Portals to Presence

Portals to Presence are everywhere. We don’t always need a burning bush; sometimes burning toast will do. Anything that gets our attention and makes us stop and receive the radical isness of the moment. Anything that breaks through our ordinary perception and causes us to stop and turn aside, willing to wonder what’s moving us to be moved.

It might be a birdcall. The shock of a near miss in traffic. A hug from a sticky kid. The shard of living grief that slices through your calm. That tune that makes you jump up and boogie. The smell of something familiar, unsettling, unnamable. The dream you can’t shake. The way the slick mud tests your balance. That break in the hedge, in the heat, in the heart. Six perfect eggs.  Wind, always wind.

Recently the Wisdom Tree Collective staff and a few others had a chance to sit with Rabbi Rami Shapiro. Talking about names for the Holy, he considered the cryptic, unpronounceable name God claims in the burning bush story: YHWH.

“One more way to translate that,” Rami said, “is simply I’m what’s happening.”

I was pretty much speechless. My whole world is now alight.  

In your life, what is happening right now? How is this very moment a portal to the Mystery beyond you that stirs the mystery within you?

Day by day, may “I’m what’s happening” flare up so that you can’t miss It. And may you have the desire to turn aside and look.

—Laura Huff Hileman, Wisdom Tree Collective Director of Programs in Dreams and Spirituality