THE OCCUPATION OF SPACE
The beautiful spaces we crave may be ones we never see.
This is a theology of dwelling. It didn’t start out that way. It began by thoughtful and genuine comparison of my life as a nomad against those who nestle in for long seasons. There is wisdom, even revelation, in both. Neither are right or wrong but only so when we celebrate or neglect to see and experience fresh things.
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The training to see through matter. To view three-dimensional life form in a dark room on a lit screen is confounding to me—
Tiny blobs wedged between layers of bits and bone,
cloistered rooms we carry with us but rarely if ever see.
The body is the sacred interior.
Mysterious and breathtaking.
The housing of the soul.
It is home to us.
The one we long for.
The one we seek in this dimension.
The one we crave.
I have seen this interior more than too often. Who I am within is complex.
The spaces compel me to rearrange.
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I should have been paying more attention to the road.
Instead, I was trying desperately to put myself in the emotional place of one who has lived the better part of their entire lives in one dwelling, just to somehow understand.
My response is a visceral one. Like clawing out of a well or a grave.
What moment have I lived and not remember that has pulled me away from this anchoring?
Or, is this nomadic prompting an implanted thing?
I pull over and close my eyes,
trying to inhabit the soothing that one must feel at being surrounded daily
by smells
and odds and ends
and [here and there] the scuffed floors and peeling paint—
evidence of days lived, even if not greatly,
evidence of loved ones now aloft
that arrived
and grew
and became
within walls that still echo their names.
I breathe in both incomprehension and a foreign soothing that I imagine comes from being surrounded by spaces where past and present coexist, collide.
I wonder if there is even a slight longing to move on to something ‘fresh’
while being terrified that in the leaving
a part of us dies.
I have left more times than seems possible,
perhaps even more than someone of sound mind.
If you were to pull over
and give space between driving and destination
just long enough to allow yourself to feel the rhythm in my staying and then leaving
would it resonant somewhere within?
We hold on.
We let go.
The body teaches this in how it ages.
In me, how it falters.
How it falters and majestically heals.
Do we neglect to look inside the temple
to see what needs attending—
The dust in the corners.
The peeling paint.
The loose-hinged doors?
We decide, maybe even with a bit of misplaced pride,
that the details are unimportant
when measured against the big lives we lead.
Now,
again,
I close my eyes
and allow the movie reel of spaces
to play inside my head—
of homes neglected
that were nurtured under my attention and attending,
to spaces within me
that now benefit from this same care.
No matter where we live.
No matter the frequency of our navigations to new adventures ahead.
We take the temple with us.
We carry the One
who calls us his home.
May the obsession be not only with beauty for its own sake
[which may seem shallow but is inherent in the vast creation that is His]
but with the healing
not only of body,
but of soul.
The mastery is not only in the stewardship of space but of another divine trinity—body. mind. soul.
Are you occupying the space you dwell within in a way that dismisses and depletes, or attends to every healing detail?
Fear. Anger. Regret.
These are the enemies of healing spaces.
Perhaps beauty is what remains when these are no longer allowed
to occupy the room.
NOTES
Soul Map
The occupation of space—
of Jeeps
and heads
and homes
and souls.
People compliment the homes.
The gardens.
The rooms.
The architecture.
I wonder if beautiful spaces are ever really about the spaces at all.
Perhaps they are simply the visible evidence of what has healed within us.
REFLECTION
What occupies the space within you?
What has quietly taken up residence—
not simply passing through,
but making itself at home?
What rooms have you left unattended?
Which ones have become cluttered with fear, resentment,
UNBELIEF?
And which ones have quietly filled with hope, wonder, gratitude,
PEACE?
If someone were to walk through the unseen rooms of your life,
what would they discover?
Would they find evidence of careful stewardship?
Or merely the accumulation of living?
The spaces we inhabit eventually begin to resemble the things that occupy them.
The same is true of the soul.
You Are Here.
The first sanctuary you were ever given wasn’t a house.
It was you.
Attend to it gently.
You are not alone.
The beautiful environments you create are just a flex of the world you see—Jack
A response to "Please Don't Make Me."
Image: It may seem as though this is the same image from last week. It isn’t. It’s a unusual capture of something different. I love that my dear friend captured this moment that comes to me from time to time…when I’m writing and the words stop feeling like mine. Those are the ones I trust most. Sometimes I find that one sentence that makes me stop. Or maybe that’s when the sentence finds me. He is there. He reveals more of himself in every word.