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An Altar in My Home

8/26/2010

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As a spiritual director, I have often read about people creating altars in their homes and felt a little goofy for not having one myself -- maybe an area that contains a table, covered, holding a candle and spiritual reading materials. Then this morning, I realized that I do have an altar in my home.  

My altar is something that I appears as a jumble of things. It is a tall bookshelf with eighteen cubbies standing in the middle of the interior wall of my living room. The center horizontal board is thick, thus there are nine cubicles over nine more, and I have thought it symbolizes the spiritual and earthly realms of my life.

I am familiar with the feng shui schema, where there is a tic-tac-toe grid separating nine spaces from one another signifying abundance, fame, and romance, across the top three; family, unity, and creative offspring across the mid-section; and self-knowledge, the journey and friends and travel along the base. So I have noticed what statue or books or framed photographs I have placed in each one and sometimes I have intentionally put an object in a specific cubby.

This is the stuff that I bring to God in prayer. Now I pause with one, the one in the abundance sector of the spiritual realm. I believe it is something my mother gave me once when she was cleaning things out of her home, but where she got it, I don't know. It is a wooden container, rosey, carved, a little insect eaten, with a lid. Inside, I find two books of matches I had forgotten about. 

I will replace it on the shelf, this time with the lid open, praying that God’s desires for me, this day, be realized.
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