Rendezvous with The Holy

Traci Hubbard                          May 17, 2026 

There are moments in life when the veil between now and eternity is thin. We experience moments when something greater than us enters in. A hospital room where a final breath somehow feels holy. A mountain sunrise that silences every anxious thought. A dream that lingers because it feels more true than ordinary waking life. 

These are rendezvous moments. These moments are appointments with the Holy. They are encounters with the divine energy who has always been with us, always been for us, even when we did not know how to name it. The scriptures and many other sacred texts we have access to today are filled with such moments. 

In the Gospel of Luke, we enter the story of the rich man and Lazarus revealing that there is more to reality than what we can touch. Death does not erase consciousness because memory still speaks. The rich man suddenly sees what he refused to see while physically alive. The poor man is carried into comfort. The story reminds us that eternity is not far away, it is breathing inside of us, speaking to us, even in this moment if we choose to surrender our knowledge and beliefs and listen. 

In the Gospel of Mark, we encounter Jesus as he climbs a mountain with Peter, James, and John. In the blink of an eye, Jesus is transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah appear too and show up for Jesus. They are not dead and have not ceased to exist. They are spiritually alive, their consciousness, their souls, come into human view bringing the Holy’s eternal presence. The disciples glimpse a communion that stretches across time, science, human conception, and language. Eternity, the permanent infinite, and earth, the temporary material finite, intersect and overlay on the edges of connection. This is a very real place where ancestors speak and guide. This is a thin place where wisdom returns to encourage and teach. 

The writer of Hebrews informs us that our faith exists as assurance for the things our souls hope for and exists as our conviction that what we cannot yet see is the most real. Our faith is not denial of our reality. Our faith exists to remind us to relearn what we have forgotten on our human journeys as it draws us to perceive a deeper reality than our human now. 

And Ezekiel! He gives us wheels within wheels, stories within stories, painting mythical word pictures of creatures full of eyes, and fire flashing in every direction. His experience with the Eternal is mystical. It is also strange, and overwhelming. The prophet is trying to describe what cannot fully be described, something that has no suitable language for human understanding. Ezekiel tries with all that he is to describe the eternal living movement of Mystery in all creation. He is struggling to describe time turning inside time, and the eternal moving inside history, the Spirit alive in the organization of existence itself. The prophet Ezekiel saw wheels moving in every direction because the Spirit moves like quantum spirals of light to guide and immerse us as we walk in ways that strengthen our faith to adapt, and transform, so we may make a difference as guides of wisdom for those here and those yet to come. Living faith breathes. Eternal LOVE…Ex nihilo (out of nothing) exists beyond the Neolithic construct of time and is not afraid of mystery. We are afraid of mystery. 

Modern life trains us to distrust anything and anyone we cannot measure or completely know. We are taught to value efficiency over wisdom, information over transformation, and productivity over presence. Yet our souls continue aching for something older, something deeper, something truer. The real divide isn't left or right; it is wisdom we choose to embody and what and who we value. And so, we continue searching for a rendezvous with the Holy. 

The writer of Hebrews says we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” We are not, we are NEVER, abandoned. We are always surrounded. Surrounded by who? Scripture names them “Saints” ... who are your saints? My Saints are Maya Angelo, Corrie ten Boom, Juian of Norwich, Henry Nouwen, St. John of the Cross, Mary Magdeline, a few among many.   

We are surrounded by our ancestors. Those who crossed rivers before us and paved the way for our freedom to vote, to love who we love, to gather to pray, to have control over our bodies, among many other things. We are surrounded by those who suffered, sang, resisted, prayed, survived, and died trying to help others wake up and make a difference. We are surrounded by souls who understood that creation, the trees, are our ancestors. 

Indigenous wisdom traditions have long understood what modern cultures continue to miss or misunderstand, time is not linear. It is not merely a straight line rushing forward to the next moment. Time spirals in quantum connections, overlapping, co-existing with all “human” time. Memory, consciousness, never dies…by nature, it cannot die. It is eternal. It lives. The land we stand on this very moment remembers. The people who were here and are here with us in this place, in this moment, they remember. The trauma echoes across generations, but folks, so does courage and healing.  

Mystics across all ethic and faith traditions tell us the same infallible truth…that the visible world is only a small part of the story. Beneath our ordinary lives a river of meaning is running deeper than our veins. Friends, myth is not falsehood. Myth is sacred truth carried through stories. And stories are the thread through which wisdom breathes, survives, and even thrives. 

Jesus was a narrative storyteller who taught through stories because stories bypass defenses and speak directly to the soul. The parables, his stories, are not simply lessons for our lives, they are mirrors, guideposts, and instructions that are spiritually medicinal. We are living in his stories whether we admit it or not. We are the coin, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the angry vineyard workers caught up in capitalism, us vs them, winners and losers, dualistic mentality. Each one of us consciously or unconsciously, struggle with dualistic thinking. Stories help us wake up and become aware that MORE THAN WHAT WE CAN SEE, THINK, or BELIEVE exists right NOW with intention to help us heal. Why? Because stories help us remember who we are. They cause us to FEEL. We may not remember every word of every story, but we do remember how they made us feel. 

Folks, today, we are living in a storm of change. Many of the old markers are gone. Institutions once bedrock and trustworthy are trembling. Certainties are collapsing, and people are spiritually exhausted. And yet beneath the surface there are still stones. Our prayers, our acts of compassion, our acts of social justice, our community of faith, of family, of friends, and our sacred memories are all stones. The wisdom of our ancestors is not meant to enslave us and keep us in the past. Their wisdom is meant to empower us and accompany us as we cross into the future. Eternal Mystery will never call us just to repeat old forms, old ways, of being. LOVE calls us to carry eternal wisdom into new ways of being, listening and speaking, into new human and spiritual realities. 

We dishonor ancestral wisdom if we simply keep it dusted in books on our shelves or preserved in art to be displayed in galleries and museums. We honor the Holy, our beloved spiritual guides, and our ancestors when we translate their wisdom into vulnerable acts of healing right now. 

When indigenous communities teach reverence for the earth, we hear wisdom for our climate crisis. When mystics teach stillness, we hear medicine for our distracted minds.  When we listen to Celtic wisdom, we begin walking gently with nature, revering our soul friendships, and discovering meaning and awe in poetry and stories. When Black spiritual traditions teach survival through song, we hear hope for oppressed people everywhere. When elders teach us to sit with grief instead of fleeing it, we become capable of love again. To rendezvous with the Lover of our souls is not escaping from the world. It is daring to awake while we are still alive in this realm. 

Have you ever been in a room where something shifted?  Tears came. Truth surfaced. Forgiveness became possible. That is a holy interruption. That is a thin place where we knowingly walk with those who have gone before.  

The disciples experienced it on the mountain of transfiguration. Ezekiel experienced it by the river Chebar. Humans experienced it in prison cells, forests, deserts, sweat lodges, monasteries, kitchens, marches, funerals, and communion tables. We experience it here during prayer, while singing, while listening to a God Moment, during a reflection, and while hearing a story that opens a wound and heals it at the same time.  These moments, and countless others, too, matter because they remind us that the Eternal is not merely an idea. The Holy is LOVE and LOVE is presence. 

At the center of all this mystery is not fear. It is love. The cloud of witnesses does not surround us to judge us but to encourage us. The saints cheer us onward. Our ancestor’s whisper, “Keep going. Heal what we could not heal. Build what we could not build. Love more deeply than we were allowed to love.” And beneath all of it is the everlasting presence of Eternal LOVE. A love before us. A love behind us. A love within us. The rendezvous with ETERNAL LOVE is not about earning divine affection. It is about awakening to the truth that we have never been outside it. 

Our invitation today is to listen with our souls. Listen to the stories, to the elders, to the cries of the earth, and listen to the wisdom carried through generations. Friends, I beg you, do not be afraid of mystery. Do not dismiss sacred memories. And please, do not assume that ancient voices have become irrelevant in our now. For the same Spirit who spoke through Ezekiel still moves in wheels within wheels. The same Jesus transfigured on the mountain still shines through ordinary people. The same cloud of witnesses still surrounds us. The same HOLYLOVE still longs for our rendezvous. And perhaps the holiest thing we can do in this age is to remember deeply, love courageously, and create something new from the wisdom we have inherited. May it be so, amen.