Day 6 - The Hospitality of Sacred Space

If you’re wanting to make improvements to your home there’s all sorts of advice readily available. You can browse through a copy of Garden & Home to get some ideas, or pick up any number of other magazines on interior decorating or DIY Home Improvements. Entire daytime television channels are dedicated to ideas and tips (and particularly products) that are designed to make home a more ‘homely’ place.

All of these things focus on the material aspects of a home — the colour of the walls, the layout of the garden, the choice of furniture and fabric. But what about the soul of a home? What advice is there concerning that?

I’m sure that many of us have had the experience of entering a stylish home that has all the latest fittings and finishes, and yet feels rather sterile. Like it has no soul. Conversely, we’ve all been in a home that may be pretty humble, that would never be featured on Top Billing, but there’s an unmistakeable energy and vibrant sense of joy and life that seems to pour out of the walls and through the windows. Instinctively we can sense the difference between a home with soul, and one without.

Thankfully, it has nothing to do with how much money it cost to build or furnish, but everything to do with the creation of sacred space where a home’s greatest gift — hospitality — can be freely given and received. Let me explain.

From time to time I’m called upon to offer a blessing for someone’s new home. I remember one occasion going to a home that had been newly built. The whole family and I went through every room of the house, stopping in each one, anointing it with oil, and offering prayers for all that would happen within them (yes, including the bedrooms and bathrooms!) It was a beautiful time of recognition that there is a whole lot of living that happens in a home, and that every space within it can play a unique and sacred part in allowing God’s intentions for blessing to be fulfilled.

When a kitchen becomes a place of soulful nurture; when an entertainment area becomes a place of laughter and togetherness and the deepening of friendship; when a bedroom becomes a place of rest and tender intimacy; when a living room becomes a place of lively conversation, good music or quiet solitude...then these varied spaces that make up a home are becoming sacred indeed. And the home’s greatest gift ... hospitality ... can be freely given and received. A gift, rightly understood, which is not just for the benefit of guests, but first and foremost is intended for a home’s regular inhabitants.

But when spaces within a home no longer serve their sacred purpose for God’s blessing to be experienced within them — they can become truly inhospitable.

So take a walk through your home and consider each and every space that it contains. Ask yourself what usually happens there, whether it’s lifegiving, whether it’s being used for the sacred purposes that God intends for it. Is it a space in which you easily feel more alive, more connected with those around you, more inclined to joy? If not, how can you begin to redeem each space, and return it to God’s intentions for it? Here are some practical ideas that hopefully will be helpful in getting you started:

Consider each space / room in your home and ask what its unique purpose might be in helping to enable God’s abundant life to be experienced.

Look carefully at the clutter that may be filling each space, and ruthlessly resolve to let it go. Anything that does not serve the sacred purpose of that space is a costly encumbrance that is a burden to the soul of your home.

Find something new that you can put in each space as a sacred symbol of its purpose, or else imbue an existing object with some sacred symbolism that can remind you, whenever you look at it or use it, of that space’s higher purpose. The choice of art can be particular helpful here, not only adding beauty but also meaning to a room.

Engage in simple rituals that can be ongoing reminders of your intention for every space in your home to become a sacred space. Opening the curtains in the morning to let the sunshine in can be a moment of grace if it’s done as a conscious expression of your desire to open the whole of your home to the radiance of God’s love. Holding hands as a family at the meal table as you say grace can be a powerful expression of your being bound together in good times and bad. (This can be especially apt if you’ve burnt the dinner!) Lighting a candle, or a stick of incense in a child’s room at bedtime, can be a beautiful reminder of the gentleness of God’s presence watching over little ones as they sleep. Waiting in the street for your electric gates to open can be a dramatic sign of the opening arms of God who is always glad to welcome you home. All that’s needed is to exercise your imagination, and your entire home can become a fertile, soulful playground waiting to be explored.

One final thought: The central thrust of this devotion has been to see how every space within your home can rightly be seen as a sacred space in which God’s goodness can be experienced and enjoyed. In addition to this it may be helpful to set aside a special place that you can use for your devotions and prayers. I, for instance, have a favourite chair, and next to it some special photographs of some of the people who have been very significant to me in my spiritual walk. And some art works that speak to me. And whenever I sit down in that chair, there is a hospitality that I experience that enfolds me and draws me gently into prayer. What would work for you?

PRAYER

Take my home and let it be, consecrated Lord, to Thee. Amen