Entering Sanctuary
“…perhaps the greatest benefit for the simplicity-oriented is that taking off your shoes at the front door helps to create the sense of your home as sanctuary. It’s almost magical: when you leave your shoes at the door, you start to feel you can leave your troubles there, too.”
Elaine St. James
From: Simplify Your Life
“Many poets and sages throughout the ages have observed that true happiness---I call it the joy of Being---is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things.”
Eckhart Tolle
From: A New Earth
I know quite a few people for whom leaving shoes at the front door is done to minimize the amount of debris brought in from outside. It is effective in doing that unless, like me, you also have animals that come in tracking everything imaginable. (At the moment, it is oak flowers that ride in on their feet and tail feathers.) But the notion of creating sanctuary in your own home is a good one to cultivate. For one thing, it encourages you to clean up the clutter and for another, to keep your surroundings beautiful. Beauty is a great stress-buster.
I have a man-friend who, a year or so ago, decided to give himself a bouquet of flowers once a week—just to add an element of beauty to his apartment. He had noticed that when he brought flowers to the women in his life, they were delighted and the flowers enlivened whatever room they were in. I have roses blooming right now; huge red, fragrant roses. When there are two or three in a room, the whole house smells of roses.
Simple is good. Little, insignificant, everyday things that add fragrance, beauty, or inspiration to your life can turn the ordinary into something special.
May you walk in beauty,
Jane
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