Sacred Space

Writers can learn to write any time, anywhere. I developed this skill myself several years ago. I practiced writing after breakfast, before bed, while riding on the metro train, and while waiting in the airport. Once I even wrote an entire chapter while sitting through a mandatory campus wide faculty meeting. I learned that I could, indeed, write any time, anywhere. It’s a useful skill, I suppose, when simply getting the writing done is the goal.

The experience of writing in all of those places taught me about what’s really important to me in my writing practice. It taught me that while I am able to write anywhere, I prefer to write in places that feed and nurture my spirit. It’s not merely the act of filling a page with meaningful words that keeps me picking up my pen. It’s the experience of settling into a place that invokes the sacred that keeps me longing to come back to writing again and again. For me, and invocation of the sacred creates a feeling of a sense of place, a sense of home. When I’m in my office, it’s the experience of surrounding myself with objects that are sacred to me—my father’s mahogany desk chair, my mahogany spinet desk, my inkwell collection, and bird feathers—that evokes a sense of the sacred. It’s watching the warmth of the first rays of morning sunlight hover for a few moments as golden before shifting to something more closely resembling white. It’s noticing how the sunlight strikes my inkwell collection at different times of the day, how it creates different colors as it moves through the glass, and how it makes shadows that change shapes as the sun moves.

Evoking a sense of the sacred in every day is essential for me in my writing practice. My sacred writing space changes, depending upon where I am and how I’m feeling. When I’m in New York, it may be a quaint little café near Washington Square, or it may be Central Park or Prospect Park that invokes the sacred. When I’m away from the city and wanting to be outdoors, sitting by a lake or on top of a mountain creates a sense of the sacred for me. Being in a space that invokes a sense of the sacred and that also provides a view of the outer world nurtures me as I take that daily inner journey with language. If I’m not indoors, sitting by a window that affords a view of the landscape is vital. Julia Cameron in Walking In This World: The Practical Art of Creativity writes, “Artists have stared out of windows and into their souls for a very long time. It is something in the staring-out that enables us to do the looking-in.” It is in the landscape that I find my soul reflected back to me.

This week create a sacred space in which to do your writing, however small. Pick 2 favorite objects that evoke a sense of the sacred for you, and keep them close by. Write about what it is about the experience of writing that keeps you coming back to it again and again.