It was the morning after we sent the inaugural newsletter, Reflection. I was working in the back yard early before it got too hot. This was the third day in a string of fifteen days of 100+ degrees heat. The butterflies, hummingbirds, and redbirds were already arriving to sip and nibble their sustenance for the day. I sat down on the bench for a moment, overwhelmed by the simplicity of nature, the beauty of the morning, the serenity of the garden, and the sacredness of the space.
 Bill and I built this Meditation Garden last year as part of our ongoing attention to monastic hospitality and simplicity. Another project was creating sacred space for praying the Liturgy of the Hours in a designated room in our house we refer to as The Oratory. Any area or part of any room can be created as a sacred space by arranging a chair and a table with a candle, perhaps separated from the rest of the room by artificial plants or a Shoji screen. By entering into a sacred space regularly for morning prayer or vespers, one enters the rhythms of prayers of people all over the world as they have been doing for centuries.
Three ways we have been cut off from sacred space are by isolation, distraction, and forgetfulness. The demands of daily life, the pervasiveness of the media, and the seduction of external visual and auditory stimuli leave us numbed to the beauty of the sacred. We have forgotten that God walks in the garden of our lives and calls out, "Where are you?"
Sacred is simple. Sacred is reflected in our gardens, in our prayer spaces, in our daily lives. The great Swedish psychologist, Karl Jung, had inscribed (in Latin) these words both over the door to his house and on his tombstone: "Bidden or not bidden, God is present." If we but notice that God is present, we will recognize God offering to us our daily sips and nibbles, our sustenance for the day.
By Jan Davis
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| Gateway to Heaven by Bill Howden |
"How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God;
it is the gateway to heaven."
-- Genesis 28:17 [REB]
Sacred space
is not produced
by bishop's blessing,
clouds of incense,
or dim light, filtered
through stained glass.
It is not commissioned
at great expense.
I have, to be sure,
glimpsed God's glory
in soaring cathedrals;
sensed the Spirit
in small chapels
whose walls echo
with prayers of generations;
felt deep reverence
hearing a Bach fugue;
stood in silent awe
before the art of Fra Angelico.
But are we not children
of Jacob our father?
He lay down to sleep
in an ordinary place,
dreamed a wondrous dream,
of angels ascending, descending,
and woke to see
that wherever he laid his head
could be the abode of God,
could be the gateway to heaven.
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May you be richly blessed in your sacred space. |
