Lee Mead sings Your Song - This Morning - 9th Feb 2012
Tonight, I am sitting in the bedroom in the dark with my Precious Maryn. She is going to sleep and she feels most safe if me or her dad is with her when she does. Felt safety is a powerful thing. She has had an exhausting day playing with kids, swimming, playing, swimming....and just because we have a pool....some more swimming on this hot July day. I haven't seen her much today. I had a really long work day today. There is a phrase bouncing around in my thoughts and conversations this week, and it is this. Sacred spaces. I have always known them, but now I seem to identify them more clearly and I can appreciate them in the moment that we are moving through these sacred spaces. I cannot claim to author this term. In fact, I googled it and there is a website called Sacred Spaces and their purpose is "a liturgical design and consulting company creating and preserving religious art for churches". Huh. That's all well and good, but my definition is similar, its just a design for living in a way that creates and preserves time and space for God to move.....in us and through us.....and be living examples of religious art in our lives......for the church of Jesus.
I'm sitting in such a sacred space right now. There is beautiful cello music playing on the Ipad and Precious Maryn has yielded to the exhaustion of her day. She is sleeping with her sweet head resting on her hands, her face turned to her nightlight, and me, because that is how she can dare to close her eyes. A ginormous stuffed teddy bear is beside her in bed because we are hoping that this bear will give her enough comfort and proximity that she will not have to always come find us in the night.....and this song came on. Elton John's "Your Song" done revised by someone else and I looked over at her, as I am sitting in the dark, and I agreed.....how wonderful life is, with you in the world, dear, sweet, special and so-much-work child. Thank you Jesus for this sacred space to quietly savor all that is wonderful about this child and to just let go of all the hard stuff for tonight.......
Sacred space allowed me to have a very important conversation with someone that will hopefully make the future less hard.....and sacred space prompted me to dig deep into a place of awareness and healing for someone else and I stood in awe of the place I was with these people because God allowed me into this space. His space. The space that matters. Over and over again, I find myself talking my way into or just moving out of sacred spaces with God as I spend time with people.
There are really hard lives being lived. For whatever reason, God has always allowed me into the hurting and raw and secret places so that I can do my job as a nurse, and sit with someone in pain, or work at healing there......do you know there are young women who cannot pay a $45 phone bill because they have to wait for a check next week? ( So she may live without connection with the outside world while she strives to provide for her children......and the fathers of these children do not want to help. )Do you know that there are families living in our communities who are suffering and some belong to local churches but the churches are not reaching out to help them? Do you know that there are families who are working hard but cannot afford a double stroller to take children on a walk in the evening? Do you know that special needs kids in India could have a really stable life if others would send $25 or $50 a month to help pay for school and clothes and medicine? Do you know that a little boy died in Haiti this past week because he got a stomach illness and health care was too far away to treat him in time before he died?
Life is wonderful.....because all of these people that I have described and so many more.....are in the world. Sacred space happens when we dare to enter that space with them and maybe we cannot fix it every time.....but just knowing it exists is something. I'm still in this one sacred space tonight. I'm not quite ready to put this day to rest so I have to turn it around a bit more before I go to sleep and start again tomorrow. I live such an amazing life......to see how wonderful life is.....when you're in the world. I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put it into words tonight.
Consider what sacred spaces may be available to you and put on a cloak of courage and dare to go there. Don't avoid the hard places in peoples' lives. Don't move to the other side of the road if you see something challenging ahead. Move into it. Someone real and human is there.....and you don't have to know how to fix it. I promise. I suck at fixing anything or anyone. Just stand in that space with them until they can find a way forward.....and experience the holiness and sacred way we move through the space together.
It sounds deep and abstract but only because I am struggling here to give words to something so beautiful and important. What I do know, is that God wants us to find these spaces and worship there, and pray there and nurture and care for one another there, so I have to keep working at describing and framing up sacred spaces. Thanks for sticking with me through this post. If it was hard to read, please know it was harder to write. It's not always so easy to put into words, how wonderful life is when you're in the world.
I'm sitting in such a sacred space right now. There is beautiful cello music playing on the Ipad and Precious Maryn has yielded to the exhaustion of her day. She is sleeping with her sweet head resting on her hands, her face turned to her nightlight, and me, because that is how she can dare to close her eyes. A ginormous stuffed teddy bear is beside her in bed because we are hoping that this bear will give her enough comfort and proximity that she will not have to always come find us in the night.....and this song came on. Elton John's "Your Song" done revised by someone else and I looked over at her, as I am sitting in the dark, and I agreed.....how wonderful life is, with you in the world, dear, sweet, special and so-much-work child. Thank you Jesus for this sacred space to quietly savor all that is wonderful about this child and to just let go of all the hard stuff for tonight.......
Sacred space allowed me to have a very important conversation with someone that will hopefully make the future less hard.....and sacred space prompted me to dig deep into a place of awareness and healing for someone else and I stood in awe of the place I was with these people because God allowed me into this space. His space. The space that matters. Over and over again, I find myself talking my way into or just moving out of sacred spaces with God as I spend time with people.
There are really hard lives being lived. For whatever reason, God has always allowed me into the hurting and raw and secret places so that I can do my job as a nurse, and sit with someone in pain, or work at healing there......do you know there are young women who cannot pay a $45 phone bill because they have to wait for a check next week? ( So she may live without connection with the outside world while she strives to provide for her children......and the fathers of these children do not want to help. )Do you know that there are families living in our communities who are suffering and some belong to local churches but the churches are not reaching out to help them? Do you know that there are families who are working hard but cannot afford a double stroller to take children on a walk in the evening? Do you know that special needs kids in India could have a really stable life if others would send $25 or $50 a month to help pay for school and clothes and medicine? Do you know that a little boy died in Haiti this past week because he got a stomach illness and health care was too far away to treat him in time before he died?
Life is wonderful.....because all of these people that I have described and so many more.....are in the world. Sacred space happens when we dare to enter that space with them and maybe we cannot fix it every time.....but just knowing it exists is something. I'm still in this one sacred space tonight. I'm not quite ready to put this day to rest so I have to turn it around a bit more before I go to sleep and start again tomorrow. I live such an amazing life......to see how wonderful life is.....when you're in the world. I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind, that I put it into words tonight.
Consider what sacred spaces may be available to you and put on a cloak of courage and dare to go there. Don't avoid the hard places in peoples' lives. Don't move to the other side of the road if you see something challenging ahead. Move into it. Someone real and human is there.....and you don't have to know how to fix it. I promise. I suck at fixing anything or anyone. Just stand in that space with them until they can find a way forward.....and experience the holiness and sacred way we move through the space together.
It sounds deep and abstract but only because I am struggling here to give words to something so beautiful and important. What I do know, is that God wants us to find these spaces and worship there, and pray there and nurture and care for one another there, so I have to keep working at describing and framing up sacred spaces. Thanks for sticking with me through this post. If it was hard to read, please know it was harder to write. It's not always so easy to put into words, how wonderful life is when you're in the world.
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