Sacred
Time and Space
“We
don’t have to go anywhere in particular to experience sacred time. We don’t
have to give up our lives in the world and run off to a monastery to be
immersed in the holiness of time’s unfolding”
Christine
Valters Paintner, Ph.D. (Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life)
The
pandemic has caused many of us to stick close to home. Every time we make plans
to venture out, we get news of another variant, and it’s back to masks and
closed doors. Most of us are itching to go almost anywhere that is not inside
the walls of our homes. Lately, for me, that somewhere has been the ocean. I’m
not sure why. Being a land-locked, mountain person, I have spent very little
time at any beach. And yet…it calls to me. Khalil Gibran said, “There must
be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.”
Perhaps the yearning many people feel for sand and shore is because some part
of us remembers that we originated in saltwater. Going to the ocean feels like
a sacred journey home.
And
yet, we don’t have to travel anywhere geographically to experience sacred time.
We just have to set aside time for the sacred. The Hindus believe that the hours
between four and six a.m. are optimal for prayer and meditation. Scott Peck,
author of The Road Less Traveled, said that sacredness is a mindset—that secular
people see themselves as center of the universe instead of being one small
creature on a medium sized planet in the middle of an ordinary galaxy in the
vastness of space. While people who view their existence as holy, realize that
they are one individual among many who make up the whole of creation. They do
not feel lost or lonely because everything is sacred, including themselves and the
place they happen to be.
Here is
a beautiful quotation by Oksana Rus to help you get to sacred space wherever
you are: “Just take my hand, lead, dance with me…and I will simply follow
the blueness of the water, the white waves rolling free…where the earth beneath
my feet, and the stars make me whole again…in long, priceless moments of shared
solitude.” May it be so.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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