Tuesday Slice: Sacred places, holy spaces

We visited a lot of churches in my growing-up years--a LOT of churches.  When you are raised in a Catholic, military, globe-trotting family, it's almost a given that if there is a Catholic church nearby, you will visit it.  

During tours stateside, joining the local parish gave us a connection to our new community, and attending Mass a sense of continuity in a life that was punctuated by moving every eighteen months to three years.

When we lived overseas, we learned the meaning of religious tolerance through the sharing of the military base chapel.  Catholic Mass at 8a followed by a Protestant service at 930a often meant greeting friends entering the chapel as we left.  My progressive parents allowed me to explore religious practices with my non-Catholic friends; I remember being in awe of Jewish Sabbath prayers intoned in Hebrew, equating them to our own High Mass in Latin.  My parents also believed in experiencing as much as we could about the countries we lived in, and that including touring the churches and cathedrals of Europe.  We visited Rome several times during our tour in Italy; after a long day of walking from one church to the next, I remember kneeling in front of an umpteenth alter and telling my mother that I had run out of things to pray for.  (I was seven; my list was shorter then.)

My Catholic practice has fallen by the wayside since then, but my idea of sacred space has broadened.  

I distinctly remember the day I drove past the hospital where my daughter was born, and felt compelled to make the Sign of the Cross.  The place where I became a mother, where doctors and nurses worked so diligently to keep my 26 week premature infant alive, had become sacred to me.  When my son was born there almost five years later, I found myself once again making the Sign and issuing a silent prayer of gratitude when that hospital came into view.

Porches have been sacred spaces, my own and my friends'.  Gazing at the stars and talking about feeling a Divine presence as teenagers in Germany; dancing on my back porch and being present in my own body in El Paso; sitting on my neighbors' porch and talking about our fears, being strong for each other; these were all holy spaces.

When I think about profound, still moments in my life--sunsets at the top of a hill, stargazing from the side of a road, looking out over an untouched field of snow, walking through a quiet forest--they all feel sacred to me. The same goes for not-so-quiet moments with friends when we are fully present and connecting. 

And now that I am somewhat empty nesting, I gaze across the kitchen table at the empty seats of my children, and those seats seem sacred, too.