May 1998 (Vol. XI, No. 5)

Certain redwood groves are holy places for me because they capture silence and light. The forest is so dense as to exclude all external noise. It is possible to ignore their silence until a single bird sings within. When the single song has died not only do I realize I have heard a sound exquisite in its simplicity, but also that I have heard it so precisely because it was embedded in pure silence.

Bede Griffiths once said to me,

"What is essential is to keep the heart always open to beauty."

What could be harder in an age like ours? And yet, it is just because our age is so harsh and brutal that it is more than ever essential to create around us, in our homes and offices and meeting places, a sacred environment. To do so is to awaken the poet in each of us, the poet and the lover of life and beauty. Creating a sacred environment is not complicated; it just requires concentration and the constant reminder that the one important thing in your life is to keep your heart open to Divine Love.

Should a greater ecological awareness begin to shape our thinking, new symbols would arise that could bind the scientific and the spiritual and would reinfuse all life with the essence of the sacred. We would be increasingly capable of envisioning the "blue, true dream" that is the living Earth luminous in the darkness of the surrounding sky.

Even as a child I knew the sacredness of personal space. I remember going behind my grandmother's house to a place where I could hide behind tall weeds. I would sit for hours in my circle of stones. That space was so special I never revealed it to even my closest playmates... Sacred spaces can be created anywhere. When I felt a need for a sacred simplicity within my city home, on a sudden inspiration, I emptied a closet and painted it white. Within this purified space, I placed a stone, a leaf, a bowl of water and a sitting cloth from the Amazon -- things special to me at that moment. I had created my own sacred space.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

This room was a sacred space, a place that he had chosen to make especially his own, a place redeemed from mere "use" in which he would make a conscious attempt to be at rest and to put a part of his life in order. In short, this was the evidence that the man was able to pray.

One day I stood quietly gazing through our sliding glass doors... It was a windless day and without thinking, I found myself slipping into a silent world. Then, something overcame me. Whereas silence had been a visitor, a friend with whom I communed when I chose, now silence slipped into the core of my being. Without my knowing, without even my conscious consent, silence entered me.