GARDENS WITHIN
Your creative practices can be a distinct sanctuary, honest and bright
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Today’s letter is from the archive. It’s about holding sanctuary and being held by sanctuary.
This sounds very serious, but our personal practice and experiences of sanctuary also get to be playful, wondrous, emergent. I like to think of sanctuary—both physical and experiential—as a place to commune with mystery. A place where it’s ok to not know, to not try to figure it all out. Sometimes, it’s when you tap into flow and feel truly yourself.
Here’s an example from this week: I found myself laying my jewelry out on the bed to move it into a new jewelry box, a gift that would delight myself as a child and a gift to who I am becoming—it’s definitely a step up from current makeshift set up.
As I held jeweled earrings and draped necklaces that I made almost a decade ago on my white quilt (with Gilmore Girls in the background), I remembered how arranging, organizing, and interacting with beautiful objects was a main hobby as a kid. It was a time when I didn’t have to remember anything or complete anything or keep up with anything at all. Just me and beautiful, special objects that no one else had to appreciate. Being with my collections was and continues to be a kind of sanctuary.
Another one of my sanctuaries is my harvesting practice. As I share here, a harvesting practice gives you the time to remember your wisdom, craft the declarations you most want to remember, and synchronize with the rhythm of your own being. It is one powerful way to turn raw insight into tangible writing projects (and it’s great to do when you don’t feel like writing).
~ Interested in a digital guide that walks you through, step-by-step, how to have a harvesting practice? I made it for you ~
What is sanctuary to you?
Do you have a vision of a place that you return to as a regular practice?
Do you have a physical place that acts as a sanctuary?
So much of Regarding Dew is about practicing a return to the sacred garden of sanctuary, to tend to it, to listen, and to try to bring it forward with devotion.
I try to convey the qualities of this sacred place in what I make: warm, lush, and embracing.
And also, like a garden: forever in-process and with a certain expression of audacity.
If you are lucky enough to have an actual garden, then it's likely a sanctuary in your life. And if you have the advantage of owning a porch, a chair with a view and a spot in the sun might be this place for you. It might be the bath. The yoga mat. An altar to your ancestors. A writing desk. The blank canvas. Your hand on your belly with a silent exchange of apology and forgiveness.
Lingering conversations at the table, whether over waffles or red wine, are one of my favorite sanctuaries.
Your creative practices can be a distinct sanctuary, honest and bright.
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But really, having these letters in dialogue makes it all the more creative and fulfilling, and it helps this work reach more kindred spirits.
In writing about a sanctuary through a garden door, I am keeping the ‘door’ partially open to this piece so that you can get a sense of what they are like if you are a free subscriber. Please do let me know if you enjoy it, and consider upgrading if you do! Thank you for being here.
Now onto GARDENS WITHIN…
Sanctuary
Sanctus
Holy
The place, material or immaterial, that you tap into to remember, reclaim, and embody what feels sacred to you.
What is sacred might be gratitude so deep that you can feel it settle in your pelvic bowl.
What is sacred might be cherishing something so tenderly to the point where bliss and grief swirl.
What is sacred might be an unshakeable connection to something eternal or larger than the boundaries of your own drop in time.
Layers in the canyon. When a cat boops your nose. The ancient ebb and flow of your breath. A saint, ancestor, divine figure, or a love so enormous that it feels inexplicably holy.
It’s the moon in daylight. It’s a shared gaze as old as humanity toward the sky… the soil… a friend you haven’t seen in years.
It’s the pale yellow butterfly that stuns you into total presence.
It’s kids laughing on a playground.
It’s the smell of dinner after a long day.
It’s a core memory unlocked.
Sanctuary is suspension of time.
Sanctuary is synchronicity.
When sanctuary is immaterial, it becomes a place through becoming a practice.
It’s where you go to slow down and catch up with what you know. It’s the place where your thoughts remember your body and remembers that it is safe to be here. Sanctuary is where you get to meet yourself as you are, exactly as you are, and trust that every scar and uncertainty and unrealized dream and frustration and wish is exactly what makes you so utterly, dynamically, lovably human.
Maybe you call this place a refuge, a retreat from an intense world of interactions and obligations. It might garner associations of an oasis, a nutritive place for you to refill your cup and even feel held. It might be named as an altar or haven.
Your sanctuary might be the felt-image of a place that you return to often for respite. It might have the qualities of a nest within the ‘fertile void’ (Perls). It might feel embryonic in nature or as spacious as the cosmos, wherein emptiness dances (Adyashanti).
An inner forest might be your place, or maybe a beach, or a silent place at the bottom of the ocean just for you.
Mine is a walled garden. This is actually how I conceptualize Regarding Dew. Remembering, reclaiming, and embodying the sacred involves walking through the garden door that was once leaden. Every time, the door gets lighter and I remember that my practice is the practice of forgetting and returning.
Within those walls, I am surrounded by brilliance unfurling. The hues are dream-like and shifting. The chaos is elegant and punctuated. There’s luminosity within those walls that permeates everything, even as I try in futility to grasp it.
Because I struggle with my energy becoming diffuse and entangled with thoughts too large to hold—gliding from fossil fuels to hearing someone’s experience of not affording insulin to dehumanized arguments online to my great great grandmother’s unrealized gifts—the walls are necessary. But just as it is with walled gardens in the material world, the main function of the
walls is not for security. Instead of diffused energy, energy is distributed to support growth. A walled garden becomes a micro-climate. The stone walls capture heat from the sun and distribute it over time, creating the conditions for a thriving garden.
Sanctuaries are not about having a place to ‘reboot’ in order to continue business as usual.
Sanctuary is a practice of opening to new ways that feel more honest, attuned, and inspired than what we see in culture today.