Above Rome

The teenage crowd in the back of the plane screamed and shouted as we accelerated down the runway toward the blood-orange horizon. A chorus of emotion arose at lift off, so appropriately acknowledging our break with the Earth - and departure from this particular land and country. As we soar above roads and towns, seas and mountains, and clouds and fields, the chorus reminds me that ritual can happen anywhere: that the Sacred is found everywhere. It is up to us to recognize and acknowledge the transitions, the portals, the rites of passage through which life takes us, and to invite the Sacred to walk through them with us.