a place on earth where someone found the path in; they show everyone that “It happened here. I found God here.” It may be a garden, it may be statue, it may be a cross by the side of the road; whatever it is, it offers us hope.
We all need a place outside of us that images our inner heart. We need to create places that sign for us to go within—NOW. We need spaces that are caves of the heart. We do not need to wait for them. We have them now. They are this moment. They are this place. We need to learn how to feel confident enough to sanctify this moment in time and this place in space.
There is a need to show everyone that holy occurrences happen in space and time. There is a need to show ourselves. We mark them to help us remember that time and space were altered by a meeting and wrestling with God; that we were changed in a meeting and wrestling with God. We mark them to remind us that union is possible. Cairns at holy places scream out, “Someone opened up to God here. You can, too.” Our hearts groan with this longing intent. Our lives clamber toward this hope of meeting.
The landscape all around a cairn—all around a heart—is changed by the Presence of meeting and wrestling with God. Moses’ face shone with the Glory of the LORD. People were healed in the Presence of Jesus. We are born-again when we engage God.
Sometimes the words we share in this discussion will feel forced or just a bit beyond comprehension. What we are trying to work with here in this text is the notion that all space and time come to bear on this moment and this place. We can unite with God here and now. That takes bringing together both the local and the non-local. Of course this will be tough. We will have to sustain the power of juxtaposed positions and images. Bear with it. Treat it as poetry and let the words roll over you, creating an impression that is itself the meaning.
***
When we are talking about caves, chapels, cells, prayer rooms, and cairns we are talking about sacred space, “walled off” or “set aside areas.” They are markers in space and time. These are sometimes called “hermetic spaces.”
Hermes shows up over and over again in these types of discussions because of his birth in a cave and his re-swaddling of himself as an infant (after he stole his brother’s cattle). The cave and swaddling are walled-in notions. It is that sense of seclusion (cave-like) and surrounded-ness (swaddled-ness) that keeps Hermes name close to these settings. He is seen as the “god” of the interior and interior quest.
The heart is an Hermetic space. It is the interior place for meeting and wrestling with God. The heart is a walled garden, a cave fed by an underground spring, a hollow in the side of a rock, and the shade of a sheltering pine. Set apart, it is Holy unto the LORD. It is a comfort object from before all time.
***
Hatefulness tends to produce hatefulness, love tends to produce love, and humility tends to produce humility. How can we transform the places we go to for prayer? How can we transform the inner chapel of our hearts—change them to reflect the Glory of the One? How can we mark the landscape of our lives with the wrestling encounters we have with the Uncircumscribable One from all ages? How may we discern the meaning of the landscape?
My hope is that we will begin to look at the markers of meaning in our lives and notice how we store that meaning in our heart. My hope is that we will begin to see that heart as a multi-dimensional universe within us that is truly already the Divine Milieu. That we will begin to use the meaning all around us to wake up to what IS.
My pragmatic desire is that we will look at places we set aside as holy. We will reconstruct our prayer life and the shape of our interior world. We will recognize the impact things have on us and discriminate toward health. In addition, that ultimately we will WAKE UP to the presence of God in us.
Our journey in this book will be more like an amble or a wandering. We will hop from pillar to post looking for meaning and attempting to infuse things with meaning. We will look at our practices and the practices of those from our shared human past. We will begin to notice that there is a hidden depth to how we live—one that reveals we live in layers or dimensions, not simple and flat lines.
Whether the spaces of prayer are inside or outside they reveal and transform who we are and who we are becoming. Join me as we amble among the markers and choose to transform space and time by hallowing our prayer closet within. The prayer closet of our heart.
Let us find the things that we have left as markers all through our lives and those markers that have been left by others in the life of the Church. Let us learn to read what they have to tell us about where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Let us become changed into the very image and likeness of the One who has called us from the beginning of time and space. Let us also leave holy markers for all who come after.
Chapter One
Watering the gardens at the beginning and the end of the day has been an activity that has peppered my life from youth. It is relaxing. It also feeds me in ways other activities do not. It has been a cairn in my life since childhood. It has been a sacramental landscape for meeting God. It has taken me into my heart.
When I am about the task of watering gardens, I am reaching back into my life and doing something that is self-soothing and connective. It integrates the disparate pieces of my life. It is wholesome for me.
My life is a train of stories of watering gardens. I can remember watering gardens as far back as elementary school. In all of that practice, I have learned to be in God’s Presence as I water. The magnitude of repetition over the years has been a force capable of establishing union with God through this simple act.
Some years I take to watering much more regularly than other years. It has partly to do with the gardens I plant and the needs they have for water-flow. It is also connected to the fact that some years are naturally wetter than others and require less garden tending from me—“the waterer.” Sometimes I simply water because I need to: it is good therapy.
However often I water, I am reminded of the tending that needs to accompany all forms of life and growth. I am reminded how I am tended by the “Gardener of Souls.” Watering helps me conform to His image and likeness. Watering nourishes my heart-space. Watering is an activity that sacramentally transforms my life—when I am attentive to the process.
One particular season had called me to the task of watering more often than in years past. That year I learned to love the routine for its calming affect in a new way: the sound of water, the greenery, and the repetition of a simple task. It soothed me and gave me peace. I learned a lot from the regularity of the task that year. I learned from mindfully practicing the art of watering.
***
Stone Cairns
I have piled stones,
one on top of another,
for decades now.
Fingers
slipping over rough
granite -
my heart
is settled in
simple tasks.
I have piled
stones of habit
over the days
of my journey.
Praying
