A compass of sacred spaces
Guided by the points of the compass, Hilary Davies reflects on grief, faith, memory and the sacred spaces that help us find our way.
1. North: harmony
What do we think of when we hear the word compass? The flickering needle that for centuries showed us our way across the lands and seas of the earth? The compass of a moral system? The compass of love’s direction in our lives? The compass of God?
The death of my husband flung me out into a world that suddenly seemed to have no compass. Death unhouses us in the deepest sense: it is inextricably linked with our ideas of time and space, those fundamental dimensions in which we have our being. Not in the way of the models of mathematics or physics – the arrow of time, say, or Einstein’s unified entity of space/time – but because each one of us is in a reciprocal and dynamic relationship with these two elements. For us, they give meaning, but how we encounter them is also part of their meaning. This where we meet God, for time and space are encompassed in Him.
Grief demands a profound reorientation. Our compass shifts, goes wild. We need to search for a new place where it will settle. How can we imagine this? As a poet, and a person of faith, I am constantly seeking images that will allow glimpses of our relationship to God. As the years after the death of my husband passed, I began to travel, both physically and back into memory, in space and in time, to find a new house to dwell in with God. I found myself turning to the great sacred spaces, cathedrals and chapels, which had moved me. And they formed a compass.
The first of these was York, the north point. As so often in life, I went for one reason, to attend a conference, but encountered quite another. In the sacred space there, a close harmony group was going to perform. They opened their mouths, and suddenly the space was filled with the haunting, German hymn, ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen ‘ (A Spotless Rose is Blowing’). Time and space were instantly lifted up, transformed into one dimension, the dimension of harmony. Which of course means, as everywhere, the sounding together of many voices, many experiences, into a whole that is new. Here was a new orientation.
Up and down to heaven
From the dark root’s base
Where the skull and the human heart
Make a chord of grace
