Some people find the sacred in buildings set aside for it -- churches and cathedrals, mosques and synagogues, temples and shrines.
Others feel it in things of beauty, or of deep meaning to them -- a musician in the sound of a symphony, an artist in her paints.
Others still find it in nature -- the deep green woods, the sweeping plains, the heights of the mountains.
That's me, nature girl that I am. And when I really need to renew, refresh, re-start, I head outside. And I wanted to celebrate this.
I've been thinking a lot about altars recently -- go ahead and read those links, I'll still be here when you get back -- and the two ideas came together Wednesday, as I hiked the woods of Evansburg Park here in Worcester.
The path I walked is a mile loop, long enough to lose myself for a while. And when the mood took me, when it felt right, I stopped to build an altar.
I built them under trees and on stumps, on cut branches and logs and stones.
I used what I found within arms' reach or a few steps, chose what caught my eye and lingered in my hands. Moss and stones and nuts and feathers, twigs and leaves and the earth itself.
I was drawn especially to the logs and cut stumps -- wanting, perhaps, to heal the scars left in the earth.
I don't know if any of them are still there. I suspect that some, at least, have already been carried off by the wind, or by opportunistic squirrels.
It doesn't matter. They're not there for posterity. It was the making of them that was important, not their permanence or the lack of it.
Where do you find the sacred? And do you build altars?
