With positioning desk, table, file cabinet, and bookshelves, the metamorphosis is complete; the freshly painted “bedroom” has become my office. Despite a long day moving, I woke up ready to work. Just standing in the hallway and looking into the new space was energizing. Spaces where we live and work have such power.
While I was in Minnesota last year, I had the opportunity to create my own space for the first time in many years. In the past our family created the spaces in our home. That is how it should be. We had places for art projects, “inventions,” and science experiments. An old van der Graff machine sat in the dining room, and an upright piano rescued from a bar squeezed into our living room making music lessons possible.
We were a creative bunch and kept a couple boxes of dress up clothes handy for impromptu dramas. Juggling balls and pins mixed with favorite stuffed animals and a handmade dollhouse that sometimes held little people and other times was populated with small woodland animals. The house spaces changed as we all did.
In the midst of this, a space for writing was difficult to find. At first, a comfortable chair was my “place.” After everyone went to bed I curled up in the chair with a journal and pen and wrote away. Eventually I moved into the dining room where first the table and later a small desk moved into the corner served the purpose.
One Christmas my husband cleaned out a small room off the living room that had been a storage place for stuff that had no other place to be. It was a wonderful Christmas present: it even had a door I could close.
Finally, at the Collegeville Institute, I had an apartment and an office to arrange. Housework is not high on my priority list, and I surprised myself with how I enjoyed keeping the rooms neat. I had brought a few things from home to make the apartment “my own:” Shells and stones from Cape Cod and interesting fossils that sat on window ledges, photographs of family and friends, books, two throw pillows, and an afghan.
It was a quiet place where I could work as well as a place to share tea and conversation or an impromptu dinner with friends.
Moving into the transformed bedroom at my Dad’s house imparts a similar feeling: I am surrounded by carefully chosen things that have become part of my life: a monk bowl from Thailand, a modern soapstone carving of someone lost in reflection, an ivy plant started with cuttings from a plant at the Institute, an Ethiopian cestrum. A light blue crock that has held pens and pencils since I was in high school and a new pen holder made by a retired photographer from the Catholic Times. And of course, lots of books.
I have a special place for my Bible and a candle, and this morning I resumed Lectio Divina, something neglected in the upheaval of settling in to a new way of life.
Sacred Spaces can be anywhere; An office, a kitchen table, a comfortable coffee shop, or park bench. They allow us to more easily open ourselves to receive the Presence that is always being poured out. I am thankful for this space and for the people who helped make it a reality.
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