Home As Sacred Space

By DR. PETRA WELDES

This article appeared in the November 2022 issue of Science of Mind magazine

I remember standing in the doorway of the center in Seattle during a break in my first Science of Mind class. I loved learned about spiritual living and the principles. I loved finding a faith, a philosophy and a way of life that made sense to my mind, soothed my soul and empowered my heart.

Having moved to Seattle from the East Coast, I felt Spirit everywhere. I could see it in the mountains, hear it in the winds across Puget Sound and smell it in the warmth of the summer sun, drawing sweet perfume from the pines and wildflowers. I felt drenched in beauty and saturated by nature and utterly connected in a whole new way.

Like Plato, I had been drawn to the place where my soul was filled by nature, and I could see the presence of the Divine.

I believe it was Plato who said that God is love, truth and beauty. It has always seemed wonderful to me that one of the world’s greatest thinkers should have included beauty as a necessary part of the Divine nature. How evident this beauty is everywhere we look! How wonderful is the landscape, the sunset or the color of the desert at dawn. How beautiful is the daffodil in its sweet simplicity. And what majestic beauty and strength in the mountain and the wave. Everything is rooted in beauty. Beauty is harmony and right proportion. It is symmetry and charm and grace and loveliness. Surely we should identify ourselves with this terrific beauty that pours its warmth and color over everything and seems to be at the very root of our being. — Ernest Holmes, “Richer Living,” page 69

Standing in that doorway, I gazed across a parking lot, over the tops of the cars, through the telephone poles and beyond the buildings, finding rest and peace in a glorious full moon. I turned back to my teacher and said, “No way! I can absolutely sense and feel connected looking at the moon, but all this manmade stuff in between, there is no way that is part of the whole.”

I had learned to read the sermons in stone and hear the sounds of oneness in the wind, but on the street, at the mall or in the city, where everything is concrete, straightedged, rigidly unyielding and generally ugly? Nope. Spirit was definitely not there.

I grew up in a German home with crystal, art and music. I traveled throughout Europe my whole childhood, visiting cathedrals and museums. My mother loved art, set a gorgeous table, took us to plays and sewed her own clothes from Vogue patterns. My father loved music, and we all loved the sparkle of elegant Christmas decorations.

The God of beauty is understood by the artist who appreciates the beautiful and senses in all form some reflection of that universal Wholeness that finds harmony in the perfect adjustment of Itself to all of Its parts. Beauty, like greatness, is a thing of the soul, a spiritual quality, outlined in form, objectified in space. It is eternality imaged in the mind. — Ernest Holmes, “Think Your Troubles Away,” page 13

I remember feeling surrounded by beauty during my childhood, but I found my solace in the grass and trees of the backyard. To support our spiritual growth, we are encouraged to retreat to nature, which I avidly embraced. But we also are reminded to create sacred space for our daily meditation and spiritual practice. I began learning about making altars in one’s home. The first one I made was on top of a small shelf and covered in shells, driftwood and feathers.

Over the years, I began noticing that nooks around my home and small surfaces in my office were collecting sacred objects. This expanded into acquiring small treasures and a growing passion for art to hang on my walls. Each succeeding apartment and house became more of a home, with altars that magically emerged everywhere.

A single small statue with a potted plant and a thick colorful candle from a craft fair right where my eye rested across my meditation chair. Ah, a moment of restfulness. A series of colorful glass pieces, vases and knickknacks, carefully arranged, with lots of space on the mantle across from the couch. Ah, a moment for my busy mind to drink in color and form.

A Quality of the Divine

Slowly I began to realize why beauty is one of the qualities of the Divine. It is restful to the mind, nourishing to the soul and peaceful to the mind. Beauty invites us to contemplate it. And in the form and color and texture, we are invited to sense the Infinite.

By communion we mean silently entering into Divine harmony and beauty until we feel that harmony and beauty in our own souls, in our own minds. — Ernest Holmes, “Richer Living,” page 74

I’ve learned that all this beauty made by humans is just as beautiful and an expression of the One as is anything nature. There is something within each of us that is capable of such beauty. Seeing this allows me to perceive the gift, the beauty and the unique perfection of each and every person. And if it’s true for them, it must also be true about me. It is my spirit, the very essence of me, and all the things that make me precious and unique that are what make me beautiful, too.

Making our homes sacred helps us see ourselves and each other as the sacred Presence we are. As each of us finds our own way to let the sacred emerge in our living spaces, we express the very truth of our being, neither forced nor rigid nor needing to look like anyone else. As we create space and lovingly fill the space with those things that delight our senses and are restful to our being, then our house becomes a home. It becomes not only a home to the humans who live there, but it becomes sacred space in which our Spirit communes and recognizes Itself.

May the beauty of your home fill your heart and open your awareness to the ever-present sacred and Divine.