God comes to us disguised as our life.

Paula D’Arcy

Life is so messy right now. Maybe it always is, but this feels like mess on steroids. Nothing is how it was before the world went into lockdown, which isn’t such a bad thing. The part about nothing being the same as before I mean.

Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, things weren’t working very well before. We’d just gotten used to them.

But still.

Living in the chaos of the unfamiliar is not easy. In fact it’s downright hard and scary and batshit crazy. The way forward is murky at best, and so we are stuck in the mess that is today. So just what are we supposed to do with it? The mess I mean.

To answer that question I have to take you back to my front porch earlier this morning. It was pouring rain and I was listening to a song my niece sent to me called The UK Blessing. Actually, now that I think about it, I have to take you back inside and upstairs earlier this morning. I was on my yoga mat doing a plank while listening to this song on full blast, tears streaming down my face. It just reached inside and grabbed me by the heart and said, this message is for you. Maybe it’s one for you too. The message I mean.

So, back downstairs and out on to the front porch. The rain was pouring down in a cleansing-tears-from-heaven kind of way. I was listening to the song, again, when I got a text from that same niece. She said that she had been listening to it too, because like mine, her life felt a little more than messy. The power in their home had just gone out, and so she decided to light some candles.

Which is the answer to that question. The question of what are we supposed to do with the mess I mean.

We are supposed to light candles in our darkness, let music pour into our souls, and tears stream down our weary faces. We are supposed to make a sanctuary, a holy place, right in the middle of our messy, muddled, murky lives. Whether we believe in God or not, we all believe in Love. Tomato. Tomahto. Life isn’t holy and sacred someplace else. If life is holy and sacred anywhere, it is holy and sacred right here. In the mess I mean.

(With gratitude to Katie Meleney)