Creating A Joy-filled Environment

Benedicamus Domino!

Over the thirty-three years I have lived in this world, I have come to the conclusion that the environment in which one lives and/or works has a lot to do with how one approaches life. I, for instance, tend to live in a rather chaotic environment, though this chaos is something which fuels the side of me which is creative and doesn't live in a box. I have tried and tried to become more organized and to create an orderly existence for myself, but I have failed miserably, simply because I don't think that this kind of almost-militaristic idea of order can work well with my personality or with my true and inner self. As a result, I have come to a compromise. I have decided to contain the chaos and to simplify it as much as I can. It's not about getting rid of it, but rather about accepting it and letting it be, while at the same time molding it into something which is more smoothly-flowing and less choppy. A river, after all, is always chaotic, whether it spills over rapids or flows easily through flats. The key here is to create an environment that both reflects who I am and also challenges me to be more than I am.

I know a woman who has bird-feeders in her yard, and who also has dishes of food for the neighbourhood cats. She feeds squirrels as well, and this is all in the name of creating a joy-filled environment for herself. She loves little birds, so she feeds them. She doesn't like to see cats go hungry or be lonely, so she feeds them and makes friends with them. She lets them be who they are, but she lets them know that they have a place to go if they want food. Me, I'm not minded to do this, though perhaps a bird-feeder might be a nice idea, for when I lived with this woman, I loved to hear all the birds descending upon the bushes and singing all together. It was a lovely thing in the midst of an urban landscape and it made morning really feel like morning in some fundamental way.

I know another woman who has fountains dotted hither and thither throughout her house, so that whenever she wants, she can hear the sound of running water and watch it falling. To her, this is soothing, and I can relate to this, for I do love a good fountain. Indeed, I have one on my desk and I use it sometimes when I write.

I have known many homes and offices in my time, and some have simply been places in which people lived or worked, but others have been dedicated spaces, spaces which have been conscientiously created as places of tranquility or of creativity or of true and homelike comfort. This is what I seek to make for myself wherever I am: a place that is mine, a place that is sacred and also practical, a place that is my place of power, to borrow a phrase popular in Pagan circles. The monastic has a cell: a little piece of Paradise where he or she can await God's illuminating presence with prayer and with awe. I must have something like this as well, and moreover, I must learn to carry its influence about with me.

I have always dreamed of a cabin in the woods. It is a dream and I know it, but when those dreams come to me, they are always calm and it is always new dawn in the cabin, and there are always birds twittering, and someone is stirring a pot of something on a fire, and when I taste it, it is the best oatmeal that I have ever tasted, and the woman who gives it to me--for it's always a woman with me in this place--is calm and careful, loving and wise. In short, she is the me that I want to be, and though she has been nameless till now, I have given her a name. She is why I'm doing all this. She is why I'm trying to find the centre, the source from which joy springs for me, because I'm not who I need to be, and it's time for all the dull and tarnished parts of me to be thrown off to make room for the full flowering of whatever my true self ultimately is, and the beginning of all this is with the physical space which I inhabit, and so long as I'm in this house, this means the room where I tend to do all my praying, writing and sleeping.

May God help this process, and may it herald a new way of life for this world-weary pilgrim who sorely needs regeneration!

Deo Gratias!