ALTARED
REALITY
I want to talk to you this morning about
creating sacred space, a place in your home, in your yard, that is especially
for the life of your soul. People from
ancient times have had altars in their homes. People from Lithuania to
Pakistan, from Congo to California have small tables, shelves, book cases where
a small figure of one of the aspects of God sits, where there are photographs
of ancestors, bits of stone and wood, feathers and berries and beads arranged.
Offerings of fruit, flowers, or candles speak of gratitude and reverence. Sometimes these spaces are small. Sometimes
they are large. One of the voices
articulating the reasons people make sacred space is Tim Beal, in a book called
“Roadside Religion.”
Tim Beal is a young man with the same hobby as mine:
visiting and interviewing folks on the religious fringes. On the front cover of his book is a
photograph of a structure of red-brown girders with a large blue and white sign
in front of them:”Noah’s Ark Being Rebuilt Here!” Beal is a religious scholar married to a Presbyterian minister;
they load up their two kids in the summer and go on road trips to see people’s
expressions of their interaction with the Divine, expressions these folks
invite the public to interact with by putting them right beside the road. The
family visited Holy Land, USA, in Virginia; the Golgotha Fun Park and Biblical
mini-golf in Kentucky; and Noah’s Ark of Safety in Maryland.
He writes: “These places are as deeply
personal as they are public. At the creative heart and soul of each is a
religious imagination trying to give outward form to inner experience. “
Yes, but what does “sacred” mean, you ask? You might be
sorry you wanted to know. People have been thinking about it for a long time.
From Roadside
Religion:
“Drawn from the Latin sacer,
the most basic meaning of “sacred” is “set apart.” But, what sets it apart as
such? Different theorists of religion find very different answers. For Emile
Durkheim, the answer was sociological. The sacred is that which symbolizes and
indeed creates the social and moral coherence of the community. It is… that
which a social group (a clan, a church) sets apart to represent and create
unity. For other [theorists], the answer is phenomenological, that is, it’s a
matter of understanding how the sacred is perceived and experienced…. French
philosopher Georges Bataille…. described the sacred as that which is
experienced as radical otherness, representing a realm (real or imaginary,) of
animal intimacy that threatens to annihilate the social and symbolic order of
things. For historian of religion Mircea Eliade, too, the sacred is wholly
other, but he focuses on the religious person’s experience of it as an experience
of transcendence that serves to orient her within a sacred cosmic order. “The
sacred is where you encounter God, The
Holy, where you feel awe, where things have a flash of making sense to you,
where you have a feeling of connection to that which is larger than yourself,
where you suddenly have new information that makes a shift inside you and
things are different now.
When you have
that feeling is it inside you or in the place itself? Are there real sacred
places, springs and mountains, coming together of ley lines or a vortex of
energy or are there just places that have been invested with meaning by the
people who carried within themselves a human urge to be part of something
larger than themselves? I don’t know the answer to that. No one does.
Have you even been to a place you felt was
sacred? There is a spring down the
hill behind Nazareth Presbyterian Church that is sacred. I used to work there,
and I would slip off down the hill and worship there when I could get away from
church responsibilities. It drew me. It felt like a responsibility to myself to
get there.
Sometimes objects feel sacred. I don’t
know if they are sacred in themselves or because of energies invested in them
by people. When you watch the opening credits of the movie “To Kill a
Mockingbird” you hear a girl humming, and the camera pans over a harmonica, a
pearl necklace, a carved doll, a whistle, a broken pocket watch. Some children collect feathers, stones,
beads, berries strung together. Those objects are sacred if they have mana in them. “Mana” is an
anthropological word for this buzz of holiness that seems to accrue to certain
objects or places in human groups.
Another word for that same buzz is “numinous
Making sacred
space can be a large undertaking or a tiny one. I want to encourage you to think about making a place in your
house or yard that is sacred space. How
do you do that? Start by making an
intention that this space be set apart from other spaces. Your ancient instincts will help you. Put a
beautiful cloth there, some stones, pieces of wood, a pocket watch, some beads
or berries, photographs of your family and friends, reminders of times you want
to mark in your life, reminders of something you learned or something that
changed you, then add flowers and light candles to give it freshness, to
interact with the space.
Sometimes your altar will be just for honoring those
changes, those people.
Sometimes your altar will be a thank you, for getting
through and illness or a divorce, for getting though a difficult period with a
child or a friend, maybe it will be a thank you for life being in a good place
right now, or just for life. Being.
You altar might be a prayer, a tangible, concrete
prayer or wish or intention that you put out into the Universe, that you
present to God, that you communicate with your Higher Power, or your
deepest/best/highest self. Some say there are parts of your brain that think in
images rather than concepts, If you are trying to make changes in your life, in
your self, they say it is good to have all parts of your mind and heart with
you in this undertaking. Making your
prayers concrete, in images, helps all the parts of your mind understand what
you are trying to ask for, what you are trying to invite in. A friend wanted clarity, so she put a pair
of her grandmother’s glasses on her altar, as a tangible reminder of what she
was asking for. If you are building
something in your life, put some sticks on top of one another like a building,
or if you are trying to get rid of something, write on a candle or scratch into
the wax what you are wanting to melt away. Then burn the candle (never leave a
burning candle unattended) and say to God, to the Universe, to your inner mind
“As this candle burns away so let this habit or this person’s influence melt
away from my life.” Then, every time
you see that candle getting smaller, your deep mind, your whole conscious and
unconscious, sees that and says, “Oh, I want that influence, that habit, that
connection, to get smaller.”
A sacred space in your home reminds you
that the Holy is in the dailiness of your life, not just in certain times and
places. You can remind yourself that your home is a sacred place by having a
mezuzah for the door of your house, in the Jewish tradition. That is a small
container of a verse of scripture that you attach to the doorframe and you
touch it when you come into your house. You can have a bowl of water by the
door, if your pets won’t knock it over, and touch your hand to the water
whenever you come in, like holy water.
A sacred space reminds you that you are more than a work machine, a
family caregiver, a lover, more than yourself. It reminds you that you are part
of the Mystery, and that Mystery is close at hand.
|
by Meg Barnhouse |
|
Free for
personal use. All others, please send written request. |