This morning I looked out the the large windows up towards the ridge from which the deer come to graze and in summer to eat the roses. How many places in my life sustain this commitment for me? Where did I connect to nature so intensely that it became a commitment and a contemplation of myself in it and it in me, then the flowing of the wholeness into the Limitless?
The first (and it remains with me, as all the sacred places do) was the lake in Minnesota (Lake of the Woods) where awareness opened my eyes. I can still feel the hillock of sand on which it seems now I sat for hours at a time contemplating the moods of the water and the mysteries of its depth. I am made of that.
The next is the prairie of far western Minnesota where I spent my early convent years with the wind, the wide sky, the wheat and barley fields, the river, the driving snow and wild flowers in spring.
The next truly sacred place came to be Brione's Wilderness Park in the East Bay of California. From my contemplative commitment within this place most of my books of spirituality came forth.
I dreamed of the house above Discovery Bay in Washington State before I ever saw it. I dreamed of the whales that swam up the bay one summer. It was a place I never wanted to leave. Today my heart aches and opens even to remember sitting on the driftwood at low tide and calling to the seal that rose and fell on the quiet waters.
But from there I came here and perhaps this ground will be my final ground--this place my most sacred threshold.
The first (and it remains with me, as all the sacred places do) was the lake in Minnesota (Lake of the Woods) where awareness opened my eyes. I can still feel the hillock of sand on which it seems now I sat for hours at a time contemplating the moods of the water and the mysteries of its depth. I am made of that.
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