Where the Sacred Resides

Meditation for Thursday, July 28: Find and claim your sanctuary.

Yesterday, I ran by a church and noticed the word "Sanctuary" on the sign. I've seen the sign hundreds of times, but this is the first time that I have held on to that word. I like etymologies, so I looked it up.

The original meaning is "sacred room," a hidden chamber where the holy resides. By the 1500s, people in England were also using it to mean "refuge."

One reason some of us enjoy running is because we find sanctuary in the outdoors. Still, there are 100-degree days and snowstorms, and other times when we have to fight the elements.

Because we also dwell deeply in and contend mightly with our bodies and our psyches, perhaps there are hidden sanctuaries there. What if we considered very literally that the chambers of the heart were sacred rooms? How would we feel, then, to hear it beat?

I have always appreciated how yoga instructors encourage my mind-body awareness by asking me to think of my body in ways I normally wouldn't; for example, to visualize my spine lengthening and my breath traveling from the top of my head to my toes. Yoga is based on the principle that heat is required to unite parts of the body back to the whole, divine self, which includes the mind. To practice yoga is to join the parts together, to build the Sanctuary with a capital S: your original Self.

Here is a poem exploring the meaning of finding sanctuary, and how elusive it can be.

"Sanctuary"

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else,
respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says
"you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ...
—Huub Oosterhuis

You who I don’t know I don’t know how to talk to you

—What is it like for you there?

Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—
The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.
Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.
But they will not be mine;
to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—

What are you afraid of?

What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death.
What happens when you die?

“... not scatter the voices,”

Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in
another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What
word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the
restlessness ... Repose. To run like water—

What is it like there, right now?

Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in
against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread.

What do you dread?

What happens when you die?

What do you dread, in this room, now?

Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin.
To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered
life.

Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to
follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

--Jean Valentine