An Island in the Stream

Beyond the garden and below the spot where the cow pasture crossed the stream, where the stream banks were totally broken down by the cows and it was muddy all around, hidden among the willows growing out from the stream banks was a small unassuming island. This tiny plot of land was just barely an island. Most of the stream flowed along one side, but enough of a rivulet - more than a rivulet - flowed along on the other side that it could accurately be identified as an island. One hot summer, my friend and I lived a children's fantasy on that little piece of ground.


On our island grew small willow trees and a mass of undergrowth, brushy and hard to scramble through, and in the middle was a small open area. Working our way outward from this bit of open space, we brought into being a home. There we "played house." And yet, what we did together was much more than playing. We created - not out of nothing, but out of something - out of the earth and the grasses and the trees and the bushes and the spaces between the trees and the fallen logs, and out of our imagination - we created a sanctuary. We created a place of safety and security. A place where all is just as one imagines it. A place without pain or embarrassment or self-consciousness or judgement or rejection. A place where our souls could sing and our hearts could dance and we could be and do just as we wanted.

I would always choose to be the person running

rather than the mob chasing
I would prefer to be the person laughed at
rather than the teenagers laughing
I always admired the men and women who sat down
for their rights
And held in disdain the men and women who spat
on them
Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are
safe
Art offers Sanctuary to everyone willing
to open their hearts as well as their eyes

                                 --Art Sanctuary, by Nikki Giovanni


Let them make for Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. (Ex. 25:8)

Hazel Brook

I walked today through Hazel Brook Reservation, a property of the Sudbury Valley Trustees. It was an unseasonably warm and sunny February day. I walked briskly, wanting and needing to exercise my body, to help it strengthen and heal. But when I reached the brook - something more than a rivulet - the sight and the sound of the water stopped me.  


Below the bridge the banks of the brook were broken and the trail was muddy from the hooves of horses traversing the it. Above the bridge, the water tumbled down a small hillside and over moss-covered rocks that provided a touch of green against the brown and grey of winter. 


I stood at first on the wooden footbridge, then sat down on it, listening, meditating, praying. The noise from traffic was muffled and distant. More present was the babbling of the brook.


Sanctuary. I sat in the midst of the art of the Creator, and I felt safe. My eyes and my heart began to open, and only then did I see the first skunk cabbages of the spring, just the tips, pushing upward through the dry leaves.