Conscious Choice: Sacred Spaces and Safe Places

May 1996

Sacred Spaces and Safe Places

by Jim Mueller

My earliest memory of sacred space was the sand pile under the maple tree where I used to play as a tot. I still remember the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves and the playful shadows cast upon the roads and fields created by Tonka trucks and tractors. We moved from that place when my father bought a second farm and linked it with the first. The hayloft of our new barn became my new place. I would use the bales of hay to create forts with secret entrances and intricate passages — which gave my mother gray hair since she worried the bales would collapse and bury me. I guess it was a little dangerous. But, to me it was worth it. I would go there to get away from my brothers and sisters and be in a quiet place, listening to the doves coo and the wind gently ease through the clapboards and under the eaves as the tin roof groaned beneath the hot summer sun. Like my sand pile, I discovered here a healing solitude, a place where I could offer my self to my self, a place in which I felt okay to be me. I don’t know if that is how a ten-year-old would describe it. But I remember those feelings vividly as I reflect upon it.

My older sister’s sacred place was her bedroom. By putting in a two-window dormer, my father converted an old storage room on the second floor into a beautiful, sunny space. It was clear that it was her room and it seemed like she spent most of her time in there with the door closed. Brothers were not allowed, which made it all the more intriguing. I did sneak in a couple of times to see what was so special. And there was something that made it different from the other bedrooms. It might have been the way she had everything arranged, almost choreographed, with different keepsakes and the bedspread just so. There was no doubt that this was a special place for her.

When he was 17 my brother’s sacred space was his‘64 Mustang. He lovingly cared for that car, washed it and polished it and never parked it in the sun. I would catch him just sitting in it in the middle of the afternoon. I know for a fact that — difficult as it must have been — he even consummated his marriage in that car. A sensitive and quiet person, his car provided a place for him to be nurtured. In his car he could be alone even among the other cars on the highway, listening to his favorite music — usually Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

Sitting in his recliner smoking his pipe while he read the American Agriculturalist or the Farm Journal was a sacred experience for my father. All of us honored this religiously. When we didn’t, we’d get the "eye." When the "eye" didn’t work he’d employ other, more effective means. But while his chair provided a place for centering and calm, my father’s true sacred space encompassed the whole farm. He and my mother had begun building it a few years before I was born, buying adjoining parcels, reconfiguring fields and pastures, and carefully creating a pedigree-lineage of dairy cattle.

As hard times hit in the‘60s they took their toll on my father’s health. In the end, he gave his life for his land when his heart failed from the stress of caring for it. But the sacred space he created continued to bear fruit of a deeper level. Following his death, neighbor after neighbor appeared at our door with food and hands to help. My mother never asked, but they arrived with their own tractors and machinery to harvest the crops, tend the cows, and till the fields.

When we were forced to sell the farm, within the year, our loss became complete. Not only had we lost our father, we had lost our personal sacred places, too. There was some comfort in the fact that my mother sold the farm to one of those caring neighbors for less than market value, because he was a friend. Living on a farm gives one a unique sense of place. You can’t "just move." You are invested in the land and the community that comes with it.

Making a living close to the earth on the farm exposes one to a raw experience of gain and loss. As encounters with disease and death were not unusual, I developed a curious and somewhat detached perspective. Viruses in particular, intrigued me. They were incredibly versatile and adaptable. I was amazed that such minute life forms could be so insidious and pose such great threats to animal and human well-being. To me they seemed to survive for the sole purpose of replicating, consuming, and replicating, without being conscious of — or maybe concerned about — their affect on other life forms, without connection to the larger system of life that supported their existence. One such organism once wiped out all of our foundation stock (which had taken my parents years to develop) by scarring the tissue in the cows’ mammary systems so that they were unable to produce milk. The researchers from the university named it PPLO. All they could do was watch it slowly and thoughtlessly steal our livelihood. Then one day, it just stopped and was gone.

When I was about ten, my brother had an encounter with a virus common to the animals on our farm. I had never seen anything like it. It grew in concentric circles on the skin of his scalp, scarring the tissue as it grew larger and larger. My mother used to apply Phisohex lotion morning and night and I could see the worry in her face and eyes as she felt helpless to stem its growth. I remember that one day, we realized that it had stopped growing. Like the PPLO it just disappeared. But it left a scar about the size of a silver dollar on my brothers head. I was fascinated by that scar — though I couldn’t admit it aloud — because up-close it was strangely beautiful, almost perfectly round, made up of faint rings of ridged tissue, connected by radial lines. But, the virus had also altered the true nature of things. Hair follicles had been destroyed, and as one stepped back the view was a bit ugly and off-putting. It was a place that hair would never grow again and I knew it made my brother self-conscious.

Our farm was situated on the north side of a major highway. Traffic would speed past our barn at 55 miles an hour or faster. It created a serious hazard for anyone who needed to cross it. On the south side was a scrub-brush pasture that sloped down to the railroad tracks and the Mohawk River. On the day J.F.K. was shot, one of our cows was hit by a car as we crossed the herd from that pasture to the barnyard. (She gave more milk from that day forward; it gave us pause for thought.) Adjacent to the pasture on the east, lived my friend Deland, a skin-and-bones kid I’d known since third grade. I remember watching from the barn across the pasture as Deland and his brothers stood timidly on the south side of the road waiting for a break in the traffic. Then with a sudden burst they would scamper across it. I worried sometimes that the backdraft of one of the semis would just pick Deland up like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" and send him swirling through the air. Though Deland and his brothers came over to help with chores or special tasks like getting in the hay, I never met their father. I always tried to imagine what he looked like. I only remember visiting their home once and he wasn’t there.

One winter morning when I was in junior high, some of the water pipes in the barn were frozen because the back door had been left ajar. When we inspected it, we traced foot prints across the pasture down to the highway toward Deland’s house. When Deland and his brother came by, my father told them that it was better just to ask for milk if they needed it rather than steal it in the night. It was an expeditious, straightforward lesson for them and me; an approach I find works very well for me today.

A few years later, a group of us were playing basketball in the hayloft of the barn; Deland and his younger brother were among the group. At the end of the game the wallet of one of the boys was missing. He accused Deland’s brother, whom I defended staunchly. Even when the accuser brought in the police chief I swore to my parents that he was just being picked on because he was poor. It ended in a screaming match, I think mostly from my end. Later that day Deland’s brother offered to share some candy with us; that evening Deland returned the empty wallet. After that incident, Deland and his brother hazarded fewer adventures across Route #5. Gradually we grew apart. Sacred space cannot be profaned without cost.

On the other hand, new spaces emerge in importance, and we can make those places sacred, too. I lost the use of the hayloft shortly after my father died. But in my senior year of high school, I discovered another sacred place that lingers with me today. It was about a mile down a dirt road, across two fields, and up to the very edge of the woods. Sometimes the air was still, but more often there was a soft breeze blowing through the tall grass that sounded like the gentle surf as it kisses the sandy beach. There was also a cool, musky scent from the woods that wafted out, playing tag with the wind. This place was best in late summer when the brown stems from the mature grasses muted the lush green of the foliage. From there I could see for miles up and down the valley, watching the boats on the river, chugging against its current or floating downstream on its quiet, powerful force. Even now in my meditations I go there to find peace and nurturance.

Though I enjoy the excitement of the city, I often get the urge to go back to my place on the hillside next to the woods. I wonder if it would still provide that same sense of transport to the divine. There are times when I am headed east on I-90 that I am tempted to keep driving until I get there. When I go I’ll first visit my mom who is creating a new space for herself. When she sold the farm, she kept about seven acres up near the same hillside that was so important to me. Up there, next to a little stream, she is transforming an old carriage and wagon barn into a home. She and her husband are doing most of the work by themselves. They have been working on it for a couple of years and still have some way to go. But, the meticulous investment of themselves into the property gives it an aura of the sacred that I can almost see in the pictures she sends to me.

I’ll also drive past the place where my brother died about ten years ago. He fell asleep driving his car down Route #5 late one night. I believe he died in his sacred place. He and my father are buried in a well-manicured plot near maple trees that cast playful shadows on the ground as the wind rustles through their leaves, next to a field where the brown stems of the mature grasses mute the lush green of the foliage.

Jim Mueller has a Masters degree in Theology and is Vice President of Development & Public Affairs of the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics.

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