Sacred Spaces ........
For many people a sacred space is a place, a house maybe or an Art Gallery or a Church where they have a sense of homecoming a place that speaks to their soul and makes them feel complete.
'A sacred space focuses attention on the forms, objects, and actions in it and reveals their religious meaning. Symbols within the space can provide a means of access between the human world and divine realities'.
We happen upon sacred spaces, on occasion we stumble across them accidentally, a favourite pub, a restaurant, a beach, a forest glade.
But we can also go in search of sacred spaces.
I recall visiting the Ypres Salient for the first time. Tyne Cot Cemetery where so many of those brave men who fell during the First World War were laid to rest.
I recall that during my visit a group of school children arrived in a school bus, they tumbled from the bus in high spirits, laughing and joking, but then as their teachers organised them into line they began their pilgrimage to lay a wreath on the Memorial at the heart of the Cemetery.
As they walked they gained a sense of composure and solemnity as they recalled and remembered why they were there and what they were about.
I imagine that for all of them there was something that would remain sacred about their experience.
But we can also create our own sacred spaces.
For my family the grave that my grandfather Frank Oswald Wilde purchased for his wife Henrietta has become a sacred space as first my Grandfather and then my Mother, Aunts and Uncles and finally my Father were laid to rest in the space.
2018 has been a hard year. Too much death. Too much grieving at the loss of loved ones. After my wife died, as my grandfather did, I bought a grave for her and for myself.
Contrary to my plan that grave is now occupied by my son William who chose to be with his mother following his early and untimely death.
Spring flowers that we planted after Janet was laid to rest will soon be growing again and in time the Cherry Tree will flower and the space that we have created in the Woodland Burial Ground will become for me and my family a sacred space where we will be able to gather, to remember, to return, to weep over sad memories and to recall good memories and rejoice.
Iona is such a sacred space. Visitors to the Island remark on its set apartness. George MacLeod who inspired the rebuilding of the Abbey on Iona described it as 'a thin place'.
Literally a place where heaven and earth meet. Where heaven can be glimpsed and earth transformed into the Holy.
Where shoes are removed because the ground we stand upon is Holy.
Lindisfarne is a similar 'thin place', described by St Aiden as affording 12 hours for man and 12 hours for God as the tides rise and fall submerging and then releasing the causeway in order that traffic can cross safely from the mainland.
On one occasion I took a retreat on Holy Island and the Vicar, a Franciscan, heard my confession and then said as I left, leave it all behind 'with Cuthbert and the the Saints'.
Wise words, wise actions and so Lindisfarne became a sacred space for me.
Now in my new life, in my house in Shotley Bridge, Snods Edge, I have been gifted another sacred space. Between my house and the road and the Church is a small woodland, more than a copse but not quite a forest and in the centre of the woodland there is a space. surrounded by tall trees, it is a space of perfect peace, with the night stars and a gentle breeze soughing through the tall branches of the trees.
I can imagine creating a woodland chapel where:
'A sacred space focuses attention on the forms, objects, and actions in it and reveals their religious meaning. Symbols within the space can provide a means of access between the human world and divine realities'.
We happen upon sacred spaces, on occasion we stumble across them accidentally, a favourite pub, a restaurant, a beach, a forest glade.
But we can also go in search of sacred spaces.
I recall visiting the Ypres Salient for the first time. Tyne Cot Cemetery where so many of those brave men who fell during the First World War were laid to rest.
I recall that during my visit a group of school children arrived in a school bus, they tumbled from the bus in high spirits, laughing and joking, but then as their teachers organised them into line they began their pilgrimage to lay a wreath on the Memorial at the heart of the Cemetery.
As they walked they gained a sense of composure and solemnity as they recalled and remembered why they were there and what they were about.
I imagine that for all of them there was something that would remain sacred about their experience.
But we can also create our own sacred spaces.
For my family the grave that my grandfather Frank Oswald Wilde purchased for his wife Henrietta has become a sacred space as first my Grandfather and then my Mother, Aunts and Uncles and finally my Father were laid to rest in the space.
2018 has been a hard year. Too much death. Too much grieving at the loss of loved ones. After my wife died, as my grandfather did, I bought a grave for her and for myself.
Contrary to my plan that grave is now occupied by my son William who chose to be with his mother following his early and untimely death.
Spring flowers that we planted after Janet was laid to rest will soon be growing again and in time the Cherry Tree will flower and the space that we have created in the Woodland Burial Ground will become for me and my family a sacred space where we will be able to gather, to remember, to return, to weep over sad memories and to recall good memories and rejoice.
Iona is such a sacred space. Visitors to the Island remark on its set apartness. George MacLeod who inspired the rebuilding of the Abbey on Iona described it as 'a thin place'.
Literally a place where heaven and earth meet. Where heaven can be glimpsed and earth transformed into the Holy.
Where shoes are removed because the ground we stand upon is Holy.
Lindisfarne is a similar 'thin place', described by St Aiden as affording 12 hours for man and 12 hours for God as the tides rise and fall submerging and then releasing the causeway in order that traffic can cross safely from the mainland.
On one occasion I took a retreat on Holy Island and the Vicar, a Franciscan, heard my confession and then said as I left, leave it all behind 'with Cuthbert and the the Saints'.
Wise words, wise actions and so Lindisfarne became a sacred space for me.
Now in my new life, in my house in Shotley Bridge, Snods Edge, I have been gifted another sacred space. Between my house and the road and the Church is a small woodland, more than a copse but not quite a forest and in the centre of the woodland there is a space. surrounded by tall trees, it is a space of perfect peace, with the night stars and a gentle breeze soughing through the tall branches of the trees.
I can imagine creating a woodland chapel where:
'everything will appear
more sympathetic the barely opened
blue and yellow violets, the trilling of birds
scurryings in the underbrush of small animals
who may be afraid because I'm too close'
The space is a gift. It is a space that I will consistently return to for restoration and completeness, where I will discern the religious symbolism and discover the connection with the divine realities that sustain our human life.
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