“Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”

I spent yesterday afternoon seeking and experiencing the truth of Edward Hays’s words, “Everything is saturated with the sacred, is a tabernacle of your presence.” These words are from one of Hays’s autumn morning prayers in his book, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim.

Since the autumn equinox, I’ve been incorporating these prayers into my morning prayer time. They became more than words, however, when I experienced their deeper truth yesterday as I very intentionally immersed myself in the beauty of the natural world. Specifically, I spent time by Diamond Lake and at the Prayer Tree by Minnehaha Creek. Both these places of urban wildreness are located in south Minneapolis, and both have become very special to me in the past few years. (I hope my photographs attest to this!)

As is so often the case when I allow myself a “sacred pause” to be fully present in nature, I not only feel my body, mind, and spirit come into alignment, but I also sense in every leaf and stone, every wave of water and ray of light, the sustaining and transforming energy of the sacred. In ways that can only be described as mystical, I recognize my connection to – and oneness with – all within and around me.

This experience of oneness, of the Divine Presence saturating all the different aspects of the natural world, is for me one of renewal; it restores within me balance and harmony, clarity and hope.

May I see your holiness in the golden beauty of this day. May I touch with reverence all things, since everything is saturated with the sacred, is a tabernacle of your presence. Broaden the boundaries of my heart that it may encompass more than it did yesterday, as I begin this day with you.

– Edward Hays
Excerpted from “The Season of Autumn”
in Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim
Forest of Peace Books, 1989
p. 64

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Autumn: Season of Transformation and Surrender
• O Sacred Season of Autumn
• “Thou Hast Thy Music Too”
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2018)
• Autumn – Within and Beyond (2016)
• Autumn Psalm
• Autumn Hues
• Autumn by the Creek
• From the River to the Falls
• Autumn Dance
• “I Caught a Glimpse of a God . . .”
• The Prayer Tree
• The Prayer Tree . . . Aflame!
• “This Autumn Land Is Dreaming”
• Cosmic Connection
• The Mysticism of Trees
• Holy Encounters Where Two Worlds Meet
• The Landscape Is a Mirror
• In This In-Between Time

Images: Michael J. Bayly.