A day off began by elongating wake-up time with a good book and a hot cup of coffee. The kids were off from school celebrating that greatest of dream-makers, Martin Luther King.

Horowitz played Chopin from Carnegie Hall while I laid in bed reading of African adventures. My daughter sat on the floor engrossed in a book as well. My son was engulfed by the sports section and had spread it all out on the bed.

The cat had claimed her corner of the covers as well.

We were settled thus for a nice long time when suddenly a voice, softly and from deep within, called me to pay attention. Something sacred was in the air and I was to pay homage to it. I put my book down and took in the scene around me.

It was beautiful and like so much beauty it was terribly fragile. I couldn’t be sure if it would ever be repeated and I knew it wouldn’t last for long.

But here it was and it was holy.

Savoring the sacred time, I prayed. That is how I almost always pray...savoring time and making it sacred. My kids joined in the devotion. We smiled at one another like fools but still somehow sensing the occasion’s significance.

If this scene were a movie, James Earl Jones would be the narrator and with that divinely deep voice of his he would say,

"And it was good."

It was.

The rest of the day was lived in response to that holy morning time. It was a kind of epiphany and I thought of those three wise men long ago and how that encounter with God had affected them. The same people but somehow changed, never to be exactly the same.

The wise women and men that I know spend time each day cultivating this holy time, nurturing the potential for fertile moments of divine surprise. They do it in a myriad of ways. Some engage in ancient rituals, age old journeys to sanctified spaces to join with saints long gone and yet to come. Others sit quietly. A favorite chair, a devotional time spent reading, reflecting. Prayer. My wife runs several miles each morning in a sacred circle through the cold dark. It is her way of tapping into holy time.

Such reverence for life cannot help but alter the way in which we live. I am drawn to such devout people. People who are in touch with something deeper than the mundane.

The gift I want to give to my children is the realization that life without these holy times isn’t life at all. My hope is that they will recognize the divine value of what many might say is a waste of time.

I have a dream, too.