For many people, the concept of sanctuary perhaps has preconceived connotations. These may reflect purely religious interpretations or the idea of a special place of protection. Sanctuary Work places the concept of sanctuary squarely amidst one'd daily duties and activities, as you will see briefly. The 7 Principles make sanctuary imminently accessible by anyone.
From a historical analysis, there are three ways to characterize sanctuary:
Note that these descriptions of sanctuary have secular and sacred qualities. The secular embraces the idea of a safe haven - a garden, building, room, piece of land or woods, etc. - enclosed within boundaries. The spiritual embraces the dance between human, nature, and the Divine - natural places of power (mountains, forest, springs, rivers, etc.) and architectural structures (temples, shrines, memorials, cathedrals, etc.).
Peoples' need for sanctuary today reflects the difficulties of a world in which social structures are disintegrating. The Jungian analyst, Fritz Riemann, speaks of a "schizoidizing" effect in humans - our split ambivalence between needing distance from the world and for proximity to objects and other people. Several societal forces today shape our need for sanctuary:
So, as a result of our engagement with the world, we may have at least four needs for sanctuary:
Undoubtedly, you can relate to any of these four needs, and you can identify aspects of your daily lifestyle which may suggest the need for periodic periods of sanctuary. If so, then you are prepared to accept the responsibilities of Sanctuary Work - the opportunity and responsibility to give yourself daily "islands of grace" amidst the sea of worldly events and obligations.
I. Embrace your sacredness
II. Embrace the sacredness of the world
III. Acknowledge the value of sanctuary for yourself, nature, and all other beings & places
IV. Create sacred time & space for yourself
V. Practice Reverence for life
VI. Practice nonjudgment & compassion
VII. Give of yourself to bring more joy, beauty, hope, and peace into the world
Sanctuary Work begins with the act of embracing our sense of sacredness. This is often difficult in a world that substitutes our soulful qualities with an account number, title, familial role, or personality type. It is also difficult if we feel abused, oppressed, depersonalized, or our sense of dignity is removed. We lose our sense of sacredness when society depersonalizes us, recreating us as commodities valued for short-term use and gain. It is possible, therefore, that our personal sacredness is hidden beneath feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy, or fear.
However, to embrace your sacredness is an empowering act, calling upon you to imagine or visualize a blueprint for your sacredness everyday. You become the architect for your life, challenging yourself daily to build a sacred hermitage for your body, mind, and soul. This powerful affirmation becomes your vocation:
My Body is a Temple, My Mind is of the Divine, My Soul is Enchanted.
Rumi advises us to "get a huge foolish project, like Noah." To reclaim your sacredness amidst an impersonal world fits the bill perfectly! Only when you embrace your sacredness can you accept the need for sanctuary to regenerate your body, mind, and spirit each and every day. When you begin to reclaim the power of your sacredness you no longer feel at the mercy of others. You accept yourself and your limitations. You learn that it is you alone who must uphold and enhance the uniqueness of your body (not the contrived images offered by Madison Avenue). You learn that you really do have the power to choose what you want to create, consume, or honor within yourself (not the incessant messages offered by the media). Finally, you learn that only you can find a soulful yet compassionate way to celebrate life on Earth; no one can do it for you.
As we learn to embrace our personal sacredness, we begin to see the world with the same need. We discover that to see and embrace the world as sacred gives us the opportunity for deep abiding relationships. It gives us a sacred place to dwell. Here our soul is enriched by heartfelt connections with nature, cultures, people, animals, and places. Each is a potential sanctuary that we can enfold into our compassion just as each may give us sanctuary.
Our soul has a longing for comfort, safety, beauty, pleasure, peace, harmony, and love. Our soul needs to know it can find these while fully immersed in the world and in periodic retreat from it. Think about this for a moment. This principle asks us to explore the nature of our soul's longing to be in the world yet not fully of it. As the Sufis would say, "one foot on Earth, one foot in Heaven."
Part of our soul's longing is to re-experience paradise: a perfect world, or at the least a place, where peace and harmony exists between all. Sanctuary Work can help us see the world anew each day, giving us hope and a sense of direction. This affirmation helps you in your noble efforts to sacralize the world:
I want an Earth that is healthy, a world at peace, and a heart filled with love. I want my life and every life to count. How can I serve toward this end?
When you embrace this affirmation and principle you begin to realize that paradise comes in little moments of grace experienced as peace and tranquility, awe and wonder, love and compassion in response to your engagement in the world. These experiences then become a new type of longing - a longing to change yourself for better through sanctuary and to do what you can to make the world a more beautiful and peaceful place to live.
By embracing our sense of sacredness and that of the world's, we are prepared to acknowledge the value of sanctuary for all. It seems logical that this would happen. This principle begins to personalize our inquiry about sanctuary. What is it about sanctuary that affects our soul? What can we expect from creating and finding sanctuary in our life? Taking periodic retreat within our daily activities has great value in answering these questions.
Sanctuary especially gives us perspective. We momentarily or thoughtfully plan to distance ourself from some activity, person, feeling, or routine. We see things differently, we regenerate our spirit. Above all, sanctuary allows us to practice devotion to a great personal need: Peace. Peace within our heart truly unlocks the deep abiding relationship possible with all other beings on Earth. It tethers us to the Divine's eternal flow of love and compassion.
This principle also asks us to consider the deep devotional commitment to Place, for the regenerative and healing power of sanctuary is most often associated with a place. For this reason we may consider our homes, certain rooms, gardens, yards, and even larger outdoor settings like parks, mountains, etc, to be worthy places of daily sanctuary. The value of sanctuary gets us in touch with places, plants, animals, and natural phenomenon (sunsets come to mind), that have meaning to us - places or experiences that feel sacred.
Finally, this principle calls up our Stewardship role to ourself, others, nature, and other beings and places. Stewardship means "keeper of the place." When we acknowledge the value of sanctuary for ourself and others/places, we invest in stewardship based on respect, courtesy, honoring, and reverence.
The affirmation for this principle is simple:
In sanctuary I love myself and the world anew.
The affirmation for this principle is especially empowering:
I need the time and space to daily renew my celebration of life. This need for sanctuary is sacred to me.
The is a proactive principle. It asks you to sincerely and seriously create special places and times in your daily lifestyle for sanctuary. It suggests that such places/times are so valuable to the evolution of your soul that they may even be considered sacred. That is, they are without question. Imagine that your garden may hold such value to you, especially as a place of respite upon returning home from work. Or imagine that a special corner of a room (or even a whole room) in your home has been designated as a place of sanctuary from the day or family life.
When you activate this principle there is a lot of work to do. Many people decide to get rid of clutter, or create special touches in their garden, or devise an altar. Many fine tune their furnishings and living spaces. Many create a code of ethics or behavior for their settings to ensure that the peaceful mood of the place stays intact. Many also begin using time throughout their day differently, finding a little sanctuary time upon rising in the morning, at lunchbreak, on a park bench, in their car, or even while waiting in line. The series of articles in this website hopefully gives you more inspiration in exercising this principle.
To practice reverence for life is an indespensible tool for daily living. It keeps us focused on the sacredness of life.
The greatest dis-ease people face today is the hunger for a deeper meaning to life. The ecological crisis of the natural environment and the crisis of personal meaning offer us the opportunity to fundamentally redefine our relationship to each other and the planet. This is the great awakening of our time. We are being challenged to see that humanity is an inseparable part of the natural world. To practice Reverence for Life is both a behavior and an understanding about how to celebrate and respect our relationship to all beings.
The path of reverence is a commitment to place and the human and nonhuman species of that place - a home, garden, forest, park, office, etc. In fact, the beginning of your spiritual reconstruction very well may be a reverential treatment of the world and yourself. Reverence for Life is also how you sustain the sacred. It may require the development of a personal covenant of reverence - behaviors and ways of thinking that are noble, courteous, honoring, compassionate. These behaviors are shown when we honor the richness and wisdom of cultural diversity, when we work to protect the integrity and diversity of natural environments and species, when we give back to the Earth more than we take, when we strive to live simply so that others may simply live, when we renew our spirit through the power of loving acts, when we give ourself time for daily contemplation, self-improvement, and self-healing.
Many people find the most practical application of this principle when they choose to create an outdoor setting (garden, yard, land, etc.) as a sanctuary, or perhaps a place in their home or work, or even perhaps a bedroom for the severely ill or dying. The point is, they choose to identify a place in which to practice loving, peaceful, and compassionate behaviors. These are true islands of reverence.
Please consider the following affirmation for this principle:
I celebrate the miracle of creation by beholding it reverently. May my every thought and action be one of love, wisdom, and respect.
To practice non-judgement and compassion are indespensible tools for daily living as well. The following affirmation perhaps speaks best for the task at hand:
The fires of my judgements, insensitivity, indifference, pettiness, and harsh criticisms are doused by the waters of my heartfelt compassion and acceptance.
To claim sanctuary for ourself is a compassionate act. It is loving ourself anew. But part of the responsibility in experiencing sanctuary is to arouse and deepen our compassion for others. And the greatest obstacle in extending compassion is judgement - forming harsh opinions and criticism, even adopting attitudes of insensitivity and indifference that keep us separate from others. To practice this principle of sanctuary work assures us that the sacredness and well-being of all is in our best interests.
To embrace compassion is to think with your heart and feel with your head. Acting with compassion is not doing good because you think you ought to. It is being drawn to action by heartfelt passion, a feeling of affinity with other beings and nature, an awakening to your love for Creation. The truth is, our compassion for animals, nature, and others in need is a direct expression of our interpretation of their sacredness. We all need something to believe in, something that proves to us that life is meaningful. Compassion is about bringing our deepest truths into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist.
Many people choose to practice compassion at the most basic familial or friendship level. But sooner or later we should choose to exercise compassion in direct service with others in need. It doesn't matter what it is or who it is for, such involvements become worthy of our time and devotion, they touch our soul, give us an inner sense of gratitude, joy, and peace, and they most certainly reinforce our sense of sacredness about life.
Our soul is filled-up in sanctuary. Our spirit is renewed. The world looks more hopeful. Others seem more worthy of our caring and kindness. We realize that our life, our time, our sense of place is sacred. We have compassion for others, even if we don't take action. That is okay. Our soul is more awake to the beauty and integrity, the art and dignity of others.
But our need for sanctuary cannot be self-serving. Sanctuary Work compells us to reinvest our spirit back into the world. Few of us are meant to totally withdraw from the world like recluses. The risk of sanctuary is that we can focus too much on ourself; we can build too thick a wall of withdrawal from the world around us, literally believing that our need for sanctuary is greater than anyone else's.
Sanctuary Work emphasizes balance - between your personal needs and the needs you perceive in others. This seventh principle is actually your soul call to the world, as shown in this affirmation:
I am a sacred flame willing to illuminate the world with joy, beauty, hope, and peace.
Looked at more deeply, this affirmation acknowledges the reciprocal ethic of this principle. It suggests that we can bring our special gifts to the world as a result of our spiritual renewal in personal sanctuary. Whatever our gifts may be - talents, skills, passions, connections, prayers - they often rise up from our soul's deepest callings to life. Unconditional giving to enhance the sacredness of the world invokes our personal voices of Compassion, Challenge, Commitment/Devotion, Contemplation, and Celebration. Think about the many people you know or have observed who exercise these voices in their desire to make the world a better place to live. Think about their great causes or perhaps their most simple actions (afterall, practicing a random act of kindness to a stranger is a wonderful way to create more light in the world!).
Perhaps you notice something here - how by practicing this seventh principle you are naturally cycling back through all the principles, beginning again by reaffirming the sacredness of your life and others. Sanctuary Work is never-ending in this regard. It is a sacred loop or hoop of reciprocity, finding our center within the center of the world and our daily actions and thoughts.
This Earth is perhaps the most incredible sanctuary in the universe. We take too much for granted. The air is free and so is the sun and water we are vulnerably dependent upon for life. Like fish in a bowl who are thirsty, we too easily forget that we live in the good graces of the Earth everyday. We go looking to satisfy our hunger within our peculiar human inventions. We go searching for the musk of sanctuary that eludes us until someday we discover it to be within our very soul. When this awakening occurs, we are certain to find the face of God in everything we do, every species we meet, and every human we see. It would be impossible at that moment to disregard this incredible Earth Sanctuary and not choose to do whatever we can to ensure that peace and joy prevails.
To help you conceptualize the 7 Principles of Sanctuary Work in your life, use the following table and conduct the suggested activities.
The 7 Principles |
Strategies for Integrating the Principle into Your Life |
I. Embrace your Sacredness |
1. Affirm: "My Body is a Temple, My Mind is of the Divine, My Soul is Enchanted" 2. Write down your own unique affirmation that acknowledges your sacredness 3. List the most positive aspects of your Body which affirm your sacredness. Do this as well for your Mind (your mental-creative gifts), and your Soul (very special qualities of your character, personality, emotions, magnetism to others) 4. List those activities/experiences you engage in (or desire to!) which positively honor and sustain your Body Temple, Divine Mind, and Enchanted Soul |
II. Embrace the Sacredness of the World |
1. Affirm: "I want an Earth that is healthy, a world at peace, and a heart filled with love. I want my life and every life to count. How can I serve toward this end?" 2. Write down your own unique affirmation that acknowledges the world's sacredness 3. The following helps us create sacred connections: Family, Friendship, Intimacy, Animals, Nature, other Cultures, special places (natural or human-made). For each, list those deep qualities/values you seek and uphold, as if these relationships were sacred |
III. Acknowledge the Value of Sanctuary for yourself, nature, and all other beings & places |
1. Affirm: "In sanctuary I love myself and the world anew" 2. Sanctuary exists as a special feeling of peaceful grace within time, place, and our reverent thoughts and behaviors in relationship to others and nature (divine stewardship). Write down those benefits you gain (or would like to gain) from sanctuary. 3. List those places you have created or are drawn to that emit a feeling of sanctuary in your life. For each place, describe its quality that enfolds your spirit. 4. Under what circumstances are you most drawn to sanctuary? What re-occuring life experiences especially lend toward the need for sanctuary? Write down how you do (or can attempt to) take sanctuary space and how others respond or support your need. 5. How do/can you demonstrate your sincerity in offering sanctuary to others & nature? |
IV. Create Sacred Time & Space for yourself everyday |
1. Affirm: "I need the time and space to daily renew my celebration of life. This need for sanctuary is sacred to me." 2. List and describe those ways you have created (or can create) your home as a sanctuary. What places in your home especially emit and honor the qualities of sanctuary 3. How have you created sanctuary within nature surrounding your dwelling (i.e. your yard, garden, patio, balcony, deck, land, etc.)? 4. List those parts of the day in which you are able (or desire) to take sanctuary. 5. Describe other places or circumstances within your life that lend toward sanctuary. |
V. Practice Reverence for Life |
1. Affirm: "I celebrate the miracle of creation by beholding it reverently. May my every thought and action be one of love, wisdom, and respect." 2. Write about those ways you can practice reverence for a) other cultures/races, b) nature, c) animals, and d) living simply |
VI. Practice Non-judgement & Compassion |
1. Affirm: "The fires of my judgements, insensitivity, indifference, pettiness, and harsh criticisms are doused by the waters of my heartfelt compassion and acceptance." 2. Write about those ways you can bring more compassion into your life, and toward whom. What negative thoughts are you willing to try letting go in order to succeed? 3. How can you share more compassion for a) the ill/dying, b) elderly, c) disadvantaged, d) threatened species/cultures, e) abused women/children, f) others you may identify |
VII. Give of yourself to bring more Joy, Beauty, Hope & peace into the world |
1. Affirm: "I am a sacred flame willing to illuminate the world with joy, beauty, hope, and peace." 2. Describe those special gifts, talents, knowledge/interests you have to offer others and/or nature. In what ways are you sharing these? |
Copyright 2007 by Christopher Forrest McDowell, Ph.D.
Excerpts from forthcoming book: Islands of Grace: Creating Sanctuary in Daily Life. By Dr. Christopher Forrest McDowell and Tricia Clark-McDowell