CREATING REFUGE & SOLACE IN THESE TIMES

We are in the midst of a global shift that is unprecedented in our times. The entire world is reeling and responding to the new realities of the novel coronavirus. Many of us are finding ourselves existing primarily in our homes, “sheltering-in-place” to keep ourselves safe and to ensure wellness for our greater community.

We are using the phrase, “shelter-in-place,” in today’s COVID context; however the historical usage comes from a heritage of profound violence and fear given its context with active-shooter events and natural disasters such as tornados. I find that given our collective desire to create security within our homes for the greater good, the word "sanctuary" resonates more than “shelter.” We are being called to stay home as a way to create refuge and protection for ourselves and our communities. We are being called to set ourselves apart, creating safe space.

Related to saint, sanctum, and sentry, this sanctuary, this “set-apart-ness” becomes sacred-ness. Holy space. Sacred space. Our very inner-life and interior home life becoming a shrine to meet and greet the very ground of our being through greater amounts of introverted time and almost-constant shared space with our partners, pets, and children. This shared privacy is a powerful place to cultivate sanctuary. 

Sanctuary is also related to places that are set aside for the flourishing of wild plants and animals. Can this sanctuary-in-place we create within our homes also encourage the flourishing of our wild self, our True Self? Could this time somehow be seen as a gift as it opens up sacred space for connection and communion with the sanctuary that resides in each of us as well as all around us in the wild world? Could it be that we are being invited back into a time where "we learn to return and rest in the beauty of animal being, learn to lean low, love our locked minds, and with freed senses, feel the earth breathing with us" (John O’Donohue). 

We are being called upon to create places of refuge or safety, the irony being that now these places get created in our physical absence and intentional presence. Religious communities across the globe are now electing to meet beyond the walls of their churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. Safe sanctuary is now being created virtually.

The Christian Gospels remind us of a profound event when the curtains separating the temple, the most Holy of Holies, was violently ripped in two (Matthew 27:5), a powerful symbol that the presence of the Divine was beyond the temple and resided within the entirety of the world. Through this rendering, we are reminded that God’s presence is imminent, present within and throughout all of earthly life.

Could it be that this time of de(re)construction is symbolically similar to the curtain being torn in two, and is inviting us to re-imagine where we ascribe the holiest part of a temple or church? COVID-19 is causing much harm and violence. And, in many ways, it is returning us to fundamentals: our embodied sanctuaries exist within the most primary of temples: nature. The Celtic spiritual tradition understood that the wild natural world was primary—the primary creation, the primary scripture, and in many respects, the primary sanctuary. The sanctuary isn’t located within a building. It is located within each and everyone of us. It is found within the wild.

We are being called to create our inner and wild sanctuary. We being called to become a holy temple. We are sanctuary-in-place.

Nature is not closed! There is a healthy economy occurring within the vast ecologies around our homes. Engage in this economy for your well-being —being in nature actually fortifies your personal sense of safety and refuge! The economy of nature is that it can actually help metabolize your grief, anxiety, and concern, while stimulating your imagination and hope. Retreat to the wild sanctuary, a place within which we can come together with the greater assembly of life, liberally expressing our physical worship. In this sanctuary, you don’t have to practice physical distance with the wild. You can safely hug a tree!

WILD SANCTUARY RESOURCES

These resources are intended to provide you with deepening prayers, practices, rites and rituals to accompany your connection to your own wild sanctuary. We may not be able to gather within our traditional places of worship right now, but we can still intentionally engage Sacred Presence within the great communion of creation. These offerings are intentionally simple. You do not need a lot of materials, production, or professional guidance! Take one of these prayers or poems into the woods with you and offer the words out loud in the arboreal company. As a grounding practice, try one of these activities to bring you into more perceptive interrelationship with the Holy Wild. Create your own wild ceremony by yourself or your closest family members as its one of the only places of worship that isn’t currently closed! These are offered in the spirit of our interconnectedness and in our growing remembrance that the Wild Earth is our original sanctuary.

This page intends to be an offering and resource for those of you who are in sanctuary-in-place, a place where one can find inspiration to rewild your worship as you practice physical distancing alone or with their families. Click on the images below for dynamic resources to bring outside with you as you seek the wild sanctuary that invites us beyond the veil to see the choir in birdsong, sacrament in the soil, and communion with all of creation.

NOTE: This offering is primarily for the individual or the nuclear family who is longing to engage in sacred communion during this time of interiority. If you are a member of a larger worshipping community, you will also be served well by the Wild Church Network.