering darkness deep within me.” ― Leah Myers, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
And so another Monday rolls into view.
I’m here in my kitchen playing Jake Xerxes Fussell’s album, When I’m Called, drinking a freshly brewed cup of coffee and typing these few words.
I’m still not sure if there’s an ideal length for a Substack post. I’m conscious that my last few have been edging towards 2,500 words and that feels too long to my untrained eye. If you have a preference, please do let me know.
When I think of the rubric to this post, the first thing that heaves up is ancestry – a deep, mythic lineage. But where do I go? In what direction? Down? Towards the soul? Or to find the locus?
There’s no easy answer. Perhaps all ground is ultimately holy ground but then I need to consider what ground I really mean. Soil, water or something more metaphysical.
The other thing that I’m drawn to and drawn in by is the notion of coming home. And when I say ‘home’ I don’t mean a place, lest still a house, but ‘true self’ as Thomas Merton would have said. You see if we stand on our two feet, shorn of the infusion of the dominant narrative, and the weight of expectation that we place upon ourselves, I think that holy in all respects. And not in a grandiose sense; nor in the sense that we’re special; but to dig in and find that place that is divine. Yes, that’s it: the ground of our divination.
And there’s one more thing that’s circling; namely, failure.
This line came to me yesterday. “Is failure our only teacher?” It sure feels like that; but quite what it has to do with holy ground might not be apparent but I’d like to think that if we keep being winnowed by our mistakes, at some point we might come to a point where we can go no further, where we’re prepared to let go all that ‘knowledge’ we’ve acquired down the years, and arrive at a point of ‘not knowing’ and begin to learn what it means to be human.
In the end, at least for me, there is no one-size-fits-all version of walking on holy ground but I’d like to think that once in a while we stop from our breathless pursuit that has come to represent so many lives, aided by our obsession with distraction and chasing the next experience, and ask ourselves a better question than “What’s next?”.
One last thing.
At the moment, I can’t get this Rilke poem out my head. It seems to hold so much and I feel an obligation to keep sharing it.
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
The first stanza reminds me of the passage in Tennyson’s “Ulysses,”
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
Enjoy your day.
Blessings and much love,
Julian