Your sacred space, wrote Joseph Campbell, is where you can find yourself over and over again. Thomas Merton also reminded us that you don’t have to go to a mountain or a monastery to find your sacred space, any basement or attic, or room with a door can do.

In our world, a sacred space is an absolutely necessity for anyone seeking to  heal, think, be grounded, peaceful, or spiritual. We need to be alone sometimes in order to think, we need a place where the arguments can’t come in, where there are no notifications, no broken people on Facebook or Twitter.

It’s fine for people to love their devices, I love mine, but I know I need to be alone, in my sacred spaces, in order to grow, listen, understand myself.

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning (or on your tablet or smart phone), you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what you owe anybody,  you don’t know what anybody owes you to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation.

At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred space and use it, something eventually will happen.”

Maria is very familiar with the idea of the sacred space. Her studio is a sacred space, so is the woods, so are the donkeys.

My study is a sacred space, I do nothing there but write and think. So is the big barn, the sun peeking in through windows and boards, the smell of history and family. And my chair in a corner of the living room, where i retreat at the end of the day to think, read, listen to music.

In this season of rage, we owe it to ourselves to be alone and think for ourselves. Every time I express an opinion on my blog about politics – I try to do it rarely – I get these messages from people who are terrified that other people might think for themselves, it is literally frightening to them. They try to remind me who to hate and why I should  hate, and what he-said and she-said and he-did and she-did.

I love to think for myself. I don’t want the advice of other people. I don’t need to know who they love and who they hate, or why. It is not of my business, I have no interest in it. Sometimes I think the very idea of thinking is in peril, we are so quick to pin labels on ourselves and others and hate the people we don’t agree with.

How do we stay grounded in such a time of accusations, anger, fear, disrespect and cruelty?

For me, a sacred space is the answer, Joseph Campbell was wise to write that sacred spaces are essential – an absolute necessity – for anyone who wishes to think, be in peace, heal or put our own thoughts into our heads. And it’s true, you need not go anywhere. Sacred spaces are anywhere we feel safe and alone. Check it out.

I spend some of the sweetest times in my life in my sacred spaces, I always had them, even as a child. They have saved my life.