Holiness Hotspots

Post Author: Jenny DeVivo

On a beautiful July evening this summer, I ate dinner at a little table out my back door.  In the glorious, long-lived light of summer evenings, my eye caught a patch of the neighbor’s yard across the street.  The light hitting the section of the yard was golden.  Sunlight was passing through the various kinds of leaves so that they were not just green, but illuminated and glowing a brilliant green.  I was struck silent by its radiance.  Normally, my mind is always occupied with my mental to-do list, imaginary conversations, questions that I want to remember to investigate later, and always, lyrics to some song, the internal volume changing depending on what else is on my mind.  But this time, I was struck silent and all I could do was look at the magnificent beauty before me.  Within moments, I was giggling out loud, thinking that this was a “Holiness Hotspot,” a place where the “God signal” was very strong.  I stared enraptured at the spot and was quiet for several minutes, marveling at the glory of God.

We hear of Holiness Hotspots in the Bible.  As Jacob dreamed of angels ascending and descending from the heavens at Bethel, he awoke and exclaimed, “Surely the LORD is in this place– and I did not know it!” (Gen 28:16 NRSV).  I get that.  Surely God is everywhere, but sometimes, completely unbidden, we step into a place where the presence of God is so strong, it is almost palpable.  I can understand how Peter wanted to build tents at the Transfiguration (Mk 9:5; Mt 17:4; Lk 9:33) to stay in that place longer and to be able to return to it easily.  I am sure that, like my neighbor’s backyard, if Jacob and Peter had returned to those places later, they would not find the Holiness Hotspot again.

I experienced an even stronger Holiness Hotspot in 2000.  I was on a tour of Poland and we visited the little town of Zalipie.  Generations ago, the people of Zalipie began painting intricate patterns on their walls to cover the inevitable cracks.  The painting moved to the outside of their homes as well and now Zalipie is known for the beautiful patterns painted outside and inside their homes and on the barns, wells, root cellars, and anything else that will stand still and hold paint.  We went into the home of an old woman who showed us the beautiful painting she had done decades earlier on the inside of her house.  As I walked out of her house, I looked over my shoulder and over the fence between house and barn.  Over the fence was one of Poland’s ubiquitous sunflower fields.  The sunflowers stretched to the horizon and met the late afternoon sun.  This time I was struck so deeply, tears came to my eyes.  To make it worse, the whole tour was heading back to the bus and I couldn’t linger for more than a few seconds.  But those few seconds have stayed with me so profoundly that I can get teary just remembering it.  I am reminded of those few moments every time I hear Sting’s “Fields of Gold.”  Since its release in 1993, I never liked the song and would change the station to avoid hearing it, but that changed completely after the few moments looking at the field of sunflowers in Zalipie.  Now that song has a 5 star rating in i-Tunes, is on my favorites playlist, and still holds resonance of the Holiness Hotspot I experienced that day.  Like the song says, “Many years have passed since those summer days…,” but the memory of the profound sense of God’s presence still contains a pulse of the holy.

Too often I fall into the trap of thinking that my prayer life is dependent upon me and my actions.  Like going to the gym, I think that “no pain, no gain” applies to my efforts in prayer.  My “work yourself to death” work-ethic creeps into my prayer as well, making me think that it all depends on me.  I keep forgetting that God’s desire for relationship with us is far greater than anything I could will to create.  And when I do run into God’s Holiness Hotspots, it is not because I have worked my way there through deep prayer; it is God’s unbidden gift in the moment.  God’s Holiness Hotspots move from place to place, but like Jacob, in my heart I have set up a stone and poured oil over it as a memorial to the places where heaven touched earth, where I have been blessed to have a glimpse of the glory of God.