measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little sacred spaces The following is my February collaborative essay for [paganspeak]. While Paganism tends to focus on the earth and the energies of the natural world, there are more than enough worshippers of the Old Gods who live within the blocked concrete walls that make up large cities. Finding patches of sacred space within the confines of a city is difficult. In a place where thousands to millions of people live packed together, solitude often seems damn near impossible. Finding Energy? No problem. There is a heartbeat to a city, a stream of movement not unlike blood flowing through the veins of a living thing. Since I was in my early teens, I've needed a space that I can retreat to for personal reflection, meditation, and recomposure. Weekend ski lessons provided me that space growing up-- staring from the top of Grizzly Peak over the expanse of south central Montana and just listening to the wind whistle through the lodgepole pines, becoming just another animal in the great forest in wintertime. This was before I knew what Paganism even was. When I got to college, the need for personal space became obnoxiously pronounced. I shared a 10x12 cinder block dorm room with an extremely gregarious girl named Kathy, and a floor of 44 men and women. There were always people in our room, and being a higher-middle class child, I'd always had my own bedroom. The concept of sharing a bedroom that had been smaller than my own at home was frightening to me. I constantly felt like I needed to be on my best behavior, constantly putting up the front of being comfortable with other people around me. And, being a girl from the Midwest, I was constantly having to translate the slang and accents of the East Coast and foreign students so that I didn't look like a complete idiot. While I loved living in the dorm, I found dorm life mentally and physically exhausting. By November of my freshman year, I realized that if I didn't find some sort of space for myself, I wasn't going to make it. I tried the college library, which worked to a point, but was only open at certain times and didn't guarantee me solitude. I found nooks and crannies in the classroom buildings, but that required sitting on tile floors and wasn't exactly comfortable. I even went down to Copley Square, and despite my growing beliefs in Paganism, would sit in the pews of Trinity Church, trying to relax in the childhood familiarity of the Episcopal Church. The church helped a bit more than anywhere else because of the surroundings and silence. But what I realized I really was missing was a connection with the outdoors. I needed that mountain. Yes, I was becoming a modern-day Heidi. *sigh* I knew that Boston wasn't far from any beaches, but I was both too clueless and nervous about taking the MBTA too far from campus to get to one. So the ocean was out. My entire world in Massachusetts had a divider that was called "The T," (aka the MBTA mass-transit system). I was afraid to go off-campus, except for the occasional trip over to Copley or Harvard Square. So I needed to find something within that radius that I could get to by subway, but preferably by walking. After a couple more months of searching, I found a little dock along the Esplanade, which is a park that runs along the Charles River in Boston. The dock was slightly divided from the shore of the park by a treeline, and required me to take a little footbridge to get out onto it. Once I was on it, the sounds of the city seemed to disappear, and all that existed was the river, the distant lights of the city, and myself. It was absolutely perfect. And even if there were other people sitting on that dock, I was happily alone, just feeling the gentle rocking of the wooden planks and listening to the lapping of the water along the dock's edges and the riverbank a few feet away. Over the course of the next five years, I often would go down to sit on that dock. My friends came to know that when I said I was going to "The Dock," that I didn't want to be disturbed. The Dock was my place. My sacred space. On a couple of occasions after learning bad news, I went there to mourn in isolation. I learned shortly after the beginning of my sophomore year that one of my two childhood cats, Kashan, had died suddenly from a lung infection. I went running to the dock to cry, and Mother Nature seemed to notice my sorrow-- for only the time that I sat on the dock, it rained, trying to wash away the tears from my face much like Kashan had often licked the tears from my brother's face when he cried as a child. The rain gave me comfort and let me know that Kashan's soul was now part of the clouds, cleansing the Earth as he'd cleansed Scott's tears. The Dock became the spot of all of my Sabbat rituals, and monthly meditations that were my version of Esbat rituals each full moon. My favorite ritual was very simple-- I lit a couple of voitive candles, and positioned myself to watch the moving cars across the river on Memorial Drive, observing the city's energy as if I were an outsider. I blocked out all sound except for those of the river. I listened to the birds. I listened to the wind. But I didn't hear the noise of the city at all. The city became a foreign movie with the volume on mute. And I relished in the silence. Bright Blessings, Mel. 11:01 a.m. - 11 February 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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