During this time, when we need to stay home, when religious services have been canceled, we may realize that sacred spaces we find in church buildings are subconcious touchstones each week. We may not have acknowledged before the ways that entering church spaces calm us, take us outside of linear time, and connect us to the holy. This a new experience and realization for me. For my adult life till now, I have tried (and sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed) to create sacred spaces in school gymnasiums and senior centers and multi-purpose rooms as part of emergent church/progressive evangelical church communities. I had not had the experience of having a dedicated, quiet, already-built and not needing set-up and take-down space since I was a child. And as a child, the spiritual community I was a part of was not liturgical. My first years, at a very large nondenominational evangelical church, my memories of the environment are based on decor, not altars or spiritually significant spaces. There was a sanctuary, which was a purple-brown upholstery and a gray carpeted stage with lights, a large wooden cabinet was present for the once monthly communion Sundays, but It wasn’t a focal point for worship. There were no windows, and it was always a little dim, like a theater. There were large octagon shaped stained glass portraits, one I think of the Good Shepherd. High up on the walls to the side of the stage. You had to turn a light on behind the glass to make it glow. The bathrooms were decorated in the same mauve and gray. At the Baptist church we attended for several years, there was a connection somehow to the outdoors. This was because the sanctuary was smaller. There were stained glass windows, there were trees just outside and the windows could open. On a summer Sunday evening service, the windows let in a breeze. The rafters were curved and took on the shape of the ark, like we were huddled inside the overturned boat.
When we entered the church we attend now, it was a new experience. Everything seemed to rest together there, inside that room. All the parts to make meaning. The stained glass above the altar was a strange image. Our family would joke about it, not knowing what it was. We were new at so much in the Episcopal setting, the words were new, the standing and sitting, the passing of the peace. All so new. So we chuckled that we couldn’t even tell what the picture in the stained glass was. We came to the agreement that it was a magnolia grandiflora. Large white petals disjointed with spaces of yellow, black, red in between. We learned later that it was supposed to be the empty tomb. It will always be a flower I think to our eyes.
I have been playing with this essay since the first Sunday church was cancelled due to the pandemic. I’ve been reflecting on our family’s journey. How my creating sacred spots at home was an action I took in response to a yearning I felt: For the liturgical color. For a place where layers of meaning rest together. A space for God. Now, the sacred spot is the spot we make at the coffee table to say our morning prayer on Sundays with our Holy Cross friends. And it is still also in the corner of the mantle-I pick fresh flowers, light the candle. Say a prayer. We are in such a deep, dark Lent this year.
I have so many reflections and wonderings about all this-more to come.