Chapter 1:
Surely the Presence
Then he said, “Come no closer!
Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Exodus 3:5
Thursday, May 10, 2018 - 6:00 AM: I packed up my small basement Airbnb in Raleigh, NC, stopped off for a coffee, and pulled into the church parking lot for the final day of a spiritual writers’ conference. The preceding days, as is true for most conferences, felt like drinking from a fire hydrant.
I am not a morning person, but my mind had been racing with ideas that kept me up much of the night and I had to get it all on paper before the next wave of information and inspiration washed over me. I intentionally arrived at the conference with more than enough time to spend an hour in the quiet sanctuary with my journal before the morning worship and keynote session began.
To my surprise, I was not the first one there, or even among the first twenty. The presence of other people was not a concern, but their choice to turn that quiet sanctuary into a social hall quickly put a damper on my quiet reflection time, particularly since the church also had a large fellowship area and entry hall available outside the sanctuary doors. Had I known the sanctuary walls would be reverberating with the chatter of a half-dozen other conversations, I would have stayed at the coffee shop to write and process my thoughts. Instead, it was all I could do to keep from unintentionally eavesdropping on those who had gathered early for fellowship.
While I wasn’t able to write down anything that had been on my mind through the night, I did have nearly an hour to reflect on a new thought, specifically, what has become of sacred space? …
