They are hiding places, and celebration halls. Sometimes sacred spaces speak in soft voices, when we need to hear something in the quiet. Some nights, I put my sacred spaces in the CD player. Some nights I close my eyes and dream of windy northern bush lands, long sun-drenched stretches of road and empty beaches. Some nights I drive through the city, all ablaze with shining lights.
Sometimes the sacred spaces put skin on and come to find you.
I had spent the day harried and harassed, feeling every inch of my age and gravity. Questioning, doubting my instincts, and my provocations.
Thinking too big and wide for my own head to contain, so I felt myself cast out across the universe as if the one continuous stream of intersecting thoughts in my mind had exploded into impossibly small pieces hurtling through time and space.
So small that all my intelligence has been lost and I was scrambling to put some coherence back together. I was tired, a little worn out.
I got home at last and went online to find an email from a dear friend who I haven't seen much of lately - just brief, passing greetings as we compare notes on one another's Facebook updates and travel schedules. Those short moments are laboured with pre-text, our intention to be better at doing life together, of sharing stories that don't make it to the public profiles we live through.
Our reality is a sharp and shallow transaction far removed from what community could be.
But he sent me an email that acknowledged our absence from one another was somehow robbing us of the worth and beauty we gained from connected with each other.
With just a few words and a minute of time, he created a sacred space for me. Just a few moments worth, but enough to revitalise, re-energise and to bring back together some of the pieces of scattered self that have emerged in recent days.
A sacred space, much like what we celebrate at Easter, is just enough of a reminder of who we are, who we can be and how each of us fully alive calls out the sacredness in those around us.
It doesn't have to be much – a phone call, a photograph, an email, a message that says – even though we can't be together, I am present to you and the sacredness within.
I imagine that's much of what Resurrection Sunday's fish breakfast at the beach was all about. A reminder that though we are not at this moment faced with the living flesh of Jesus, He is still present to us, calling out the sacredness he sees. And that is home to me.
Tash McGill is a professional writer and communications consultant who has been involved in youth ministry for 15 years, working in local churches as a volunteer and bi-vocational youth pastor. She is passionate about adolescent development, community formation and hospitality.
Tash McGill's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/tash-mcgill.html