You're Invited into the Shrine of the Real
If you feel like resting your eyes, you can listen instead of read...
There is an old, red-roofed chapel on a backroad in a valley, one ridge away from the edge of the world.
Built in 1908 as part of an Army base, for almost 70 years it was a place for soldiers to pause and pray while they faced wave after wave of chaos. When the base was finally decommissioned, its gorgeous coastal land became a national park. And the chapel? Well, it continued as place of welcome for years, becoming the visitor center — an entry point and orientation site for the threshold between urban fervor and the wild open of the sea.
Age took its toll; the chapel isn’t used anymore. It’s locked and easily overlooked. But recently, two friends of mine caught sight of the red steeple when they were looking for a place to elope. They pulled off the road, found its still, soothing presence. And those front steps, sheltered by two massive trees, became the altar where they quietly started their new life.
I’m so drawn to humble places like this, simple and open, where I’m welcome to pause, to return to myself, to be led by love and wisdom bigger than my own. A shrine where I can encounter the Real.
In these times of pummeling information, of machine-augmented speed, I think lots of us are more weary than we realize. But we don’t always know how to rest. We don’t always remember how to listen. I think we could use more roadside restorative spaces, more holy rest-stops, more still points like this out-of-the way red-roofed chapel.
And — I think that making and tending a space like this, a Shrine of the Real, is work I might be made to do. To craft a humble, quiet place so you are given every reason to come and rest a bit.
I think I’ve been a shrine-keeper for a long time. My writing has always leaned in this folk-art direction: off the beaten track, using whatever is at hand (sometimes spare parts, sometimes the very heart). I work with slow attention, a little wandering, waiting for the deep order that’s always gathering me in.
Audio has become the natural medium for this. Reading so much on our screens has given us full access to vast information, endless worlds. But to handle it all, we’re forced to skim text with dogged attention. We have to narrow and contract our focus instead of expanding and relaxing in.
Sound, ironically, has proven to be a way for me to create quiet, to expand vision, to open in an almost spatial way. I wondered what it would be like to offer pauses through listening, to use aural ways to help us step into a more open, quiet place.
So. I will offer short audio pieces, no longer than 10 minutes. Some of these will be little essays, odes to ordinary things that radiate substantial truths. Others will be prayer-like ponderings of attributes of the Real. Other weeks, I’ll offer a sort of practice for setting aside distractions, for listening to ordinary wisdom, for taking rest-stops along the way. There might be soundscapes, too, and other chances for briefly getting away from all that inundates us.
From these odds and ends, I’ll be making and tending this virtual Shrine of the Real. You are invited to come rest here, too.
