So What Makes It A Holy Well?

Once again this morning I am pondering the thought that if I don’t reflect on the beauty and grace of life, I simply won’t see it – I will see its shabbiness and pain instead.

A couple of nights ago, I had dinner with a few friends, and I took each of them a little bottle of water from a "holy well" in Ireland.  One of the ladies asked,

“What makes this a holy well?”

Because it IS (it exists), and because thousands of people for hundreds of years have traveled far to experience its holiness, its healing waters, its beauty and grace, and the peace of that ancient space. There are “thin places” in the world, and this place is that kind of space.

I don’t think that’s what I said exactly, but that’s what makes something holy: the witness of others who have recognized and experienced its miraculous healing and its sense of ‘sacredness’.  And sacredness is all around us; it can be everywhere if we but have eyes to see. We, you and I, have the privilege of labeling life “holy and sacred”. Or we can label life hard, sad and complicated. It’s our choice.

All of life is holy. But it is, for me, imperative that I ponder the holiness and sacredness of life – otherwise all I see is the mundane. I must listen to that mockingbird’s song as if I never heard it before, or it will lose its glory each new morning. I long for beauty in my life – to see it, hold it, and kiss its face. To draw near my furry kitty’s face, smell her breath, feel her softness and look into those deep golden wells you and I have labeled eyes and see the face of God. To look up from my journal and see the raindrops dancing on the creek.

To seek out the low raspy “hoorah” of Mother Frog crouched almost hidden underneath flora dripping from long-awaited rain – that is holy.

For some reason most of us tend to complaint. Perhaps it’s not “life” that is profane, but simply our sight, our hearts and minds. Maybe like the hot dry dusty earth, we need to be refreshed, baptized and washed anew with “holy water”, summer rain, in order to see the beauty of life shimmering around us. Maybe it’s our “hurry up and get it done” ordering of the priorities of the day that causes life to become mundane, profane. Our sense of having to control everything around us – even the places we sit in order to experience morning’s grace. I do it too. I want my coffee nearby, and a cushioned chair underneath my bottom. And no mosquitoes, thank you very much.
But there are moments that shimmer through, thresholds of time and space that awaken me to wonder, when I can pause and sit on the damp ground to receive a photo of a frog also wet with refreshing rain. And in those moments, I know that life is holy, and I can add my voice and my experience to all those other pilgrims along the way who say, “This is a ‘holy well’”.

There was a delicious poem posted on Facebook a few mornings back, that I failed to save, but I’ve remembered well the “just” of it. The poet mused on getting together with a friend and talking only about the beautiful – no complaints, no discussion of the hardness of life or the sadness of our children or the brutal nature of business today, but only talk of beauty – could we do that for just one hour? And remind ourselves that life is holy. I think that’s another gift from pilgrimage – for eight days, we talked of beauty, we explored beauty, we breathed in grace and holiness every day. In eight days, there was perhaps eight minutes of complaint? If even that. And that’s holy.