Specialness, sacredness, holiness – these things that we set apart from the normal aspects of life have drawn and created trouble for me. As soon as we deem something “extra good”, we seem to downplay everything else around it as less good. As soon as we elevate a person or place or object, we risk lifting them up too high and editing out their blemishes so we can have an ideal to feel good about. It is so easy to miss or taint universal holiness, good that is everywhere, because it is so pervasive and then drifts into the backdrop.
Our emotions are a gateway for the raw material behind such things - awe, wonder, and confusion. This tale attempts to reveal emotions as a relational conduit for finding balance in such matters – our feelings are a kind of knowing that comes from how we are affected by things outside of ourselves. If we honor this way of knowing without falling into holiness traps, it can be a beautiful road to wisdom of the heart – letting emotions tell us what is dangerous, intriguing, or glorious and then placing this way of knowing along our other ways so that they can complement each other. The mind, the heart, the intuition – what gifts to help us hold the tension between our utter transient insignificance in the vast scope of the universe and our rich and utterly unique irreplicability together.