sacred places

I've been in enough sacred places to know them when I see them. Westminster Abbey. The Brits know a thing or two about building churches, and I've always liked the notion of a cemetary next to the church, not to mention underneath the church. I like the dead poets and the kings and the queens who have come before me. I like my religion with grand, sweeping ritual and intrinsic reminders of humankind's relationship with God, not just my own.



Grand Lake

I got a glimpse of it when I rode the snowmobile around town, going slow and adjusting myself to the new machine and just looking... at the kids digging through a foot of snow to find sand on the beach, at the crystaline mountains, the snow-flocked trees, the lake still pristine with newborn snow because no one yet dares to walk on it.



And there's my house at Christmas, when it's dusk and the windows are lit and the tree is on, reflecting diamond lights out onto the snow. There's my daughter's bedroom at night, when she's coughing and needs me, and the steps, where my son confessed to his dad that he thinks he's been bad and so Santa won't come and if he does he'll only leave rocks. There's my Jeep, icy at the edges, through which we view Berthoud Pass smothered in powder; fresh back-country snowboard tracks reminding us of the fun to come.

There's the closet downstairs packed with wrapped presents, hidden away so that our HannahDog--cuz we have a dog now!--won't tear them up. There are the six extra family members who are coming for Christmas, which will make my living room a sacred place on Christmas morning. There's warm in bed, pressed up against PHF, remembering how it was... how it is.

There's our hero Sean, who I can't quite bring myself to call fictional, battered and bloodied, embroiled in a war so awful, so desperate, and so chaotic I'm waging my own battle in describing it. It's always hard to know when you finish a book which is the more sacred place: the difficult journey or the bitter end.

There's Pajamaland, where we make friends without seeing the others' faces, listen without hearing the others' voices, and yet reach across impossible distances to touch each other.

This started out quite negative, but damned if I haven't talked myself right into believing my own topic, so I axed that start. Go blog go!

May you find your own sacred place.

Peace be with you.