Coming to the red-brick church, we slip inside to rest, reflect, and lay prayerful hands on our ailing bodies. The sanctuary is empty. We sidle into pews, remove our hats, gloves, coats. Silence. Yank off our shoes. Silence.
Unlike the silence of a library with its absence of noise, of outward distractions, its rules and kindly librarians who shhhh! at you, in the empty church the silence is different. It's all about presence. Presence you can't name for what it truly is, can't see, but you can feel, if you bring your heart across the threshold of the outside world. This church could as easily be a synagogue, mosque, or a temple. There you meet yourself, and that inexpressible mystery that lies beyond you. This presence requires reverence, not obedience. We kneel at the shrine with no donation to make but our prayers -- for things beyond words, prayers of the open heart. This silence is alive, making possible a change. Silence
~ from THE EMPTINESS OF OUR HANDS by Phyllis Cole Dei and James Murray
To be sacred, a place must be honored, treated with respect. It must gather and hold energy; be alive with the seen and unseen. Above all, a sacred place must be safe — for cells to open, boundaries to expand, what is normally hidden to come forth.
Sacred spaces help us access our own spirits. They offer us doorways through which we can pass, gateways to deepening our connections with nature and our elemental beginnings. Those connections lead us to wholeness; the more we experience the interconnectedness of our bodies and Earth's body, the more we heal spirit.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Summer blessings, dear friends! Where will you find your special Sacred Spavce to leisurely bask in silence this season? The forms and places of spavce are myriad, each with the potential to be experienced as sacred: in earth's secret nooks and crannies, or wide open plains and ocean landscapes ... in the sanctuary of quiet gardens, chapels, or, simply, a rocking chair ... and, always, in the silence of the Sacred Chapel within the heart of everyone. Graced are those who visit regularly ... Silent BE and see.
How do we make a place sacred? By removing diversions. By creating silence. By bringing our presence and breath to a point of stillness. By listening with our skin, touching with our energy field, feeling with our senses. By holding intent as we enter a sacred place. By drawing out the power of a place with love, courage, and attention. By inviting spirit and welcoming it fully.
~ from "EarthLight" (Spring 2000, Issue 37) by Meg Beeler
There were many places I now know to have had for me the quality we call sacred. Those places were no more and no less than places where for some reason one longed to be, where one had certain feelings that varied from fearfulness to strange and undefined joy. The adult I now am has learned to speak and to write of something called "sacred space," but, as with so many sacred things, one possessed them as a child long before one could name them. Come to think of it, the same may be true of all elements of God's grace.
We have been silent. My mother is gathering small pine cones. We cross a wooden bridge and look down at the water. The mud hens come toward us, dragging a ripple of light across the water. Never in my life have I brought anyone to this sacred place. I have come here for its silence, early in the morning. And she, for the first time in our life together knowing exactly what I need, enters with me in silence.
The survival of wilderness -- of places that we do not change, where we allow the existence of creatures we perceive as dangerous -- is necessary. Our sanity probably requires it. These places function, whether we intend them to or not, as sacred groves -- places we respect and leave alone, not because we understand well what goes on there, but because we do not.
When I sit at my computer, before I start, I say my prayers, open up, and strike a match to light the candle. To me, this is the sound of space becoming sacred. Creating a sacred space is the first step and, in many ways, the most important step in opening ourselves to the creative process. This is the gift we give to ourselves so that the multitude of gifts we are born to share have their own birthing space. Sacred space marks ours commitment and symbolizes our readiness to serve and be served by the Source itself.
That which is at the center of the Sacred Space within my heart, is the very same which is in the sun, which is in the earth, in the heart of every living being.
