All this time
We have together
Is our shelter from the rain.
I will share the weight you carry
Let me be your sanctuary.
I will share this weight you carry
Let me be your sanctuary.

 From “Sanctuary,” by Gary Nicholson, Sarah Siskind and Jill Andrews

 Let me be a sanctuary for you. Let me be a sanctuary for the internal spiritual resource that I need to function as a human being, and which my world needs.

A lighthouse is a kind of sanctuary. The lighthouse is a sanctuary for light. You need a lighthouse to cast light upon the sea so that the ships can tell where they are going. You need a sanctuary for the light.

The same is true on Monday morning in our world. There ought to be a lighthouse there, a sanctuary for the light. Where there’s a sanctuary for the light, the light can shine—not in people’s faces but in the world, so that people can see. Then everything changes. People act differently when they can see.

When you are present as a lighthouse, your world works differently because people can see, and because you can see. Well-intentioned blind people—well-intentioned people who simply can’t see because the light is not on—haven’t learned to be a sanctuary for the light. So they create chaos. That’s happening in the world at large, I’m sure we’ve all noticed. And most of our local worlds have a fair amount of chaos, at least from time to time. This world needs a lighthouse.

The issues that we face on Monday morning, or at any other time, are, at their root, resolved by people who are not all busy fixing what is wrong. They are resolved by people who come back to being a sanctuary for an inner spiritual resource. In so many cases, it’s the lack of that which created the issue that showed up. Somebody wasn’t being a lighthouse, so there’s no light and people cannot see. The answer is simply to be a lighthouse. It’s not that there’s some intractable problem other than that.

Could it be that most of the conflict in the world that looks so intractable could simply be a reflection of the fact that people generally have forgotten to be a sanctuary for the light?

My purpose is not to solve the world’s problems but to come back to the place of being a sanctuary for an inner resource. Giving expression to that inner resource, I find that it is, at its origin, unending. It is awesome to touch the ever-flowing fountain of love and realize that it doesn’t stop, and that when I am a sanctuary for love, I don’t stop. When we are a sanctuary for Spirit, we are filled with assurance—a knowledge of how things work, knowing that love is the solution to everything and so I’d better bring more of that and bring it ever more clearly. Every situation needs light, so I am called to be a sanctuary for the light. How about you?

And so the answer is clear. Just how the answer is brought and how I open to it is a discovery for me, as it is for you. But the fact that light needs to be brought is unquestionable, and the means by which it is brought is also unquestionable: I simply need to be a sanctuary for it. I need to turn to open to it and let it in. And if I can let it in from within me, I can be a sanctuary for you too. I can love that overflowing love in you and welcome it into the world.

You matter. You are loved. You are significant. You have a gift. You are precious to me. I’m a sanctuary for the reality of Being—in you, in me, in all people.

At some point in our spiritual blossoming, we come to a place of assurance—of knowing what it takes to live a creative life. It takes me being a sanctuary. I’m not wondering what to do. I know.

It’s baseball season here in the United States. You hear the baseball commentators talking about a player, saying “Well, he’s really got confidence in his swing.” I remember hearing that and thinking, What are they talking about? What has that got to do with hitting a baseball or pitching? But I get it. When we are in the groove and we are living and moving with confidence, there is something different that is happening for us. We’re not wondering what to do. We know, and we are doing it.

I don’t want to be misunderstood; at some level, life is a discovery and a curiosity, that’s for sure. It is an unfolding mystery every moment. And yet there are underlying realities that are unquestionably true.

I can’t go wrong being a sanctuary. I can’t go wrong bringing light into the world. I can’t go wrong bringing the truth of the love that’s in me, and loving that same truth of love that’s in you. I just want to do more of it. I want to magnify that. I want to magnify it in myself and shout it from the rooftops till it’s heard ’round the world.

I want to be a sanctuary with you. I want to shine the light with you. I want to bring love into the world with you. I want to live! I wasn’t born just to survive, and neither were you. If things get desperate it comes down to that. But I want to live, fully and freely.

Just like anyone, I live fully and freely when I am a sanctuary for love and a sanctuary for the light.