Where to look for hidden treasure.

As Catholics we know that the whole world is charged with God's grandeur.

HAVE YOU EVER WATCHED THE ANTIQUES ROADSHOW program on PBS? I love it when some guy comes in hauling what he thought was a spittoon only to find out it' s a rare Louis XIV vase worth over $100,000. Such stories not only make great television, they also remind me of the gospel passage about the seeker who bought a field that, lo and behold, had a pearl of great price buried within it.

Jesus had a lot to say about where we might find the treasures we're seeking. In typical paradoxical fashion, he hints that spiritual truth--life's greatest treasure--would be found where we'd least suspect it, hidden in plain sight, if only we have eyes to see.

In recent days I've noticed a new--or more accurately, a revived--movement in the church to search for and discover the deepest treasures of God's life in the ordinary moments of our own lives. This is especially true in family ministry circles, where those who want to guide folks to a deeper sense of the sacred point to the ordinary moments and relationships of family life as the place they'll most likely find the presence of God.

But not everybody sees it that way. In a recent issue of the journal Family Ministry, theologian Wendy Wright shares a question that was put to her at one of her workshops. Typically in workshops with parents, Wright, author of the insightful Sacred Dwelling: A Spirituality of Family Life (Forest of Peace, 1994), sets an altar with ordinary household objects that bear special meaning to her and her family members. As she contemplates these, she invites participants to reflect on their own experiences of sacred space and time.

During a recent workshop for trainees in pastoral ministry, one participant asked: "What makes this sort of spiritual reflection Christian, and what differentiates it from sentimentality?" Wright reports that one attendee, wrestling with the question, concluded that such reflection was merely "a nostalgic reminiscence ... [of] some idealized `sweet time' when children were young or we were innocent of the cares of life."

I suspect that the threat inherent in seeking God in the ordinary is that if everything is holy, then holy doesn't seem to add up to much. "Don't tell me that spittoon is really a priceless work of art." In most people, if not all, there's a desire to locate the sacred outside ourselves, to see it as totally other.

This is the ideological split that has fueled the recent flap in certain parishes over where to locate the tabernacle in their church redesigns and renovations. Those who primarily see God as totally other claim the tabernacle ought to be the central focal point in the church. Front and center, more prominent than the altar and certainly more prominent than the congregation. Others want to direct the congregation's consciousness toward the God who is in our midst, who is embodied in the people gathered around the altar.

Both points of view contain much truth, of course. But different camps have formed, and each camp wants to emphasize one understanding to the exclusion of the other (although in my experience those of the "God is immanent" camp seem to have a lot more room for the "God is transcendent" believers than vice versa).

It seems God is content to have created people with both leanings. And if we're honest, most of us would acknowledge that at times both of these understandings have been true in our own life experiences. Perhaps our call is to learn to appreciate and accommodate both approaches. We need respectful compromise.

Meanwhile, many young people--and people of all ages--are going through life without an awareness of God, whether immanent or transcendent. We need to find ways to speak a word of life to them. Why not begin where they live--by pointing to the traces of God in the ordinary experiences of daily life? Albert Einstein said, "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." As Catholics, we're heirs to a belief system that takes the latter view. Sure, such a close-to-home view can devolve into sentimentality--any devotional process can--but that doesn't cancel out the fact that the whole world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Those pushing the transcendence of God seem threatened by the truth that Jesus, the one they want to lock away behind the gold doors and silky veil, was called Emmanuel, "God is with us." When he taught us to pray, he didn't start out with the words, "Oh, Almighty and Ever Powerful God," but rather with the simple words, "Our Father."

TOM MCGRATH, executive editor of U.S. CATHOLIC magazine.