by Patricia

Invisible fences are built around my garden and these days, the world seem inaccessible and filled of worry. Three steps out of my doorway, I watch it all happen in the distance. The action lays in nature and lives courageously within every feathered creature. Silence is common, and I feel grateful to hear the air at last. Sitting quietly by the edge of my patio door, I follow the sound of a bird. Landing just a few feet away, its beak captures a long piece of string blown away from across the street. I focus on its flight back to his home and recognize his purpose. He’s building a home and making it his own.    

His story gracefully reminds me that my home is my temple; my shelter, an oasis. Though we may feel powerless during these past few months, we hold the privilege of our uninterrupted attention to what lives between our walls. We may suddenly begin to distinguish the details of our living space. We seek for uniqueness, an object our eyes can capture and animate a spark of comfort withing us. We were given a sudden space in our lives to chase after our favorite things. Time is unusually available and I choose to embrace the potential of my immediate surrounding.

A memory surfaces; the space I made in my home for my stunning dinner table. As I relive my visit to Artemano, I remember daydreaming of the multitude of decorations that would someday take up the hollow corners of my home. Time went by, and day after day, I visualized the once sighted treasures that never made it back here with me. I finally had a moment and the freedom to dive into this charming sea of well-designed pieces and anxiously embrace every fragment that would provoke a light of safety, comfort and joy inside of me and my temple.

I soon lay my eyes on serene and spherical candles that will create shadows on my walls. I envision them assembling a sea of light, harvesting a clearer path filled with ambition, just like the utmost splendid symphony; a near-future worth being patient for. We choose to build our nest, just as the birds do. We instinctively surround ourselves with the ones we love, but as we have all been pushed apart these days, our everyday territory has become of greatest importance; we never saw it coming.

I break the invisible fences around me as I have given my present ground the care it invariably deserved. Nurturing our environment seems more a necessity now than it’s ever been. What brightens our home will illuminate our life. I am no longer shaken by this sudden silence as the sound of fresh candlelight embellishes any unsettling emotion I once had.

We may feel a little lost, but the battle will be won by the light within our own sanctuary, our homes, and our temples.