As Holy Week commences, I offer my latest column for the Global Sisters Report, a meditation on the sacred spaces of our lives and the way we carry sacred space within us. As a dear friend once told me: "hold the sacred space and it will hold you." I pray in these holy days that you may be blessed to encounter the Holy and to find shelter in the sacred spaces that emerge.
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Besides a trailer for the Netflix series "Tidying Up
with Marie Kondo," I haven't seen much of its content, yet the question
central to Kondo's philosophy of decluttering has somehow made its way into my
life. The past few weeks, as Lent has come to a close and Easter quickly
approaches, a question has kept surfacing in real and surreal ways in my life:
What sparks joy?
I happened upon the question quite by accident. At first,
people would dramatically hold up objects in the midst of everyday situations
and jokingly ask me, "Does this spark joy?" Then news articles began
to surface in my social media feeds, followed by think pieces about why people
were so captivated by Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant, author
and, now, television personality. Soon, I began to look around me and echo the
question central to her philosophy; somehow, even though I hadn't watched the
show, it was having an influence on me.
As that question — Does it spark joy? — surfaced time and
again, I began to look at what objects line my walls. Glancing around the
spaces of my life — my bedroom, my office, my community — I recognized the
glimmers of joy surrounding me. I saw the many markers of where I've been:
objects that signify moments on my journey, totems of people and places that
hold significance in my life, and souvenirs of lessons and ideals that have
become part of the very marrow of my being.
There were crosses from my travels and homemade prints,
family photos and gifts from friends. Joy is only part of why I keep these
things around. I keep these items because they are place holders. They are
reminders of the gifts of being alive, the lessons of experience, and the
palpable presence of the sacred in very specific moments of my life.
We hold onto objects like this because in a way they hold
sacred space for us. We need them because, beyond joy, they spark a remembrance
in us of what is most holy and significant. There is no need to tidy up these
moments. We hold them and they hold us and in moments when light seems dim,
they spark something deep within, reminding us what the light is that we've
experienced and we are meant to bear.
By acknowledging that significance, we can identify that
light (and bear it to the world). And when we do that, we don't need any
objects. Instead, we become the sacred spaces — living, moving, and breathing —
that once captivated us.
The sacred spaces of our lives, after all, are spaces that
have always just been waiting for us to enter. It is not our presence that
sanctifies them. Each moment is holy. Our recognition of the Sacred in our
midst, though, opens up a space to receive the sacred deep within us. This
openness makes us a vessel, a means of carrying the holy far beyond a singular
moment. If we are aware enough, that is to say attentive enough to grace, we
can engrain the sacred moments and spaces of our lives into our very beings,
revealing them in who we are and how we are in the world, becoming purveyors of
sacred space in our everyday lives, peddling God's grace in the many spaces we
are blessed to inhabit.
As L. William Countryman writes in his book Living on the
Border of the Holy:
It can be helpful to imagine our human encounter with the
Holy as life in a border country. It is a country in which, at privileged
moments of access, we find ourselves looking over from the everyday world into
another, into a world that undergirds the everyday world, limits it, defines
it, gives it coherence and meaning, drives it. Yet this hidden world is not
another world, but the familiar world discovered afresh.
The world we live in is filled with holiness. The discovery
of the sacred in the mundane fills us with amazement, and as Countryman
continues, "In the long run we find that the border country is in fact the
place we have always lived, but it is seen in a new and clearer light."
Our call is to dare to cross that border and establish
connection not only for our life, but for the life of the world. More often
than not, this requires our branching out beyond our own boundaries, our
sharing of the sacred by revealing the stories of the objects we carry with us
and also being willing to hear the stories others have to offer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks directly to this point. "The
first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to
them," he declares. "Just as our love for God begins with listening
to God's Word, the beginning of love for others is learning to listen to them.
God's love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives God's Word but
also lends us God's ear."
With God's ears we learn to listen in a new way; we develop
a manner of listening to and from the heart. The to and fro of this listening
is a bridge that connects us, a pathway for the Sacred to make connection and
to take up residence in yet another personified place. I can only imagine the
joy such connection sparks in the heart of God.
With such joy comes the invitation to not just hold on to
what has been but to once again encounter the Holy in the here and now. Holding
firm to such experiences and the receptivity they nurture in us, we are able to
both hold sacred space for others and be held in the sacred space God calls us
to dwell in.
As Lent comes to a close and Easter approaches, we bear witness to the hopeful work of this season, work of renewing and refining our lives enough to better hold the Holy. We can tidy all we want but we must also realize that sacred space is most often found in the midst of mess. Embracing God present to us in all things — life, death, and resurrection — is our true invitation. Accepting that invitation and all the people, places and objects that hold it gives purpose to our being and, beyond the shadow of any doubt, sparks joy deep within, joy that is truly inextinguishable.
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