Making Home a Sacred Space

All of us who don’t work at hospitals or grocery stores or such are spending a LOT more time at home right now than usual. Thank you to all of you who are working to keep life going, and thank you to all of you who are staying home to keep us safe.

When we are at home so much our home space has to somehow do all the things; it is a restaurant, playground, library, school, gym and office. These days I am leading worship from my home, and the congregation is gathering by Zoom from their homes. Whenever we do that, it becomes our sacred space -- just by our coming together, just by our intention to make it so. “Sacred” means set aside. It means finding a time and place to remember what is most important to us, to remember the spirit, to remember our deepest self.

When the same space is also your office, hangout and guest room, I find it helps to prepare my space to help me remember that it is sacred. When I lead worship from my home I clear all my bills and other work off my desk, and I light a candle to help cultivate that quality of set aside time.

I find that it also helps me to have a set-aside space for my spiritual practice as well. Right next to my desk, I have a little cushion and a table- piled with all my books of meditation and poetry. Behind it is our guest bed which I threw a bedspread over to help my meditation spot feel special. It takes up just a couple feet of space, but as soon as I go to that spot, my body and mind immediately start to unwind, start to get ready to meditate or read or journal or just be quiet.

One of the books on that table is “Meditations” by Thomas Moore, who was a monk for many years. He helped me realize that we could imagine “sheltering at home” as our own private monastery. He wrote:

“withdrawal from the world is something we can, and perhaps should, do every day. It completes the movement of which entering fully into life is only one part, just as a loaf of bread needs air in order to rise, Everything we do needs an empty place in its interior. I especially enjoy such ordinary retreats form the active life as shaving, showering, reading, doing nothing, walking, listening to the radio, driving the car. All of these activities can turn off one’s attention inward to ward contemplation. Mundane withdrawal from the busyness of an active life can create a spirituality without walls, a spiritual practice ... At the sight of nothing, the soul rejoices” [p. l 4]

Do you have a space in your home that could be your sacred space? A place where you go to remember the sacred, to hear the still small voice within? Perhaps it could be a space that comes and goes as you need it- you could light a candle, or spread out a pretty cloth, or gather all your stuffed animals, to prepare your space in a way that says to you “this is a special time.” Whether we are in our church building, in a monastery or in our own room at home, the way we create sacred space, the most important way, is by setting aside some space in our minds and hearts. Make space for the spirit wherever you are sheltering today.

                                                      

An Extroverted Spiritual Practice

Finally the growing season is in full swing. The long winter is over, and the trees are green again. I’m running into neighbors I haven’t seen since fall. The season invites us to turn from the inward contemplative focus back out into the world. Here in the North East, where our growing period is limited, the spring into summer is a sprint as plants grow and bloom and fruit. Your friends, your neighbors, the trees, the irises, the birds all have emerged from their winter dormant period, and lured out into the world by the long, warm days.

This season invites more extroverted spiritual practices. For most of the summer I move my meditation spot out onto the porch. Before I close my eyes and draw inward, I spend some time just gazing out at the world around me- at the breeze moving through the leaves in the trees, the squirrels hopping from branch to branch, the insects buzzing about, even the neighbors walking their dogs. At first I was frustrated by all the noise- the lawn mowers revving and buzzing, the cars zooming, the friends arguing as they walked by. Then I remembered a practice I had learned in a meditation workshop years ago- to open up my awareness and allow all the sounds to drift in and then let them drift out. In this practice I meet myself, just as I am, in the neighborhood just as it is.

Another favorite summer practice is a walking meditation. For years I have walked my dog on pretty much the same route each day. Instead of impatiently waiting for him to sniff every tree, I decided to engage the walk with openness and curiosity. I watch the mysterious circles he traces with his nose on the ground, and wonder what critters have been there before us. As I walked and observed the same path day after day, I have begun to know my neighborhood in a deeper way. It was exciting to see the Bleeding Heart in my neighbor’s yard that shot up over a few hot days burst into bloom, and now I notice that the blooms are waning. I remember the tree where the woodpecker came last year, and wonder if he’ll be back. I watch the neighbor kids running for the school bus, and marvel how they’ve grown. I love the special green of the moss on trees after a rain, and notice the dry wilt of plants when there is no rain.

This summer I encourage you to experiment with an extroverted practice. Begin with curiosity, and open your senses to whatever appears- flowers or bugs, sun or rain, the chirping of birds or the rumble of construction. As you reach the end of each period of practice, let go even of the curiosity, end with just gratitude- gratitude for all we meet exactly as it is.

When your spirit feels dry and dormant

A few years ago, a friend gave me an amaryllis bulb. Who knows how long it had sat in a box on a warehouse shelf before I put it in my window and watered it. Nothing happened. This poor thing went literally months without growing. A fingernail of green kept me hopeful so I continued to care for it.

Then all of a sudden, with no change in the care I was giving, it began rapidly growing what seemed like inches a day. A beautiful flower bloomed and then withered in its time. Long green leaves filled up my window long after the flower was gone. The following winter I waited obediently for it to die back and flower again, but it never did. The lush greens enjoyed the sunny window, but it never flowered that year. Without a dormant period, the plant never flowers. I took it outside over the summer and waited, as fall came, for it to die back. The days got shorter and colder, some nights neared freezing, but still no change.

Finally the first hard frosts came and I put it in the basement to force a dormant period. It was sad, when I went down there to get the snow shovels, to see the green leaves looking wilty and desiccated, until it died back to a brown husk. Finally the alarm I had set on my calendar chimed and I was free to bring it back inside. It looked really dry and brown. A week went by. No change. Had I killed it? Finally after 10 days that fingernail of green peeked up like hope.

The story of the amaryllis not only reminds us that renewal is possible, but that renewal is part of a cycle. Dormancy is not a disorder. Periods were we don’t grow, don’t flower are inevitable parts of life, are necessary parts of life, as we rest and preserve our resources for the turning of the season.

If you feel dry and withered right now, that doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong. It just means you are in a dry patch. It doesn’t always feel good to be dry, to be dormant, especially when we can’t see even a sliver of green, to assure us that renewal is possible. But life promises that no matter how old we get, no matter how dried up and withered we feel, something new is always possible. That’s the nature of life; life finds a way.

What would it be like to love our enemies?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” says Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. There are abundant examples on the news, and on social media, of folks acting out this idea that anyone who does something we don’t like is our enemy, and once they are our enemy, it is culturally normative to insult them, to bully them, even to threaten their lives and their families. Jesus knows he is calling his students to something counter-cultural when he says “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

What would it be like to love our enemies? I find it hard even to hold those two concepts in my heart at the same time… enemy… and love. I want to be clear that when I use the word “love” I don’t mean “letting people abuse us or others.” Abusive behavior absolutely has to be named, and we have to create cultural limits for what behavior is allowed. Instead I am talking about maintaining compassion in our own hearts. I must confess that when I see the face or hear the voice of certain political figures, when I hear certain ideas, I turn away, I turn the channel, I walk out of the room. So if I accept this challenge, it is going to take intention and awareness.

The Buddhists suggest that we start with a ground of compassion and openness. A tradition called Loving-kindness Meditation helps us cultivate such a frame of mind. There are many versions of this practice, this one is from American Buddhist Teacher Jack Cornfield. First we call to mind a person we care about. We remember that feeling of caring, that feeling of compassion. We make room for it in our bodies and hearts and establish it there with these words:

May you be filled with lovingkindness.
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May you be well in body and mind.
May you be at ease and happy.

The traditional Buddhist practice does not rush this process. You cannot will yourself to feel compassionate, you can’t force yourself, you can only open yourself up to it, soften and allow it in. You can take as long as you need to establish that foundation of compassion- days, weeks, years. When you are ready, you extend compassion to yourself -- even the parts of ourselves that judges and hates my enemies. Even the part of us that is hard as a rock with hatred and anger. I invite that part of myself into my heart, into the stream of compassion like a child climbing into his mother’s lap. And like a parent listening to their child tell of the cruel playground bully, I just listen, returning again and again to the ground of compassion. This process takes as long as it takes. And if you choose, if you are willing to consider that maybe each of us has some small role to play in increasing the compassion in the world, in reducing the number of enemies in the world, in creating the kind of collaborative solutions this world needs, you can invite someone with whom you have a difficult relationship, even one who feels like an enemy into that space of compassion. It can be hard keep our hearts open to people who challenge us, people who make us angry, but in truth the practice of learning to keep our hearts open allows us to stay open to the Spirit even in the presence of our enemies. Surely that is when we need Spirit most.

The culture all around shows us, day after day, what happens when we lash out at our enemies with hate. Perhaps it’s time to break that vicious cycle of retribution and violence, and turn instead to the slow, vulnerable work of cultivating compassion, of weaving and re-weaving connections. We are called to love one another as God loves us- unconditionally and without exception.

Feeling Busy this Holiday Season?

At this time of year my friends tell me they feel scattered, busy, and overwhelmed by all that is on their plates. Many of us have holiday traditions that require preparation, on top of the usual business of repairing the furnace, putting snow tires on the car, doctor’s visits, meeting deadlines at work or school.

On top of these very real demands on our time, there are the urgent suggestions that come at us through the media. The whole world seems to have a lot of things I need to do right away, most of them involving my credit card. Economists and reporters call this “The holiday shopping season” because it accounts for between 20 to 40 percent of typical retailers' total annual sales. This time of year I get a staggering number of e-mails from retailers insisting that I “Shop now and save” alerting me to “One day only special offers” to “get them now before they are gone.

Let’s interrupt that. This season, this “dark of winter” is a time of emptying and letting go. The trees have dropped their leaves, and now we have a wide open view of the sky. In the Catholic tradition Advent is a time of emptiness, a time of waiting. In most Catholic churches the holiday trees and greens are not decorated until after the 4th Sunday in advent, when the time of spiritual preparation is complete and the time of celebration begins. For observant Catholics, waiting to welcome spiritual light of the Christ Child into the world, Advent is a time of “emptying ourselves of ourselves.” I think this is really important wisdom for Christian and non-Christian alike. Without a time of emptying, our spirits are too full to receive anything new. This year as our culture insists we fill up our time and our shopping carts and our homes, the spirit invites us to enter into a time of emptying.

Perhaps we keep so busy in these dark days because we know that emptying is not always comfortable. Sometimes when we are quiet and still our hearts fill up with concerns and feelings we have been too busy to feel. Sometimes we find ourselves shopping or working precisely because our hearts are so full. But if we can give ourselves some space to just be quiet and still, those worries and memories and feelings that rise to the surface of our attention often drift away, one by one, leaving us with more inner spaciousness if we meet them with a compassionate awareness, without grasping or pushing. The wisdom of the ages tells us that there is a value in our journey into the emptiness, into the darkness, because it empties us out for the returning light.

What would it mean to empty our hearts and minds during this darkest time of year, to make room for new gifts, new light, new growth? It takes intention to carve out a little time for our spirits in this busy season. Some of our traditions give us that time- reading holiday stories to a child, lighting a candle, gazing up at the night sky or falling snow. I invite you now to take a moment and consider the seasonal traditions of your family, your spirit, your community. Which of those traditions offer an opportunity for emptying yourself? Which traditions make you feel like a crowded parking lot? What is your inner wisdom inviting you to let go of to make room for whatever new light may be on the horizon?

As we wait in this darkest time of year, let us prepare room for something deeper, something more important than “the holiday shopping season.” Let us be grateful for the gaps and in-between times instead of rushing to fill them up. Let this be a season of emptying our hearts and minds -- a time of listening. May we make time for our deepest, truest self, open to the possibility that something new may enter in.