Love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is not explainable or even justifiable. Love itself is the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. Love includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. Love is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.
I began to think of sacredness as a kind of dialogue between the human spirit and certain designated places. These sites that call forth reverence, awe, humility, and wonder — we make them sacred. It is a way of honoring those feelings in ourselves. And when we hear the songs the places sing, we hear our own most ancient voices.
