Finding Sanctuary – Monastic steps for everyday life

• Before you can offer sanctuary you have to find it.
• We have to learn how to build a sanctuary in the midst of everyday life’s business
• Stillness and silence is often truly foreign to us and not welcome
• The consumerist lifestyle forces people to work too hard in order to fulfill their consumer ambitions but you are a free person and can choose how busy you want to be
• Being busy and producing and consuming can be a substitute for facing the deeper realities of life. Rather than look into your own soul it is easier to simply keep busy
• You have to create a space for yourself beyond this world, a holy place, sacred, place of refuge
• Finding the sacred space begins with the recognition of the sacred in your everyday living
• If you want to find the sacred place in your life you have to walk without blemish. Of course you will fail but failing is better than not even trying.
• The door to the sanctuary is virtue. The ordinary decencies of human life are crucial to the spiritual search

The elements of the sanctuary:

1 SILENCE - The floor underlying the whole sanctuary is silence

• The wrong kind of noise disturbs us and the right kind helps us. Challenge is to find
positive silence in the city, find positive silence inside yourself
• Physical silence is a great help in fostering inner silence
• To be truly silent takes time to achieve
• Be silent and listen
• In silence one has to deal with your ‘demons’
• Good for children’s spiritual health to teach them the value of being still and silent
• Because of our turbulent lives the one who lives in the midst of activity does not see
his sins. When quiet he sees the real state of things
• To know yourself and to grow requires the insights that only solitude can provide
• Silence is the under carpet because the challenge of the noise in the head remains

www.sacredspace.ie

2 MEDITATION - The carpet of the sanctuary is meditiation, prayer and contemplation
Meditation helps to create silence – is the carpet that we lie upon in order to find rest for our souls wounded by the busy world

We need self-conscious techniques to raise the heart and mind to God
To pray is to address God as a familiar friend rather than to think about him
Prayer can include silence, anguish, ritual and recitation
Pray constantly in order to have a pure heart and be reminded that God is in our midst, see him everywhere. Thus the mind is turned to God in the midst of the noise and complex mental activity

Meditation :
To repeat a phrase (mantra)
Slow, thoughtful reading of sacred texts, reading with the conviction that God is addressing you through this text, God is speaking to the reader as you, reading as an act of salvation, not for information – keeps distracting thoughts at bay. See text as a gift to be received. Read slowly, repeat, pray that God will speak to you through the text. Deep entry into the meaning of the text. Sit as if preparing to hear something important

Contemplation :
When God alone is at work and we are passive receivers of His presence.
We meditate to be ready to receive what God is offering which is comtemplation

www.centeringprayer.com – contemplative prayer

3 OBEDIENT FREEDOM – the walls of the sanctuary – be true to God and yourself

• Do not assert your own desires and ambitions
• Choose to attach yourself to the life of others in relationship or community
• Reach to other people for support
• Pray for your own discovery – your agenda is set by God. To find this agenda is the work of a lifetime, when you find it you find your true self. To do it you must stay in the sanctuary
• I must know what I am choosing to obey
• Choose things that open up future possibilities, not enslave

4 HUMILITY – the roof of the sanctuary

• Humility is a tradition that enriches our lives
• To be humble is to be down to earth – realistic, honest, truthful
• Humility is about our struggle to be fully human and rooted in the real earthly self and not be deceived by the divine self
• Someone with humility must have learned to handle their own emotions and how to touch the goodwill of other people in order to help build greatness
• Steps to humility:
1. Fear of God
2. Learn to contain my desires
3. Experience the reality of other people’s needs
4. Submit to superior authority
5. Embrace suffering
6. Radical self-honesty
7. Contentment even with the lowest or if status is taken away, live fruitfully and happily still
8. Inner conviction of relative value of self
9. Obeys common rule
10. Restriction of speech – avoid complaining, grumbling, gossiping
11. Integrity – inner and outer person are one
12. Constant mindfulness of own sinfulness and God’s mercy and love – thankfulness

5 COMMUNITY - the windows of the sanctuary
• People are connected to their own story not anybody else’s – I am my own sanctuary – loss of community
• Stay with one stable community – spiritual growth
• Conversation is necessary for community to be real – deep conversation is essential part of spiritual living
• Good speaking = good listening, restraint of speech
• Persevere in community life
• High levels of good meaningful conversation
• Relationships founded on fairness and respect
• All be peacemakers
• Protect the community
• Community fosters the experience of obedience, silence, humility thorough its very structure
• Rituals are part of community
• Rich and poor to be alike

www.laybenedictines.org
www.thesoulgym.org

6 SPIRITUALITY the roof of the sanctuary

• Spirituality (interior and personal) is not the same as observances of religion (external)
• Spirituality strays when it is self-regarding and self referential
• Christian faith offers a vision of being fully human which involves all aspects o life
• There is no one way to pray and no single path to spiritual growth

www.anamchara.com – Christian mysticism
The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris

7. HOPE – the altar of the sanctuary
• The ability to die well is seriously underrated in western society
• Dying well means leaving a parting gift
• Remember your mortality so that you can live with a sense of the urgency and goodness of life now.
• Foster constant awareness of the presence of God, in death we will have the blessing of knowing the presence of God continuously. Death is the ultimate encounter with God.
• Live with great mindfulness and great purity of heart
• Modern person so busy in self absorbed activity, death is the final hopeless denial of everything that has filled his life
• Altar is for making offerings to God, even offering life itself to God
• When anybody finds sanctuary they will also find an altar of sacrifice
• It is about asking for God’s blessing and living out the vocation to love others in a way that is unique to each of us.
• SO at the heart of the sanctuary we build an altar in order to give and receive the sacrifice of love, which is at the heart of true religion

8 RELIGION a vital part of the sanctuary

• The key spiritual resource that religion offers is hope
• The future of humanity lies in the hands of those able to pass on to future generations reasons for living and hoping

You can find tranquility in private but cannot find peace there. In the end, we find sanctuary in God, he is our natural sanctuary

- Christopher Jamison -