The Power of Sanctuary

Making room for the Artisan

There’s a thread running through many of the conversations I’m having at the moment. It’s often implied rather than understood, submerged rather than stated, but still very evident.

It gets dismissed lightly as “busyness”, as though it’s similar to a cold - a temporary nuisance that will pass. Take a mindfulness pill, or book a two-minute breathing exercise on your Apple watch, and then get back to work.

It is no respecter of age or experience as far as I can see. My grandchildren doing homework instead of playing are as susceptible to it as my children and their friends in serious jobs, and as I am, who have precious little excuse at all.

The challenge for all of us, I suggest, is not managing the workloads - real or imaginary - that we have.

The challenge is not what we’re doing. It’s understanding how what we’re doing is getting in the way of what we could be doing.

When I see bright, creative, generous people with real insights and compassion, who have messages to impart that matter, not doing so because they don’t have the time, I am alarmed.

However busy, there is more busyness waiting to fill in any emerging gaps as we work to the rhythm of the clock from a lifetime of habit.

We need Sanctuary.

Although the word "sanctuary" is often traced back only as far as the Greek and Roman empires, the concept itself has likely been part of human cultures for thousands of years. The idea that persecuted persons should be given a place of refuge is ancient, perhaps even primordial, deriving itself from basic features of human altruism. Wikipedia.

Not so much for protection, we need it in order to give what is in us that needs to emerge space to breathe, to befriend it, and come to terms with what it is asking of us.

Sanctuary, today, is in the company we keep. Time with those who will provide that space to allow the heretic in us to speak and be heard, without judgement or advice. Because there is an enormous difference between thinking something and saying it out loud in the presence of others.

Sanctuary
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Dorothy Parker