An Altar I Didn't Know I Needed

The entryway to our home has never been an important space. A space in which I’ve wanted to linger. A space into which I’ve wanted to welcome guests. It’s simply been a space through which to pass, multiple times, as we go about our daily rounds.

I am a person to whom space matters, and yet somehow transforming this small but central space escaped my attention. Until it didn’t.

As with most things, its transformation began with one thing. A photo of the logging road that we have been hiking faithfully ever since the pandemic. It began simply as a way to build our endurance, but over the course of walking that same path, witnessed by those same trees, it has become a kind of pilgrimage. A holy trek upon ground that will faithfully bear whatever we carry, and somehow lighten, and enlighten us in the process. Next came a drawing of Mt. Adams, the mountain in whose shadow we sit, and upon whose slopes we’ve climbed with people we love. Finally, a picture capturing the partnership Tom and I have somehow managed to build, despite our many flaws and foibles, over our thirty years of loving each other. A trip to Pottery Barn for inspiration yielded just the narrow table needed, at a floor model price. Shopping our home resulted in a small lamp to shed soft light, a glass candle holder first purchased for the weddings of a couple of daughters, acorns gathered as symbols of new life to come, a tiny vial of holy oil as we are all in need of healing, and art pieces made by loving hands.

The space was completed on January 19th.

On January 20th, as we headed out to the porch for our morning coffee in the dark, I lit the candle to remind us of the light that will shine in any darkness, no matter how black. In that moment, that transformed space became an altar.

An altar I didn’t know I needed. Until I did.

The altar is now the place upon which to set my prayers. All of them. A space upon which to lay down the burdens of my sadness and grief and pain and fear, leaving them in hands much greater than mine. It is also the space upon which I place my thanks, my faith in the Love that is greater than any evil, and my gratitude for the privilege of being alive. Right now. At this exact moment in our shared history.

All left at the altar, my heart has the space to take in all the beauty, wonder, joy, and love found in the world around and within me.

All left at the altar, I can better encounter the world with a willing heart, an open mind, a ready laugh, the tears that need to be shed, and hands ready to do what is mine to do. To actively work to create a world, and a country, that I want to inhabit.

All left at the altar, I can be present to who and what are before me. To, in the words of Diana Butler Bass, go out and Love relentlessly.

I didn’t know I needed an altar.

Until I did.

Maybe you might need one too.

(Written with gratitude to Katie M for helping me bring the altar into being.)

Climbing A Mountain Part 5: It All Adds Up

My pack weighed over 40 pounds. That’s a lot to muscle up a mountain, and every pound made every step harder. It slowed me down, which meant that it had the potential to slow everyone else down too. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one with a heavy pack, and we all worked together to find a pace that was sustainable for our long haul.

But every pound mattered. Even one or two less would have eased my burden, and that of my fellow hikers.

Back home unloading my pack, I weighed every single item. I wanted to know how much that which was essential weighed, all in service of lightening my load for the next adventure. I began to understand why backpackers cut the handles off of their toothbrushes. It all adds up.

When we moved from our last house over 15 years ago, we didn’t do much sorting and sifting and shucking. We just stuffed everything into boxes, shoved them into two rented storage units, and shut the door. We didn’t think about them again until a couple of years later when we were ready to move into our new home. In the interim, as our house was being built, we housesat. Living like nomads, we brought only what was absolutely essential. At each new house I would set our two favorite coffee mugs on the kitchen counter, along with our French Press, and a photo of our family. And with that, while the house may not have been ours, we were home.

When it finally came time to unload the storage units so that we could load everything into moving trucks so that we could unload everything at our new home so that we could load everything back into our new garage, I took mental stock of the process. As the storage unit doors opened up I was tempted to simply hold an epic estate sale and leave it all behind.

Thankfully, we didn’t, as there were many things worth keeping. And truthfully, there were many things that weren’t. What we hang onto can all too easily become a burden. Be it possessions, wounds, habits, old stories, beliefs, or ways of being, it all adds up.

We all carry an invisible pack on our back. What is essential to an authentic and wholehearted life, and what is not. That which served us in the past may not serve us now, or perhaps never has. Every day is an opportunity to lighten our load, readying us for the adventures still to come, and equipping us to climb the mountains that will inevitably appear on our horizon.

The longer I live the more I am inspired to travel light. Maybe I’ll start by cutting the handle off of that toothbrush.

Unloading The Wheelbarrow

It is easy to treat our mind like a mental wheelbarrow. One that we fill to the brim with issues, and our thoughts and feelings about those issues, all of which require precious mental and emotional energy as we carry them with us wherever we go. Rather than taking the time to actually do something about the contents of the wheelbarrow, we just keep wheeling them through our days.

If you’re like me, almost anything is fair game to pile into the cart. On any given day my cart might be piled high with relationship issues, conversations past, present and future, financial concerns, heartaches, challenges to those we love, health issues, politics, global warming, aging skin, unfinished projects, the NFL Playoffs, and the holidays. Just to name a few.

One of the best practices we can develop is to lighten our own mental load. To stop pushing the wheelbarrow, take out one thing, and deal with it. Find out about it. Understand the truth about it, and with that understanding do what we can to take care of it.

To lighten your mental load, what is one thing you can take out of your wheelbarrow?

Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels

Lighten Up

It’s finally here. The last day of the year.

This is the day for one last glance over our shoulder, taking note of what we’ve accomplished and experienced, how we’ve grown and what we’ve discovered, what we’ve contributed and what we’ve been given.

This is also the day to leave behind what we don’t want to carry with us into 2019. We get so used to carrying what we carry that we just drag it along with us, never counting the cost.

Let’s not do that.

The new year is beckons, and there’s no room for excess baggage.