Space and atmosphere have always been a big thing for me…just something I always notice, I guess. A few years ago I picked up a book, a table in the desert (making space holy). I never actually made it further than page 5, so I don’t actually know what the book is specifically about, but just the title served as a launching pad of inspiration for me. It opens with a quote from Pope John Paul II, from his letter “Concerning Pilgrimages…”:
“The spatial dimension is no less decisive than the temporal in the concrete accomplishment of the mystery of the Incarnation. My meditation turns to the ‘places’ in which God has chosen to ‘pitch his tent’ among us. God is equally present in every corner of the earth, so that the whole world may by considered the ‘temple’ of God’s presence. Yet this does not take away from the fact that, just as time can be marked by kairoi, by special movements of grace, space too may by analogy bear the stamp of particular saving actions of God. This is an intuition present in all religions, that sacred times and sacred spaces are where the encounter with the divine may be experience more intensely than it would normally be in the vastness of the cosmos.”
So this begs the question: how do we define and decorate our spaces? Are they conducive to us being more aware of the direct presence of God around us? Do they draw us into his Story and constant work of restoration and new creation?
I try to surround myself with objects and symbols of this so that I am constantly being drawn in. I have live plants mixed with bones and shells in a conjunctive display: life springing forth from death; newness from the old. I like playing with light, and have found that a yellowish light seems to have a calming effect and give the idea of warmth, and since I hold youth meetings in the office and it often becomes a time for dialogue and discussion, I try to use lamps that give this effect and provide this sort of atmosphere.
I had the camera with me at the office today, and I was thinking about some of these things today as I messed around and took pictures of my office space:
I would be interested in hearing about or seeing images from your spaces and how you try to make them more conducive to ‘an encounter with the divine.’
