Over the years, I have given plenty of thought to the idea of holy ground. Mostly, I have considered how people’s behavior changes when they perceive they are about to stand on holy ground. If before there was bickering, it quickly gives way to peace. The isolation of electronics shifts toward attentiveness to each other and our surroundings. Of late, I have begun to wonder more deeply about this long-observed shift.

The question of how a person is obliged to behave on holy ground first arose for me at a baptism my young son attended with our family. An hour into the ceremony, he grew restless enough that I decided to take him outside to stretch his legs. Unfortunately, a large, two-century-old cemetery adjacent to the church proved the only option.

Eying the place, I wondered if it would be a breach of holy etiquette for us to walk the grounds, spread a blanket, and enjoy a snack. After surveying the perimeter, we decided to enter. But not without including the dead in our thoughts. We finally came to believe that they, whether near or far, might appreciate our enjoyment of this little blessing even more than we did, and that most of them would be fine with our choice.

As my son has grown and I have aged, the substance of that discussion has stayed with me for years, its outlines becoming ever more defined with time.

When we moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a decade ago, one of the first activities we were invite to was a picnic beside a place called “God’s Acre.” I soon learned that the term referred to a cemetery that lay squarely in the middle of Moravian Academy’s lower-school campus. Generations of Moravians, as well as Native Americans and others in need of a final resting place, lay buried there, where towering cypress trees mixed themselves among row after neat, flat-stoned row of graves, pathways, and benches.  

As we ate at the edge of The Acre, kids raced, laughed, and played frisbee or ball. It seemed that the Moravians’ sense of holy ground and good behavior was closer to that held by Whoever made meadows, forests, and mountains, where life (laughing rivers, rustling leaves, joyful flowers of every kind) is as comfortable as comfortable can be with death, with decaying logs, critters, and plant matter that, to many eyes, might seem contrary to the dance to which it has been welcomed.

Not one child failed to display the appropriate reverence when the occasional ball or frisbee needed retrieving from among the grave stones. We were all mindful of the dead and, amidst that awareness, we also seemed more mindful of each other. It had never consciously occurred to me how much a willingness to remain aware of how near death is, and to then act accordingly, marks the boundary between holy and unholy ground.  

In subsequent months, this realization nudged me to wonder if all the bloodshed in wars the world over somehow made every earthly acre a kind of holy ground. Yet the change in behavior towards each other that I had come to believe should attend that recognition often seemed forgotten. As if the words, “thank you for your service” and, often unspoken but more relevant, “thank you for the deaths of your friends,” might be helpful to consider at greater length.

Most people behave appropriately towards each other once they understand the ground beneath them is holy. The challenge is realizing and then remembering that all ground is holy.  In a way no sermon or prior experience had ever been able to, having cancer gave me a lasting sense of this truth.

The lesson was delivered the first time I entered a cancer ward waiting room for treatment. As I approached, my mind was a thousand miles away with self-centered concerns. Then I rounded the corner. At that moment, the conviction that I was on holy ground rushed into every fiber of my being, as palpable as if I had walked into a brick wall.  

In the split second it took me to scan every face in the room –  young and old, perfectly attired and less so, colors of every hue, nationalities of many types – I realized that every person there was, in some way, just as scared to death as I was. The normal markers of status and judgement instantly dropped away. All that remained was the realization that there were people there who might be dead in a week, a month, a year. And I had no way to tell who, when, or why. All I knew was that every interaction with anyone in that room demand a deep kindness, a carefulness, like handling the most delicate of china, and that anything else would be a sin of the highest order.

I was fortunately enough to have that cancer successfully treated. But walking over, and over, and over into rooms filled with people clearly on the same unknown path as one’s self has a way of sticking with you. Until you realize that every person you pass on the street is in a similar boat. They may not know it. They might prefer to ignore the fact of death’s imminence. But there is no denying that holy ground is everywhere and that we should treat each other accordingly, with reverence, respect, and love.

A few weeks ago, near dusk, I attended a Marigold celebration that took place beneath the cold, rainy shadows of a local garden. Going around the circle in which we stood, each of us shared who among the dead we missed most and why we missed them. We pulling out rings, photographs, worn-out letters, and many long-hidden tears. It was one of the most moving moments I have ever experienced among strangers. It made me think that what is most wrong with society today is not that we are lonely and divided. Those are only the warning signs that in our wantonly death-denying culture we have accidently banished the foundation on which intimacy and unity are built, the acknowledgement that one day we must all return to that holy ground.