If we are lucky, and if we are truly blessed, we have a few moments when we are in the presence of someone who speaks such truth that our heart sings. Last week I spent two days in the company of a person, who for me, spoke such beautiful, plain truth that I felt a place open in my heart and I came to understand, not only the world, but myself in a fuller way. I was privileged to be among a group of people who hosted John Philip Newell, author,Celtic theologian and former leader of the Iona Community in Scotland. I had heard him speak before and have read most of his work but this time his words seemed more timely than ever.

Newell has given his time and life to the ways in which people search after an understanding of the Holy within a variety of faith traditions. His work in the last years has been to notice, study, and articulate for others the ways in which the East and the West can, indeed must, be in conversation with one another. His experiences with people of faith around the world and the many ways we can learn from the wisdom of one another is pure gift. He speaks of this coming together as ‘A New Harmony’.

At one point in is talk, Newell quoted another author and theologian, Thomas Berry.” We are living at a moment of grace.”, Berry said when speaking of this 21st century in which we find ourselves. He went on to wonder if we would miss this moment or be open to the many ways we are being called to be faithful to our understanding of the Holy, to our responsibility to our Earth home, and to living into what it means to be images of God for the healing of the world. Both theologians believe in our profound ability to be agents of transformation for the good and brighter future of our planet.

I have thought often over the last days of what it means to be living at a moment of grace. Of course, part of me believes we have always been, are always, living in a moment of grace. How else would we continue? But this statement has much greater cosmic implications than my every day embrace of grace. This grace carries with it not only a hope that lives deep within me but also the hope that rests at the heart of the Sacred. It is the dance between the two that holds this moment.

Just after Newell spoke of this moment of grace, he told of the island of Iona and the pilgrimage on which those who visit the island are invited. He spoke of the crossroads that the pilgrims come to and what is said to them there. The funny thing about this crossroads is that the island is so tiny, there are only two roads and one point at which they cross. Having stood at that very point, the winds from the sea blowing around me, I could well remember both the reality and metaphor of this place where roads cross. The kind voice of the leader of our pilgrimage came back to me: “What are the crossroads at which you stand in your life? In your nation? In your communities?”

I cannot remember how I answered that question for myself then. I cannot remember what issues or situations were pulling at me or even those that were straining the circles in which I travel and make a life. But the act of standing at that crossroad in all of its visible simplicity and complexity still rings in me. As those who seem to be grappling with so much, we still stand at this moment of grace in which we have many more roads that intersect than the two on the tiny island of Iona.

And yet, if we allow ourselves to be bathed in the grace that is being offered to us at this moment in which we have been called from our mother’s wombs to live, surely there can be a goodness that is born. This moment of grace begs to be not only noticed but embraced. It seems to me much, much depends upon it.