I don’t know how old I was when I created the first altar space, on my child-sized table and chairs, in my bedroom. My memory however does include a pure white statue of Mary, some kind of white placemat or cloth napkin for an altar cloth, a candle that I was not allowed to light…a some hand-picked dandelions. I would bring new flowers/weeds in as needed.
The other thing I am sure of is that it was the month of May, and at the parochial school I attended, May was a celebration of the Madonna. The words or concepts taught have long escaped me, but a sense of reverence, the sense of the sacred has followed me as the Psalmist wrote “all the days of my life.”
As I created the above altar space this morning for a Zoom day of prayer I’m facilitating tomorrow, I began recalling some of the spaces I’ve created. Here are a few of the photos I found. All but one was from the time of the Pandemic, when I livestreamed our service from home.
Today, I continue to sense the sacred through what I see, and in what is beautiful. On a daily basis I sense the sacred in richly colored flowers, in the multitude of greens in grasses and trees, in the small and large birds that frequent our backyard, in the colors of the rising sun-making the Great White Heron appear a pinky-apricot (and any clouds the same color), in the whiteness of clouds in a crystal blue sky and their ever changing movement; by an unseen breeze. On most days there is an abundance of riches to see that seem to be speaking Divine imaginings without any sound being uttered.
My intuition is that many of us create such altars in our homes, whether we call them that or not. We create little niches of curated pieces that cause our soul to go “ahh” when we pass by them. And that it is also true that we all sense the sacred in creation, in nature and creatures that surround us–whether or not we would use the word ‘sacred’ to describe what we feel in our garden, or gazing at a passing deer, or turtle, or racoon or family of geese. But let me encourage you to do so.
Macrina Wiederkehr, in 1990, published the book “A TREE FULL OF ANGELS.” In it she encouraged her readers to see the holy in the ordinary. Since then, other authors including Barbara Brown Taylor have written on this same subject. Namely, that the sacred, the holy, is not locked up in a building somewhere but rather is everywhere. We simply need to soften our eyes and look with a sacred gaze.
In a time in history, civilization, and particularly for us in the catastrophic ecological and political landscape, seeing with a sacred gaze can be salvific to our sanity and our soul. It was Dostoyevsky who wrote “beauty will save the world.” And since then many pages have been written both on the absurdity and the absolute truth of that sentiment. I am of course in the second camp. The beauty I see, or the beauty I am able to create in small ways around me are saving my sanity and my soul.
So today these few words, and these few images are my offering of beauty for you and for me. Because even recalling the images, and my search for them lightened my own heart. And writing these words reminded me of those women who are part of my spiritual heritage who taught me to see trees full of angels.
May you be blessed today in sensing the sacredness of where you are and what you see.
xo Kathleen –thecelticmonk
The Celtic Monk Musings 