The magic of the sacred

"Entrances to holiness are everywhere. The possibility of ascent is all the time, even at unlikely times and through unlikely places. There is no place on earth without the Presence."

Bamidar Rabba 12:4
quoted in 365 Nirvana

"As we train, we may come to the point where we see the magic of the present moment; we may gradually wake up to the truth that we have always been warriors living in a sacred world.  This is the ongoing experience of limitless joy."

Pema Chodron, at the close of Comfortable With Uncertainty.

I'm feeling an undercurrent of joy today.  Don't know if it's my Practice of Saying Yes, or just that a shift is coming -- or has happened -- but both these readings resonated with me this morning.  So when this picture leaped out at me, I found I liked the incongruity of the fort and the flag with the deer and the beach.  Perhaps what it's telling me is that Presence is present even when we are still protecting ourselves and fighting battles, declaring turf wars and fortifying our defenses.  We only need to step outside our self-constructed prisons to see the magic of the sacred...