Home Sweet Sacred Home

I have spent the past 2 weeks in Northern California in WSFS teacher Karen Abler Carrasco’s home – a place I’ve visited before and have always loved. Karen lives in a wonderful vintage farmhouse she calls Rosie, who is like a “big mother hen protecting her chicks” (Karen’s son David’s description). Rosie is painted a soft buttery yellow with lovely red doors and lots of windows. Her garden is a series of outdoor rooms, offering shady and sunny places to enjoy the many flowers, vegetables, and trees Karen has planted, as well as the pond she and David built together. It is truly a Home Sweet Home. 

What exactly makes a home sweet? Here, I see the beauty Karen has sown into every inch of this place – the care and feeding of both house and garden is strikingly evident. The loving connection Karen and David have with Rosie and her verdant garden is obvious. They have connected heart to heart with this place, and in so doing, have made it a sacred space. I’ve come to realize that what makes a space sweet is our loving connection with it. When we love it, it becomes sacred.

Any place can be sacred. All it takes is tender loving care. I remember a student in our Practitioner Training who placed affirmational cards on the tables, walls, refrigerator and bathroom mirror of her tiny inner-city apartment to remind herself that she was living in her own self-created sacred space.This act of lovingly connecting with her home shifted her from seeing it as “just a crappy place to live for now” to “my home sweet home.” Even though it was far from perfect, she was able to love and cherish it as her sacred haven.

This shift in perception helps us see that all spaces are potentially sacred. When we give the back alley, garage, basement, or local park our tender loving attention, we are saying, “I love you and wish to help you to be the best and most beautiful you can be.” We shine our light into places that have become dark, cluttered, and unloved. We do our part in creating heavenly places that inspire and uplift us and those we share the space with.

I invite you to share with me the spaces you have made sacred with your tender loving care. Send me photos that I can share with our Essential Feng Shui community to keep the conversation and inspiration going. Though it manifests in myriad forms, indoors and out, you know it’s sacred space when love lives there.