We almost used Peter Mayer’s song Holy Now in Sunday’s service. If you know the song, you might recognize in Peter’s lyrics an attitude that reflects our enormous power to make things—anything and everything—sacred. 

If you aren’t familiar with the song, here’s a link with lyrics. There are some other recordings of Peter performing the song live, but I know sometimes reading along with lyrics can help take them in. Holy Now with lyrics. 

(“Holy Now” by Peter Mayer, © 1999. www.petermayer.net)

The journey described in the song is one that may feel familiar to a lot of Unitarian Universalists. Many people grow up with the idea that some things are sacred and some things are secular (or “vulgar”) and those are two distinct and separate categories. More and more, I hear people from all sorts of spiritual traditions echoing what this song suggests: There really isn’t anything that can’t be holy. 

Part of me wants to argue with Peter, though. The song says, “Everything is holy now,” but is that really accurate? Would it be in some way more true to say, “Everything has always been holy, and my way of experiencing it has evolved into fuller awareness of just how holy everything is”? That doesn’t flow as smoothly as a chorus, though. 

Or maybe the more accurate thing is to say that we can decide in any moment whether we’ll allow something to be sacred or holy to us. Maybe nothing is ever holy until someone decides to make it holy. Peter challenges:

Read a questioning child’s face and say it’s not a testament. That’d be very hard to say. See another new morning come and say it’s not a sacrament, I tell you that it can’t be done.

And yet it’s entirely possible—easy even—for some people to look at a questioning child’s face and find it annoying or merely cute or any number of things without allowing it to be a testament to anything. Maybe Peter’s dawns are consistently sacramental, but lots of people experience a new morning without making it a sacrament. It can absolutely be done.

The question for me becomes, “Why would I choose not to make each new morning a sacrament?” Given the option of experiencing a new morning—or anything—as a sacrament, what do I allow to become so urgent or distracting that I say, “No thank you. No sacramental new morning for me. I’m good”? 

Maybe Peter is right and everything is now holy. Or maybe everything always has been holy. Or maybe nothing has ever been holy, except when we decide to make it so. The question still arises: What keeps us from recognizing that holiness? And if it’s entirely ours to imbue, what keeps us from making each new morning—or moment—a sacrament? 

(And just in case it’s helpful to you: My first answer to questions like that are almost always an excuse to keep me from really considering the question!)  

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