Nothing Holy, Everything Holy

I had a recent brief and light exchange of notes on Facebook with someone about pantheism. The writer threw out the old canard about pantheism being atheism in drag. I made some silly comment. The writer pursued it a bit farther, seeming to feel the “theism” in pantheism implies something extra. I posted a link to Peter Mayer’s Holy Now, to which my interlocutor replied, “nothing holy.”

Now that was a lovely response.

Nothing Holy.

Echoes, probably intentional to Bodhidharma’s words.

Not knowing. Actually, not just not knowing, but I don’t know. Which tumbles into not knowing.

Here holy and profane begin to lose their luster.

The secret is holding lightly. If we can live fully without clinging to consequences, to results, then things happen.

And everything holy and nothing holy are hard to distinguish.

Here the heart of the matter emerges.

Here getting up and sitting down become sacrament.

Here reaching out a hand or pulling it back the dance of the cosmos.

As Dongshan sings to us:

For whom do you bathe and make yourself presentable?
The voice of the cuckoo urges you to come home,
Hundreds of flowers fall, yet the voice is not yet stilled;
Even deep in jumbled peaks, it is calling clearly.

Just this.

It is all here…