Establishing Holy Sanctuary

It used to be that I hated housework. I did it, well enough, but I never enjoyed it. Then something shifted in December. Keeping things tidy became a holy task.

A couple of years or so ago, I determined that my home would be a holy place, a sanctuary. But it was more of an idea than a practice, something that I must have thought would occur through the power of intention. If my attention lapsed, so did the intention. Now that is different.

I do my household tasks as a meditation, calmly, prayerfully. Now, I have to say, these prayers aren’t word prayers. Instead, the prayerfulness is more a sense of Presence and Companionship. The Holy surrounds me. The Holy fills me with each breath.

Holy Sanctuary is not just inside my home. This morning my tasks included taking out recyclables and compost. I discovered that yesterday’s ice storm made for easy passage to the compost pile. (While I was out, the plow truck scraped 2 inch thick chunks of ice off our road.) The ice held my weight well enough that I took a walk to my Holy Hill, footprints showing in the skiff of snow on the surface.

On my Holy Hill, my prayers had words. May the powers of the Universe come into this Earth under my feet, into the water deep below, and out to the world. May the powers of the Universe cleanse and renew this planet. May the Spirit of Earth and Sky, and the four directions, protect me and my land.

The view from my Holy Hill

Getting Older

I don’t feel my age. Some people say they feel 90, but I feel like 30 something, younger than my daughter. How does that happen? It’s good to feel younger than my years, but sometimes lately I get stopped up. Like the other day when my daughter took a picture of me with my beautiful granddaughter Anna. (Sorry, I’m not sharing her sweet face, just my own.) I was having fun, as you can probably surmise from the photo on the left, but gracious! I have grey hair! I thought maybe makeup would help, and maybe it does. I’ll let you decide.

I know it is inevitable to get grey hair, and other such changes, and I’ve decided I will be my natural self without colouring. Well, I’ve done purple before, and may again. There are other changes that you can’t see, like the sweet little red polka dots that seem to sprout up all over me. I feel like a banana, with all these spots. Bananas, in my opinion, are most delicious when well spotted. So I am getting more delicious all the time.

This morning I read Philippians 3:20 and 21, and it spoke to me in a different way.

“We are citizens of heaven, exiles on earth waiting eagerly for a Liberator, our Lord Jesus the Anointed, to come and transform these humble, earthly bodies into the form of His glorious body by the same power that brings all things under His control.” The Voice 

What if this is what aging is, the transforming of our humble bodies into a glorious spiritual body? It’s a work in progress. Our younger bodies may be lithe and seemingly physically perfect, but what if our real bodies are what is yet to come? And this delicious banana ripening stage is part of the glorious process? It’s all under control. It’s all good.

It’s Official!

Today I am officially retired from my career in private practice psychology. Auspicious to close that door on the last day of a decade. I have been essentially retired so long that I forgot this aspect of the date until someone reminded me. Then I needed to mark the day in some way.

I chose to burn things. I wished I had a bonfire, but a New Year’s Eve snowstorm kept me indoors. I burned things in my woodstove instead. Although my husband disapproved of ash buildup, the burning satisfied the need for ritual.

In my search for appropriate burnables, I discovered printouts of old Dream Bringer’s Studio webpages. THOSE did not go into the fire. Perfect timing for reconnecting to that part of myself that had been tucked away.

I have to disagree with one friend who says I will always be a psychologist. That is a term I can no longer apply to myself, a legislated term only used by appropriately trained and approved people who pay their dues. For me, somehow, psychology was only a job. I think I was always a pastor, my true calling, flavoured by a Dream Bringer soul. Psychology paid the bills until life lined up. Now that door is closed. On this side of the door, I have a heart full of experience, wisdom, and ideas.

Today, the first day of 2020, is lit with clear blue skies and pristine sparkling snow. I am excited. 🤸‍♂️🎉🤸‍♂️🎉🤸‍♂️

Ask for a Sign

The other day, I felt a message coming in. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, other than a warmth and an invitation from somewhere inside of me. Perhaps that place is my Heart’s Cave, a place inside of me where I meet with my Soul, and slip into the Ocean of Possibilities, the Ocean of Creation. Jesus meets me there. We often sit by a bonfire on the shore, just hanging out.

On this particular day, I had been thinking about Isaiah 7, where God, through Isaiah, tells King Ahaz of Jerusalem to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses. After all, the Ten Commandments said that he should not “test the Lord“. But God wanted to give Ahaz a sign, proof of Presence, to comfort and encourage him. If you’d like more info on that, listen to my Dec. 22/19 sermon; here’s the YouTube link.

I was needing encouragement and comfort too. There had been a couple of deaths in my family. Plus, I’m still, on some level, recovering from August’s surgery. It was a busy week. I was tired.

So when I felt the nudge to look for a sign, first I turned to my little For Today devotional. The Dec. 17 reading said, “We were not now nor ever could be like normal eaters. that was the beginning of freedom.” When I’m tired or sad, I want to eat. But I’d already eaten a very good breakfast. I wasn’t hungry. Something shifts when we finally accept that we are not normal eaters. It is a new beginning. No need to fight what is. To be, in this new normal, is freedom.

Next, I opened to Dec. 17 in Celtic Daily Prayer (Aidan readings). It told me a story about a vase that survived a fire. Before the fire, peple said, “What a pretty vase.” After the fire, they said, “What pretty flowers!” It’s not about me, the vase. It’s about what my life contains, and how I draw attention to God’s creation. Here I am at 62. My body still works perfectly well, but it isn’t as lovely as it once was. Still, it holds and highlights a beauty beyond my own. It has been through the fire of “life”. I need to accept my new normal, and love it, even if it means getting tired more easily than I used to.

Finally I drew a card from The Heart of Faerie Oracle. Queen of the Night. The Queen of the Night embodies longing, and I had been feeling the longing to write again, to blog, to say things that don’t fit into a sermon or a learning disability assessment report. Don’t ignore that longing, the Queen of Night was saying. Go ahead and write. It may not be good writing, or well received, but follow the longing and just do it.

The Queen of the Night also says to draw another card, to make sense of where the longing is taking me. I drew the Queen of Shadows. Writing here, writing what I need to write at this point in my life, means I can’t just look at the sunny side. There are neglected parts of me that need dusted off and brought into the light.

And so, here I am, blogging once again, taking the risk, committing. What was old is new again.