A Holy Place

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A SHORT STORY

What is a holy place?

This week, I’m in Queenstown, New Zealand, investigating that question.

When my Dad was dying, I’ll never forget how he watched YouTube videos of Queenstown on repeat. He had purchased a house there in 2009, with dreams of retiring well into his 80s. Unfortunately, by the time he was able to travel there regularly and begin living that dream, he was diagnosed with cancer and later passed away.

I still remember the tears in his eyes as he watched image after image.

My Dad was always a distant figure in my life, so you can imagine I never got to see this place with him. And now, as I spend the week here trying to put the house back together, I find pieces of him in the in-between.

This place feels holy, I keep thinking to myself, a pilgrimage of sorts. Funnily enough, it does take 28 hours of travel to actually arrive here.

There’s something I love about the idea: how a pilgrimage is an invitation to be a saint for your future self, and to remember the saint already inside you.

I choose to imagine this place as a pilgrimage, not just a destination, but a place of practice. A place where I can return, again and again, to invite and to remember.

Standing here, my Dad’s voice returns to me. When I once asked him if he regretted anything, he told me, I wish I would have spent more time with you.

So, in a way, I live those words in this holy place, not as regret, but as practice. A place where I celebrate the joy of being with my family. A daily choosing of time, of attention, of love carried forward.

A place to remember.

Where do you return, again and again, to practice presence?

A POEM

“Coleman’s Bed” by David Whyte

Make a nesting now, a place to which
the birds can come, think of Kevin’s
prayerful palm holding the blackbird’s egg
and be the one, looking out from this place
who warms interior forms into light.
Feel the way the cliff at your back
gives shelter to your outward view
and then bring in from those horizons
all discordant elements that seek a home.

Be taught now, among the trees and rocks,
how the discarded is woven into shelter,
learn the way things hidden and unspoken
slowly proclaim their voice in the world.
Find that far inward symmetry
to all outward appearances, apprentice
yourself to yourself, begin to welcome back
all you sent away, be a new annunciation,
make yourself a door through which
to be hospitable, even to the stranger in you.

Above all, be alone with it all,
a hiving off, a corner of silence
amidst the noise, refuse to talk,
even to yourself, and stay in this place
until the current of the story
is strong enough to float you out.

Ghost then, to where others
in this place have come before,
under the hazel, by the ruined chapel,
below the cave where Coleman slept,
become the source that makes
the river flow, and then the sea
beyond. Live in this place
as you were meant to and then,
surprised by your abilities,
become the ancestor of it all,
the quiet, robust and blessed Saint
that your future happiness
will always remember.

Grateful,

Michael