thesoulpurposedotorg

We missed church today. We were expecting a “snow day” here in the Southern Tier. It was mostly sleet followed by gentle snow falling all day. My mother-in-law is here for two weeks – I’m not sure if she loves us or our house more. She is so excited to be in this space with us. This is a place of peace. We live in a house built into the side of a hill overlooking a stream and a forest. With the snow, it feels like a winter wonderland. Regardless of the time of year, this home exudes a sense of peace.
It wasn’t always that way in this space. The woman who built this home was hit by a drunk driver, living her last years in a coma in a far away institution less than two years later. The family who bought her home left signs of growing much marijuana (for medicinal purposes I am sure). The broken and dented doors we inherited leaves us believing there were anger management issues at the least. This room that is now my office showed signs of the “dark arts” that fascinated their son. The young couple who followed them to this place loved this house as a party house but the birth of their child made a house built into a hill with a spiral staircase in the middle a little less than practical. And so here we are.
We have made it a place of healing, prayer and retreat. People feel it when they walk in the door and look out huge sliding glass doors onto pine trees and a trickling creek. But it isn’t the house itself that makes this space healing and peaceful. It’s what we do in this space that changes a once sad and violent space into a place of peace.
I think that is usually the case. The holy and sacred places in this world became that because of what was done or not done in them. This earth itself looks like a beautiful blue ball brimming with joy and designed for peace when we see it from space. But what we do on this earth and to this earth makes this space in the universe either a place of peace or a place of destruction. Peace on Earth the angels sang. Indeed.