Sacraments...Another Take

"What is a sacrament? A sacrament is anything you believe to be
holy. Whatever for you is set apart, solemn, breathtakingly special--
that is a sacrament.
Sacraments are old and new. They occur inside churches and out.
Weddings and their joys are not confined to a place, nor is a funeral
and its grief. We christen ( name, welcome, dedicate) a baby in
ceremony, but in less formal ways, too---in our laughter, in touching
our palms over a quickening life within, in our prayers, in kissing the
newborn. These moments also are consecrating, dedicatory,
celebrative. Sacramental.

A sacrament can be walking the bridge at Golden Gate, walking at
Gettysburg, viewing earth from the Canadian Rockies, strolling near
crashing waves on sunlit coasts, or in the silence of great trees;
wading the brook in Minnesota where the Father of Waters begins
its journey to the Gulf. A sacrament is reading the Second Inaugural
at the Lincoln Memorial or listening there to Martin Luther King, or
working a garden, or praying in our Gethsemanes.

Sacraments hover around the essentials of life, in such things as
sexual intercourse and other deep reunions of flesh and spirit, in
meals together, a last supper, at an alter rail with bread and wine
or a picnic with strawberries and milk. Sacraments occur when the
depth of life is disclosed.

Sometimes all life becomes sacramental. We walk on holy ground,
the devine is present, interfused. We celebrate it, call it Thou.
These moments of sacred recognition flee and the world retreats
to dreariness, as do we. But men and women and artists remember--
to give liturgical shape, ceremonial form, some permanent halllowing
to the sacredness we do meet in life. We recall, reclaim and transmit
our times of sacred memory, the holy events and places of our lives,
history and traditions."

author unknown. I do know someone who makes sacredness
or holy events of seemingly ordinary events. See Kyle Kimberlin's
blog called
Metaphor (under links).