At The Threshold Of The Holy

At All Saints,’ our architects and our congregation are in the midst of the conceptual design phase of the fi rst Episcopal Church to be built in Bentonville.

Naturally, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about sacred space and how it can be intentionally created.

As I write this morning, watching a thin layer of fog drift across the silent waters of Lake Avalon, the vapors rising in curls and then disappearing in the sun-warmed air, I marvel at our audacity and at the challenge we face in attempting to purposefully fabricate a place of transcendence, when the natural world seems to eff ortlessly provide countless opportunities for humans to experience the holy.

I suppose my favorite church on earth is one on the island of Maui, a small Episcopal church with exterior walls that only rise to a height of about three feet. The absence of a roof allows a Pacifi c breeze to carry the fragrance of the Lokelani roses through the Sunday morning Eucharist.

The sunlight, fi ltered through the branches and fronds of towering palms, provide the only warmth needed.

The creators of this space seemed to recognize that their role was mostly to get out of the way, and allow the Creator to do her work of providing the experience of transcendence.

Yet we live in Arkansas, and as nice as the weather is, it’s not a Hawaiian paradise, and our climate requires that we sometimes work and worship indoors.

And even the Maui church builders recognized the value of constructing a space that was set apart, designated for the purpose of acknowledging thepresence of the Divine.

But how can we even come close to replicating the sense of the Holy that nature readily provides?

I fi nd that the conversation with our architects is often about thresholds - the movement from one kind of space to another. The preliminary design for the entrance to our church calls for a wide, low-lying porch, with a dozen red doors that can be flung open on Sunday mornings, signaling to all that there is shelter and warm welcome within.

Through the red doors one passes into an interior garden, bringing the senses into play through the sights and smells of vegetation and the bubbling sounds of a baptismal pool.

The passage toward the holy continues through the narthex, a gathering place where the welcoming carries on, but this time in the midst of sacred art, carefully selected to remind visitors that their pilgrimage is in company of the saints.

The narthex, at particular times of the day, is traversed by a narrow beam of sunlight through which visitors will pass before finding themselves at the threshold of the nave - the principle worship space.

Within the nave, guests will be bathed in light, not directly from the sun, but filtered through a series of veils that allow shimmering light to enter inside andprovide small glimpses of the surrounding meadow. This will remind us that while worship can’t truly take place in isolation from the outside world, it is nonetheless possible to design particular places and moments in time so that, in those sacred locales, we are more likely to realize the presence of the transcendent.

In a sense, we are all standing at the threshold of the holy. The world abounds with the liminal, the transitions between one way of being and another - what the Celts call the “thin places.”

All Saints’ imagines a church building as a sacred space where particular attention is called to the state of liminality, but in truth, we are surrounded by opportunities to cross the threshold into the presence of the Divine.

Nature presents the same occasion for transformation in every sunset and in every leaf that drifts across a still pond. You may arrive at athin place by merely listening to the laughter of a child or hearing the prayer of the aged. We stand at the same threshold of change whenever we learn to love the unlovable and experience compassion in a new way.

Ultimately, it is a matter of expectation. When we enter into a space, a moment or a situation with the anticipation of an encounter with the holy, God generally shows up.

Having said that, during this season of Advent, I’m compelled to wonder whether Mary and Joseph, as they walked together into the stable, realized that they were passing through the threshold of the holy.

Thomas Merton oncewrote, “Love laughs at the end of the world because Love is the door to eternity. He who loves is playing on the doorstep of eternity ...” THE REV. ROGER JOSLIN IS THE VICAR AT ALL SAINTS’ EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN BENTONVILLE, WHICH OFFERS SPANISH AS WELL AS ENGLISH LANGUAGE SERVICES.