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Hello Friends, Last week we spent five very special days with the participants on our year-long coach certification programme. As part of our exploration into deepening contact with ourselves and others we spend time diving into poetry: discovering how language and attention, skilfully woven anew, can touch us deeply and open new realms of experience, of possibility. On our final day together, we sat reading and sharing our discoveries. One of the poems Lizzie found that day touched me deeply. Here it is: A Sacred Space Your love requires space to grow. This space must be safe enough to allow your hearts to be revealed. It must offer refreshment for your spirits and renewal for your minds. It must be a space made sacred by the quality of your honesty, attention, love and compassion. It may be anywhere, inside or out, but it must exist. By William Martin
These words ignited in me a wondering about sacred space and how it emerges – about the containers that make space possible. Our everyday way of thinking about containers might stretch to: boxes, jars, lorries, cups, cupboards… There is real beauty in the ordinary way such objects make so much possible in our lives. Each of these containers creates a space in which something particular can happen. I notice that without the form a cup provides, drinking becomes a whole different experience: not worse, but different. The unique shape of any container in turn shapes our experience. As I’m writing this, I have a favoured tea-cup close by: it’s white, with a pleasing weight and an ample handle and drinking tea from it is particularly comforting experience. It strikes me there are other, perhaps less obvious, containers in the human world: cell-walls; bodies; homes; relationships; families; schools; workplaces; communities. I’ve been pondering how the unique shape and quality of these also afford us a particular space of possibility. Which raises some big questions for me: What is the condition of these precious containers: My body? My relationships? My community? What is my and others’ experience of the space they open up or close down? How am I participating in neglecting or caring for them? Into all this, the poem speaks to me – like a reassuringly uncompromising, and loving teacher. It calls on us to weave our containers with honesty, attention, love and compassion. I feel the challenge – this feels much easier to write than to practice. But maybe if we rest our perfectionistic hands and simply bring our messy, willing hearts, we can find a place to begin. Perhaps as we practice bringing ourselves to the world in this way, we become invitations to the sacred: to the simple and necessary space of love and connection. I’m with William Martin, this space where we experience refreshment of our spirits and renewal of our minds is not a ‘nice to have’: It’s essential. Both for its own sake and because in this kind of safe, welcoming space we can heal and grow, we can be truthful, we can be playful and creative. We can courageously take care of our own precious lives and the lives of others. This sacred space may be anywhere, but it must exist. I think I’ll stop now and make another cup of tea. Warm wishes
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