Saturday, June 1, 2013

If I Call It A Church Can I Get A Tax Break?

Slow-moving around here in Lloyd today. I slept until almost nine which is absolutely unheard of. That room we're sleeping in is like a cave and I doubt you could get us to move back to our old room for anything. I had always despaired of the way that room gets so little light but finally after living here for nine years, I understand the appeal of a cave-like room to sleep in. I look at the bedrooms in photos of the mansions of celebrities and I can't even imagine sleeping in one of those rooms the size of football fields. There's no way to make them cozy. Go ahead, put a full-sized sofa at the foot of the bed, fill up that gargantuan space with seating areas and collections of antique whatevers, hang a damn chandelier over the bed and you'd still feel like you were sleeping in a gym. No thanks. I like my little cave. Here's what I see when I wake up and peek through the curtains.


That just makes me happy.
If for some bizarre reason I HAD to live in a mansion, I'd probably have to find a gardening shed out back to sleep in. 
I wonder what sort of circumstances would arise in order to force me to live in a mansion. Well, whatever, I hope they never happen. I am so happy here. 
There's a little article in the paper today about creating a "sacred space" and it's all about bowls of water and pebbles and prayers and sitting and "holding the place sacred" and blah-di-blah-di-blah but what it made me realize is that I want my entire house to be a sacred space. If I am a householder yogi, which I guess I must be (is that the same thing as being a housewife?) then is not the place where I live my life my church, my place of practice? 
I think so. 
Chop wood, haul water, etc. 

The first sacred spaces were of course outside. I think they still are. Groves and waterfalls and beaches, prairies and mountains. Can there be a temple or a cathedral which draws the spirit up to the heavens better than a forest? Can there be anything anywhere which humbles us with such direct evidence of the vastness of the universe more than an ocean and the sky? But you know, humans seem to have some need to build structures to demonstrate faith. I understand that. In my opinion, the Mayans got that shit down and did it right. 


Tulum

I remember once being talked into going to some Universal Unitarian Church or something like that and it was fine. It was nice. There were people there showing a slideshow of their work with some indigenous peoples somewhere and there was music and while all of this was going on a wicked beautiful storm came up and there was a wall of windows behind the place where all the stuff was going on and the rain was lashing and the trees were bowing and swaying and the lightening was crashing and thunder was pounding and I wanted to stand up and say, "Excuse me. Could we just all shut up and stop ignoring what's going on here right outside those windows because that's some holy shit right there, now?"
Of course I did not but I'd rather be on my porch watching the storms come in or smelling the magnolias or watching, as I have been this morning, parent birds feeding their young'uns at the feeder, passing seeds from their beaks to the babes'.

I love that in my house the outside is not that much delineated from the inside. 




I love that in my house there are places everywhere which to me are sacred, although perhaps not to anyone else and my bathroom with its beautiful tub and my mermaids and my madonnas is as holy a place as anything I can imagine, especially when my grandsons are in the tub, the light shining through the windows, a sacred space for sure to me. Owen likes me to let the water keep running and he calls it the waterfall. 
He's on to something there.

So yes, my bedroom is a sacred space, even if though it's not really tricked out like a bedroom with the exception of the bed but that's okay. I'm working on it. Slowly. Well, to be honest, I'll get around to it eventually. Right now that room is where we do nothing but read and sleep and fool around and a cave is perfect for those activities if one has a nice light beside the bed for the reading part. And yes, I do change diapers on that bed and yes, Owen does call it the "diaper room" and yes, I do try to get the boys down for a nap in there (usually unsuccessfully, as applies to Owen) but those are holy activities as well. To me, anyway. And when they leave to go home, it reverts back to the Panther Room, the cave where we sleep and dream and love and read and that's my form of religious practice, I guess. 

All of those and cutting up and eating holy mangoes and making bread which I do not have to pretend turns into the body of Christ (ick!) when I swallow it for it to be consecrated and the miracle of turning on the tap and having pure, clean water pour forth. And sweeping the floors of the kitchen and the hallway, the Holy Hallway where when I am so lucky to have musicians playing in the house the acoustics are perfect. 

Yeah. I got your sacred space, baby. And I live my life in it. I don't feel the need to set aside any specific areas to worship in and maybe I'm just coming up with one more rationalization for staying home and being here in this house, in this yard, in this place where the lines between those two are blurry, often only a screen to separate me from the great good trees, the chickens who roam and peck and scratch and cluck, the birds mating and then feeding their young, the garden where we grow some of our food, the squirrels who race and skitter and sometimes fall in the sort-of pond where the frogs croak and the skinks and lizards sun themselves. 

Well, if that's what I'm doing, so be it. I am happy here in my old house and my prayers and my worship are my life and this, this writing is my song and my sermon, and now it's time for me to shut up and move on to the next thing in this beautiful day where I have nothing at all I have to do which makes it a Sabbath even if it's a Saturday, and I promise to keep it holy, and sometimes that may involve the sacred and sometimes that may involve the profane but here at the Church of the Batshit Crazy, as long as there's some love and some light the lines get a little blurred there too and I'm not qualified or sanctified to draw them anyway and am perfectly content and comfortable rambling around in both.

Much love...Ms. Moon






10 comments:

  1. It is a beautiful sacred house and you are its yogi and we all come here and are spiritually nourished so yes I think you should get a tax break. Good morning Mary Moon.

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  2. Well, here's a sermon from the Church of the Batshit Crazy, and it's a particularly beautiful one. When I was a Catholic, you could get church over with by going on Saturday night. I'm hoping, here, that there'll be another one like this tomorrow when I come to this sacred spot for inspiration.

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  3. That storm story at the UU sums up so much of what is wrong with church and why I don't go to it anymore. I love seeing pictures of your house, and your view, your mermaids and Madonnas, which make me think of that Tori Amos song, Marys of the Sea. And maybe eventually it will be enough to inspire me to make sacred spaces in my own home.

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  4. Angella- I know that you, like me, love the cozy spaces, the spaces where light comes in and illuminates a few certain things. I know that your home is your heart because that's where you live with your family and I know that you live in love.

    Elizabeth- One never knows. You could come back tomorrow (and oh, I hope you always want to) and find that I've written about side boob again. Because you know me- I find breasts endlessly fascinating.

    Ms. V- I'm willing to bet the ranch that your home is as sacred as any other. Every space a holy one.

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  5. This is a nice post. Talking of sacred spaces outside we once wanted to buy an ancient wood here in England that had a ring of very old holly trees in it. This would have been sacred at one time although not within the lifespan of the hollies. Yet the trees were deep in the wood on a hillside. I have often puzzled about it.

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  6. My husband and i often go on Sunday morning hikes in the summertime, either at places along the Oregon coast, or in the hills around Portland. And i said to him one of these times.. who the hell wants to be in church on a day like this when he/she could be out here enjoying the gifts of the Universe? He didn't have a clue. lol

    I love your morning view. You live in a beautiful place!

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  7. Jenny Woolf- I know that sometimes trees do grow in a circle, perhaps from the roots of an ancient one. Could that be it? I wish I could see it.

    Mary- Amen. I think humankind lost a big chunk of sanity and the sacred when it moved its worship indoors.

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  8. I love your house, too. And you, my dear. You make that house, you know.

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  9. Now THAT is a sacred space I can appreciate. Thanks for helping me experience it from a distance. :)

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  10. You have made many places sacred just by being in them. My boat is pretty sacred to me. It is in face the sanctuary that is sustaining.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.