holy of holies: the Presence is closer than we think

Posted on by February 21, 2025

The sunlight of longer days in February produces the same effect as caffeine to someone who never drinks it. Beams splash across the floor and the table, and suddenly everything is brighter, more hopeful, and ambition takes dangerous proportions.

I could plant the celery. We could let the chickens out of the coop. Never mind that it’s below freezing at night; the expanded hours of sunshine throw logic and reason out the window and we start to dream again. I could do this, I could do that, I could do anything.

holy of holies: the Presence is closer than we think | Shannon Guerra

It reminds me of wisdom I learned many years ago: One should never mix an extra shot of espresso with writing the week’s to-do list, because the superpowers from Monday’s latte might become the hole you can’t dig yourself out of by Friday.

By Tuesday I’m already wondering about that as I putter around, cleaning the house between helping kids with school.

“How’s it going up there?” Vin asks as I stop by his desk on the way to drop off laundry.

“My mind is ambitious and wants to do things,” I tell him, “but my body is like Nooo, it wants to get a blanket and lay down on the couch.”

By Tuesday, I don’t want to clean the bathroom or put away laundry. I don’t want to edit three more chapters or format paragraphs or change graphics. I don’t really even want to read email, or journal, or type.

I want to take a bath. I want to shut off the notifications, close the door, dim the light. Turn down the noise and rest.

It’s like the mom-version of the Holy of Holies. This is the sacred space that’s quiet and rarely accessed, and only then once all the sacrifices have been made to get there. We’ve made atonement for sins through the washing of many loads of laundry and dishes, and we silently approach, exhausted, face down, knowing our need for His presence.

The real Holy of Holies, of course, was the innermost part of the Temple of Jerusalem, where God’s presence dwelt. It was the most sacred space, separated by a thick curtain (“the veil”) from the also-but-not-quite-as-sacred space just outside. Only a certain priest could go in, and he could only do it once a year. Praise God, bath nights are more frequent than that.

But also, if you know about the death of Jesus, you know that when He said, “It is finished,” that veil was torn from top to bottom. So we all have access now because the Presence erupted forth and landed within each of us who have invited Him in.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

– 1 Corinthians 3:16

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?

– 1 Corinthians 6:19

So now His Presence dwells within us and our hearts are the Holy of Holies. And this is maybe too big of a thought for a tired Tuesday, or a busy Thursday, or a frantic Friday. But it’s still true, and something we should wrestle with until we can wrap our minds around it.

Meanwhile on that tired Tuesday, there are three hours to go until the bath, the dim lights, the restful retreat. He is there in the midst of the exhaustion and to do list, so for the joy set before me – which is not just the quiet bath, but also the accomplishment of a project that is so close to finally being finished – I’ll work on these last twenty pages.

But first I’ll run downstairs to refill my water and grab the phone charger, then come back upstairs to drink that water while reading a few posts in my email. An hour later, I’ll realize I forgot the charger on the first trip and run back down for it again. Because even when the joy is set before me, I tend to get pretty distracted with details.

We must get delivered from ourselves, and His presence is the very thing that will prune us.

– Michael Freeland Miller, His House, His Presence

On Wednesday I am short on time at the desk (“On Wednesday,” she says, as though every other day has looooads of time) and Bingley the Small Puma jumps up and demands attention while I am holding a book in my left hand and typing as fast as possible with my right.

This book has passages that I need to get in me, that might become part of the post I’m working on – or they might not, but the message is definitely flavoring the stew. But Bingley gets right in my face and doesn’t care that my hands are already full or that I’ll need to go back and edit the extra vowels he made me type along with the constant need to insert all the h’s I missed because my keyboard has something miniscule stuck in it (probably a cat hair) and for three years now the H key has been capricious, which means sometimes it works fine and other times it makes me type in a Cockney accent.

Bingley cares about none of those things because his sole focus is the presence of the one who loves him. And if I’m at the desk, then the desk is the sacred space he runs to.

He is learning manners, though: He may not step on the laptop, back onto the keyboard, or knock over my tea. We have standards (not many, but some) and he can’t just walk all over the place, because this is my sacred space too. If he ignores the boundaries, I push him away.

A few months ago in group we were discussing the dwelling place, where the Lord resides – how the Holy of Holies left the building when Jesus died on the cross; the curtain was torn and the Spirit was loosed and tongues of fire emerged and our free access to Him changed everything:

So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone;

in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

– Ephesians 2:19-22

We hold the sacred place within us, and He is there. Here. Breathing, pulsing, burning, inside.

So we approach Him with awe. But another fascinating thing that came up in our discussion: If we recognize His presence with awe and wonder, marveling at the intimacy and closeness with Him because He dwells within us, then also, in Kingdom culture, do we recognize that He is also within each other?

Do you not know that your body is a Temple of the living God? Yes, we know, it says it right there. But have we considered that when we look at a fellow citizen of the Kingdom, they also are housing the presence of God? They, too, are temples that host the King.

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,

“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.”

– 2 Corinthians 6:16

Temple, in Greek, is naos, derived from the verb naio, meaning “to dwell.” In the New Testament it specifically refers to the inner sanctuary, the most sacred part of the temple where God’s presence dwells, the Holy of Holies. And we clearly see that it’s no longer talking about a building.

Suddenly the world flips inside out as we realize there’s this galaxy within our hearts, the temple where worship is always occurring:

For this reason they are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

– Revelation 7:15

At this very moment, worship is happening. We can choose whether or not to join it or be consciously aware of it, but regardless, it is actively occurring, right now, at this very second, always. This holy place is in us and we don’t understand it and can’t wrap our minds around it, but we are here and there all at once, and so much more is happening than we realize.

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

– Ephesians 2:4-6

A person’s life is a holy thing. So do we recognize the Holy of Holies in each other’s hearts? Do we hold each other’s confidence and trust in fear and trembling? Or do we incautiously push the curtain aside, our recklessness creating a draft of air that causes the flame to flicker? Are we acting as mere men, or are we saints and priests, the redeemed who recognize that each of us is a temple wherein His presence resides?

And in that light, we learn manners and approach each other with a little awe, too. Our kids, our friends, our spouses: I revere the flame within you, and so help me God, I will not blow it out.

So must take care of ourselves, and take care of each other. Caring for the body – literal and figurative – is both a gift and a holy commission.

On the frantic Friday when I am finishing a post and looking at Monday’s to-do list that has no hope in the world of being completed in the next two hours, He is there.

I look at the uncrossed items on the list and know that two can easily move to next week, and the last item is being typed at this second. The holy work of washing the eggs and teaching the kids and sending one kid outside to do chores was finished earlier. The holy work of the moment is in progress. And the holy work that hasn’t been done yet, that was the result of too much caffeine and ambition on Monday, will be just as holy next week.

And so we worship, because He is here in the midst of it, and the joy is set before us.

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keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

Posted on by January 28, 2025

The cars went up and down the highway, headlights and taillights flickering through the trees. Dusk hits lately around 4 pm, and on this side of the window, my journal was open to page 360-something. I wasn’t sure what to write but I wrote anyway, words about mundane things, hoping something would spark – a theme, an idea, an analogy, a memory of something funny or profound. Just kept the pen moving, pushing it across the lines, because something usually reveals itself.

keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

I started this journal toward the end of 2020 and there’s only fifteen or so pages left. Every page doesn’t have to be profound, just like every day of life doesn’t have to be filled with something wildly spectacular. The slow, quiet, routine days are where most of our living is done.

So this journal entry, like the day, was meat and potatoes: books I’m reading, the project I’m working on, what we were planning to do that evening. A headline or two of what’s going on in the world. Nothing exciting but the ink filled the page, and some of it was even legible, so that’s a plus.

It’s the little things, and our attention to them, that really do add up. Like yesterday, when I put a few extra minutes into cleaning the kitchen – did anyone notice the front of the dishwasher wasn’t as streaky? Or that the dust inside the oven was cleaned out? (How do ovens get dust inside them, anyway?) Or that the stovetop was clean? Probably not. (Which is why I’m writing about it so I can get credit, she smirked.)

Those small things are so encouraging to me though, whether anyone else notices them or not. I like clean spaces – just don’t look at my desk – and haven’t always had the margin to notice and take care of those details. I look back on that other season where the air was thick, the noise was loud, and there were so many demands that sometimes only the absolute top-of-the-top priorities, like meals and safety, were taken care of. I can now see how I put figurative blinders on in certain areas, willfully ignoring many peripherals, because there were already too many essentials. It’s amazing how many essentials become peripherals when you’re in survival mode.

I remember telling a friend, a fellow adoptive mom, that I felt like I had some sort of survivor’s guilt as we began to walk out of that other season and into this one. Vin started working with me from home and we could tackle the demands together. There was less chaos, more sleep, and time to process. The kids were bigger and the special needs were less volatile. I had survived, was surviving; we had all made it and were slowly working back toward equilibrium even though we had no idea what that actually looked like anymore because so many things had changed. How do you rest and let go after years of trauma and hypervigilance? How do you know it’s really safe?

I didn’t have to be so strong anymore, and I wasn’t sure that was actually forward progress.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

– 2 Corinthians 12:9a

I felt guilty because there was a sense of ease I hadn’t experienced in years, but many parts of myself and our family had died in the process of getting there. Yes, we survived – but so many other things didn’t.

It was like we had made a trade but had no say in the details of the transaction, and the deal didn’t seem fair. It was too good in some ways, too hard in others.

That was three journals and several years ago, and I still don’t understand it; I’m obviously still working my way through it.

In many ways it’s best to not look too close. When we look at those details it can quickly lead to a naval-gazing, toxic cocktail of blame and regret. We have to surrender the past, the decisions we made and others made, and trust that God knows what to do with them. He knows what to do with each of our hearts in all the dynamics of memories and current choices and loss and grief and ideas of how things should have been, and the distance between that and how they actually happened.

So many details are still being worked out. So if it doesn’t look like that yet, don’t linger; keep going. He’s going to show us how those years resulted in honor instead of dishonor; beauty, not regret; healing and growth in the place of trauma and immaturity. Gain instead of loss.

He’s doing it. We don’t have to understand how that’s possible anymore than we know the starting place or destination of all the cars on the highway. And this, too, is surrender.

Vin and I sat on the couch the other night looking at a list of dreams we made a little over three years ago. The challenge was to write a hundred of them but we only got to thirty, and upon review, we’ve accomplished five so far. Publish Risk the Ocean. Finish book #4 in series. Replace the Stagecoach. A few other items were no longer dreams and we crossed them out, then added some more. Healing for my hand. Find a great assisted living situation for Andrey. And after editing, the list had only grown to 36. So it appears we need to work a little harder on this dreaming thing.

Some of the dreams, though, I don’t want to define. I don’t want to name them because they’re still too fuzzy and I don’t want to shoot in the dark, committing something to paper that I’ll have to cross out later. I have books without titles, ideas without structure, colors but no outlines. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And I feel like answers in many areas are on the way, but meanwhile there’s this strong sense of plodding on steadfastly, determinedly, knowing that the Lord is leading and the answers will come in time. Maybe sooner than we think. So we continue to invest, and not bury, the talents, while we wait for clarity to come.

In the beginning of this season – I think it’s still this season, at least; the one where we transitioned out of dark chaos and into a lighter, brighter version of chaos – we unexpectedly got pregnant and had Kavanagh around the same time friends our age were becoming grandparents. That was about six years ago and we were feeling the full range of parenthood with an adult kid out of the house, a high schooler, three 13-year-olds, an elementary schooler, and the two littlest littles, toddler and infant. Never would I have guessed this would be my life twenty years earlier. Or ten years ago. Or five years ago.

But it’s so good. I mean, mostly, of course – not perfect, and there are plenty of things that are expletive-worthy at times (we call this “writing material” in our house) – but overall, it’s so good.

During that other season, I didn’t know things could be good again. And I’m so glad I made it through to this side. I wish I could’ve told myself how good it would be. So instead, if you’re in that dark, painful place, where you never thought you’d see yourself, I’ll tell you: Give it a few years, friend. Or, just give it a week. And then another, and another.

Keep pushing the pen and filling those pages.

You can do this. Cling to Jesus and keep going forward. So much good is on the other side of steadfastness.

Also last week – I think it was around the same day we were working on our list of dreams, but it was definitely the same day I was journaling without knowing what to write about – I had to take all the kids to an appointment. And even though most of our kids are older now I still don’t miss those days of a small child screaming in the back of the vehicle loud enough for other cars to hear as we drive past them on the Parks Highway.

I mean, it’s been ages since that last happened…I think it was last September? But there we were, running late from the wrestle over seatbelts and sliding sideways to a stop at the foot of the icy driveway where I informed my youngest passenger through gritted teeth NO YOU ARE NOT STAYING HOME AND ALSO NO I AM NOT SUDDENLY GETTING THE GAME YOU WHINED ABOUT NOT WANTING TO TAKE FOR THE LAST TWELVE MINUTES BECAUSE WE ARE LEAVING AND YOU ARE COMING TOO so help me.

Eight kids and twenty-four years later, do we get better at this? I hope so.

So we went down the highway amid screaming louder than the traffic, louder than TobyMac, and I prayed in tongues and considered my options. We could turn around and cancel the appointment, but that would be giving in. So we had to keep going.

One thing I have learned and can remind myself in these moments is that even when the noise doesn’t diminish, or the pain stays the same, or the situation doesn’t look any different, God is still working. He is doing. Prayer is changing things whether I see those changes instantly or not.

If we are praying, He is working. And He is working anyway, even when we’re too weak or distracted or exhausted or, or, or…because it’s not about our feelings.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

– Romans 8:22-26

The tantrum continued all the way into town and finally stopped in the parking lot. We completed our appointment, went back home, assigned consequences, and moved on with the day.

A couple hours later I was chatting with a friend on the phone.

“I have a word for you,” she said. “Keep going. I’m not sure what that means, but I clearly hear that for you.” She didn’t know I had said the same thing in different words in my journal earlier that day, or that I had pondered a 180 on the highway just a few hours ago.

Just keep pushing the pen across the paper, Love. The words will come. And now, as I type this, I’m on page 370 in the journal. Just a few pages to go before this one is filled, and I’ll need to start a new one.

How did I get to page 370? The same way we got to the new year, and the same way we got to every year before this one: We kept going.

We just keep pushing the pen, filling the pages in front of us. We trust, and wait, and persevere, whether anyone notices or not.

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best books of 2024

Posted on by January 13, 2025

We take a school break every Christmas: no assignments, no schedule, no charts.

So this year, in lieu of all that, we completed six or seven puzzles, painted, and listened to The Story of the World in audio during car rides. The kids played hours of old-school GeoSafari, thinking it was the coolest thing ever. (It kind of is.) One kid fell in love with the audio version of Our Island Story, and another made new calendars for 2025. I roped another into helping me redo our planner for this year, making it her first foray into graphic design. We played Ticket to Ride, Monopoly, and several other games, and even learned a little about the Himeji Castle in Japan, thanks to a ginormous Lego project.

But no, we didn’t do school at all. Feel free to snicker with us.

best books of 2024 | Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

So learning is more than reading books…but also, it is definitely reading books. And here are my favorites from 2024. (Here are my previous lists from 2023, 2022, and 2021.)

This year they’re all novels on the classic side. So, sorry if you prefer non-fiction – I did read non-fiction last year, but apparently none of them stood out enough to be added to this list – but hopefully you’ll find something here worth trying. I think they all are; I’ve read most of them more than once.

Lilith by George MacDonald

Have I talked your ear off about this one yet? This was our first book of the year in Gaining Ground and I quoted it heavily in one of my favorite posts here, but also in this one here, and wrote posts about it for Gaining Ground here and here, AND used the above quote as the epigraph in Risk the Ocean because it basically summarizes that part of our life. So suffice it to say that Lilith is profound, thought provoking, and disturbing in the best of ways. Not disturbing-and-repulsive-but-important like 1984, but disturbing in the sense that it stirs stagnant waters and brings things to the surface that need to be looked at and considered. It’s fantasy, strange and beautiful.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Long. You need to either read this one steadily, or take notes, or lean heavily on internet resources to map out characters and relationships like I did because there are intertwinings and disguises and previous liasons and all sorts of drama to keep track of. This is a story of betrayal, selfishness, justice, and revenge…um, there’s a bit of mercy, but no, it’s mostly revenge…and even though it’s so long, it’s worth it. Not everything works out perfectly and that’s sort of what I loved about it, because even amid all the larger-than-life aspects of the story, there’s a realness that reminds us we’re meant to overcome even when life is messy and regrettable things happen.

The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

I read these to the kids for school this year, and as soon as we were done, Finn loved them so much he wanted Vin to re-read them to him at bedtime. And I was so encouraged by that because these are rich stories with complex language, but they’re so fun and fascinating that it kept them interested. They are fairy tale-ish fantasy, and the second book, The Princess and Curdie, starts a little slower (for kids) with some narrative description but the imagery is so symbolic and eloquent that it speaks volumes to adults; that message might go right over the kids but I’ve read it three or four times and love it every time, and it picks up fast after that. The chapters are really short so that helps the pace, too.

Curdie and his father were of these: their business was to bring to light hidden things; they sought silver in the rock and found it, and carried it out.

– George MacDonald, The Princess and Curdie

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emma Orczy

A hurting marriage, a messy past, and an unidentified brilliant hero helping people escape during the French revolution. We read this in Gaining Ground and it was a perfect follow up to A Tale of Two Cities – it’s lighter, funnier, and covers the same era from a different perspective. This was the second time I’ve read it and one or two of the plot twists still surprised me.

Emma by Jane Austen

I didn’t really like this book the first time I read it because I don’t like books whose main character is annoying, obnoxious, or presumptuous. And Emma is…well, she’s a gentle version of those things: pampered, wealthy, revered more than she deserves. But this time around I noticed that Emma wasn’t really selfish, she was just immature. And in her immaturity she didn’t realize how arrogant, overbearing, and manipulative she was – but upon maturing (and it’s not an instant process) she grieves and repents. We could use more of this.

Malcolm by George MacDonald

Some years you just plow through a bunch of books by the same author, and this was the year of George MacDonald for me – not on purpose though, it just worked out that way with homeschool and Gaining Ground schedules colliding. But I chose this book myself, and it was hard to get into because of all the Scottish – and by Scottish, I mean dialect and vocabulary. But the spiritual principles in it were so good, the story so pure (not perfect, but pure), that it was worth it. Plus, now I know what words like gien, lugs, een, and lippen mean (if, ears, eyes, and trust, respectively).

Gone Away Lake and Return to Gone Away by Elizabeth Enright

Two kids wander the woods during summer vacation and stumble upon an empty, abandoned town…or is it? We had so much fun reading these last summer that we named one of our new chicks Minnehaha. (That will make more sense when you read the book, I promise.) I first read these to our older kids about 12-15 years ago, so this was the first time our younger crew encountered them, and just like with The Princess and the Goblin books, as soon as we finished, Finn immediately dove back into them as bedtime reading. Return to Gone Away is actually my favorite – if you’ve ever dreamed of finding an old, old house and restoring it, you’ll love it too.

Heavy Weather by P.G. Wodehouse

I raved about Wodehouse in this post and it’s this book’s fault. Sir Galahad is publishing his scandalous memoirs – but then he isn’t – but someone else wants them published – but several others don’t – and mayhem ensues with multiple plots afoot. Wheels within wheels, you know…SO FUNNY. No one does dialogue like Wodehouse.

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

Another one I read to the kids. If you’re not familiar with Elizabeth Goudge, her writing is beautiful, cozy, atmospheric – the kind you curl up into, like a virtual blanket and tea. In spite of the title, the book is not about horses – or even a particular horse, really – but about a girl who goes to live in her uncle’s castle, which is her family’s ancestral home. The characters, human and animal, are fun and intriguing and not all what they seem to be.

So there’s the list. But hey, lastly, want to join us at Gaining Ground for more great books? We’re currently in the middle of Gone With the Wind (I really want this tshirt) but we’ll be starting Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott in March and we’d love for you to join us either on Substack or Telegram for it…since it will probably achieve a spot on next year’s Best Books list.