I’ve been busy this week moving into a new room. A much bigger one, praise God; but that also means a lot more work. I began accumulating things in the weeks prior to doing our house Chinese fire drill. and it was really building up... it got to the point that I really couldn’t walk into my room. I had too many bookcases and loose pieces of art to go anywhere but straight into and out of bed. And it’s taken me several days now to get this new space to a point where it feels like I can rest in it—finding places for all of the large things and most of the small trinkets has felt genuinely taxing. All that to say, it has been a while since I’ve felt that I have had a sacred space to exist in, and it’s had me thinking more and more about those spaces. Namely, I was learning firsthand that sacred spaces require a due amount of effort to create. And I suppose I knew this... when I’m actively participating in the practices that I find holy or sanctifying, I’m offering up things that I find particularly valuable—for me, that’s usually time, and through time, control. Taking a walk, cooking, silence, and solitude all force me to live in a way that my body and instinct lean to reject. Sacred and sacrifice are actually derived from the same root word, and I read that sacrifice originally meant something along the lines of “to make sacred”. And it’s cathartic to do so; it always feels very hard to make the first decision to put the effort in, but as I make progress it becomes a source of delight to work something into a valuable offering. I think most things are this way, consciously faith-bound or not. And I think that means that anything can be sacred, too.
P.S. I have a spot on my thumb where the nail keeps digging into the flesh and it hurts like hell everytime I type anything. A labor of love, or what have you.