When I was little I sat in church pews with my legs dangling, my tights sticking to my knees and dresses fluffed out around me. I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and church was part of the fabric of that town. You lived there, you went. You became a part of the church. It was not always a place of exact shared beliefs, maybe, but it was a place of community, divine prayer, singing, Bible stories, laughing, friends in joyful celebration, shuddering shoulders of the bereaved, long-robed pastors and candles. It was the place where I got to hear both my Mom and Dad sing, my Mom in her high, airy voice and my Dad in his rich, deep tones. The hymnal pages smelled like holy paper, and the cookies and apple juice afterwards were the very best thing in the world. People held hands and baked pies and casseroles and played love on the guitar and rose together in forgiveness “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”. Church was comfort. Church was sanctuary. For awhile. Then as I grew up my definition of sanctuary changed.
I do not debate religion. I have strong beliefs, and what I consider the Divine is mine and mine alone. Partaking in the spiritual rite and believing what is felt and known in the heart is an un-judged gift (unless your belief system involves terror upon others, then I judge you, amen). That is the gift of free choice and free thinking. Sanctuary, for me, evolved into a beautiful, loving, family and a strong network of people full of the divine, no matter what they do on Sundays. They love each other, help each other, bring the pies and casseroles and hold the shuddering shoulders and cradle the babies and scoot the monsters out from under the bed. Prayers come from yoga mats, from churches, from meetings in basements, from around the dinner table, from lonely hearts, sitting quietly in nature.
When my life was uprooted- oh wait- what happened? Anyone? Oh that’s right I had to move to Georgia (how hard are your eyes rolling now?). It’s just a move. Everyone, everywhere, in the world moves. Some are forced out in the most terrifying circumstances- pushed to unsurvivable limits (please, may they find sanctuary, please). I simply packed some boxes, loaded my family into a shiny new SUV and drove, unpacked these boxes into a lovely home (with a swimming pool) and a refrigerator full of food and hope and comfy beds and great schools and a providing spouse and boom- how hard is that??? It shouldn’t be that hard. It is laughably simple. I am not a refugee. We are not refugees. I am a stay-at-home mom. A privileged one. (Thank you, universe.)
But I’m angry.
My sanctuary is gone (or maybe really far away), and I’m running around here in a deep, fucking spooky forest full of palmetto bugs with my eyes closed, and I can’t find one damn piece of sanctuary. The wine bottle is not my safe place, that had to be put away, and the blog is maybe becoming a cliche and the kids are feeling Mommy’s wavering hope in this place and Jay is working too hard and I’m starting to run down deep into the tunnel. Tunnels lead underground, to rabbit holes. And rabbit holes are not pretty. They are full of so many ugly roots and dense heaps of black, dank earth, where the “undoing” happens. The undoing of everything you knew about yourself and what you could withstand (or pretend to withstand), who you so saucily thought you might have been, what you hold dear and true. Rabbit holes are not protection, they are not sanctuary. They are simply where a person must reside while they come undone, piece by piece, layer after layer, pain after pain. Shedding the snakeskin, crying out in anguish, tossing aside the trash- never burying anything, all of it stays there for you to see, to contemplate. Until the quiet becomes too much and you shut your eyes so very tightly because when you do that, you can hear a few tiny, distant trumpet notes from the cavalry. It might take a month, a year, several years, but eventually you find a twisted root and grab on, tightly, like how you hold onto a lover, and you pull up, you pull up, up, up and your feet start to kick off the rotten earth and your dirty shoes fall off as you rise and you start to squeeze through the opening of that rabbit hole. First into the black of night with Orion standing guard o’er the rabbit hole- arrow aimed toward the sun on the other side of the Earth, pointing you onwards. Keep pulling, kiddo, keep pulling up. And as you rise, you howl at the moon with a giant exhale because you have been holding your breath just as you held vigil for your trash down there. Your hair is wild and dirty and upended roots are tangled in it. Up you go, praying to your divinity, your body unimportant and so much lighter, it’s just a vessel for your soul. You go until you are lifted fully off the ground to give that rabbit hole one final over-the-shoulder look, and then you place yourself softly back down, barefoot onto velvet leaves and the warmth of the rising sun is there. You can feel it on your cheeks. The undoing is done and you have never wanted to run so fast and so free in your life.
Because you know what living without sanctuary is. It’s been felt. Acknowledged. Thank you for teaching me that. My feet are here now, my eyes are closed for the running, and I see everything I ever needed to see about myself.
Amen.