Sacred Spaces

When you wonder how to create personal sacred space in your home or work environment, I will work with you.  We can be creative together with what you have. Creating sacred space is one of my passions. I’ve been doing it in my own home, with friends, and for clients for 30 years.

Creating sacred space is a way of tending the Holy. It can serve many purposes. It brings spiritual yearnings into physical form, inner vision into the material realm. It is a way to offer hospitality, ask for guidance, discern inner knowing, honor the spiritual dimension of creation, and to co-create with intention, joy and playfulness.

Creating sacred space can become a spiritual practice to connect you with the universe, with the Divine. The sacredness of the space calls you into your prayer and meditation time and helps you open your heart.  Creating it anew over and over to reflect the changes in your life and your interior growth gives you insight and confirmation.

Guidelines for Creating Sacred Space

Beginning Steps

Creating sacred space can begin very simply with a collection of leaves on your lawn.
It can be treasures on a dresser top or kitchen window sill or fireplace mantle. Many people already have special collections thoughtfully or randomly arranged in various places in their home. The consciousness, intention and prayer you bring to its creation, is what makes it sacred space.

Select a Place
Be playful, be mindful, and be creative. Select a spot in your home or office you see every day. A place you see from your bed can easily be part of an evening and morning ritual.  You can have many sacred spaces. Start with one and add more when you feel prompted by your desire to bring intentionality to more of your life. Your computer table, inside the privacy of an office desk drawer, kitchen window sill, garden, car, inside the medicine cabinet or refrigerator, and your closet are all possibilities.

Clean and Clear the Space
Clean the space physically and clear it spiritually with sound, smudge, prayer or your intention. Take time to pray for guidance in creating the sacred space. Using a beautiful cloth, placemat, or tray as the base helps mark the dimensions.

Create an arrangement
You may already know what you want in the space to call you to your spiritual practices. Or you can use the space to open to your intuitive guidance. Look in a fresh way at the objects in your environment. Select and arrange items you are attracted to at this time without needing to know why. As you spend time with the sacred space, meaning often reveals itself. You can be with it as you would be with a dream.

Adding flowers, fruit, candles, and lights enhances the beauty. One value of fresh flowers and fruit is that they need to be changed every few days. This draws your attention to the sacred space and keeps it fresh.

Sabbath Moments
When you are done, rest back into the pleasure of what you have created. Enjoy viewing it and playing with it. Keep the space an interactive one. Make changes as you change.  Spend time contemplating and day dreaming, praying and meditating in front of your sacred space. Play music or chants as you sit with it. You might want to invite others to share the space and insights with you. You might want to keep it very private.

If you find you are no longer paying attention to the space, it is time for a change. Take it apart with gratitude, return the items or pass them on to another person. Begin a fresh creation process that brings you to another Sabbath moment.

Journaling

You could photograph or draw your sacred space and then journal about its meaning and the insights that come to you. This kind of journal is very useful in a discernment process as you become more aware of what is life enhancing and what is life depleting. You will experience which altars are energizing and call you to prayer and which gather dust. If you choose to bring the photos and journal of your sacred spaces to spiritual direction, we can reflect together on them.