sacred places

This is a repost of something I discovered and forgot I wrote. It apparently gets a LOT of  hits, so I thought I'd make it easier to find. I wrote it almost exactly 5 years ago. How things change and how they stay the same...

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 [two this year] 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 [Sean's name is Draken now, and the latest heroes are Trinidad and Castile], 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.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ha! I was just thinking back to a spot I considered a "sacred place" several years ago. I went there a lot.

I just thought of it again, a few days ago. I've racked my brains for that location, but even though I drove there dozens of times, I have no idea where it is now! I know what part of the state it's in, generally, but ... I'd have to hunt around a few hours to find it. I referred to it by a name that's unofficial, no map will call it what I called it, so I don't think I could even Google it. Beyond the number of the highway I'd need to get there, I can't remember any local street names, or what town it's in.

I wonder what that means. Was it not a sacred place to begin with? Or have I just "moved on" and updated my definition of the sacred?

Oh, wait. I suddenly remembered where it is.

Yep. Guess I've moved on.