Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SACRED SPACE FOR A HEALING ENVIRONMENT

When I read a book, I tend to gravitate toward sitting in a black reclining leather chair that has an ottoman where I rest my feet.  I also often take a soft olive green throw blanket and wrap it around me.  However,  I don’t really view this as my special sacred space that some authors tell us to create.  They encourage their readers to find even just a small corner in a room and fill it with inspirational books, candles, special mementoes, a comfortable blanket, meaningful pictures, thereby creating a sanctuary where you can experience serenity, healing and comfort.  After reading another Caldecott Winner, Prayers For A Child, I began wondering whether creating sacred space has something to do with creating a healing environment.

As a Christian, I ask God to bless our food at the beginning of each meal.  And of course, I am also familiar with the story of Jesus at Passover blessing the bread and wine before giving it to his disciples and thereby giving them new meaning as they became symbolic of his body and his blood.  But when I noticed that in the book Prayer For A Child, the author included eleven blessings of which seven of these were blessings for inanimate objects, I began wondering what we are really asking of God.   Certainly, when we say, “Bless the hands that never tire/ In their loving care of me” we are asking God to confer His divine favor upon that person.  But that is obviously not the case when we say, “Bless this milk and bless this bread.”  Rather, we are asking God to consecrate these food staples.  Somehow we want our ordinary breakfast of bread and milk to assume something sacred as we want it to be set apart for the service of God.

Years ago, I remember reading a book called   The Sacred and The Profane, and the author discussed what constitutes sacred and how there is more secular, profane aspects in our lives than the sacred.  This little prayer is not only asking God to bless her family and friends, but this prayer is asking God to bless everything this young child comes into contact with.  Therefore, her bed is being blessed, as well as her little painted chair, the lamplight, her toys and her bed.  Recently, I read a lovely argument that when God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden, their purpose was to expand their “sacred space” so that the garden should have gotten larger and larger.  I believe this author, Rachel Field , would have concurred with this lovely thought as she too was expanding this child’s sacred space as she asked for God’s blessing on people and on all these inanimate objects.

This book has led me to ask how much of my home do I view as sacred space? I have certainly mumbled and grumbled enough this winter about how I am tired of spending so many hours in this house.  That certainly doesn’t suggest that I am occupying sacred space!  I have particularly moaned as I have slowly walked upstairs in pain and in fatigue.  It has never crossed my mind to ask God to bless the stairs!  And of course, I have often viewed my bed quite negatively when I am tossing and turning trying to find a comfortable position, often drenched with sweat when my thermal regulator has turned me into a hot furnace.  I have not been saying with this author, “Bless this soft and waiting bed/ Where I presently shall be/ Wrapped in sweet security”!  Interestingly, these past few nights I have been doing exactly that:  asking God to bless my bed, my blankets, my bedroom and it is beginning to impact my perception that God is truly present and that I am occupying sacred space.   I really like the idea of extending my sacred borders in my home and squeezing out the profane as I  bless not just  my loved ones but as I bless all of my rooms and its contents.  It is thrilling to imagine how much more healing, comfort and serenity I can experience when more and more of the space I occupy is blessed by God and thereby becomes sacred.

[Via http://gaylejervis.wordpress.com]

No comments:

Post a Comment