In the bustle of this past week, my mind keeps coming back to a reflection of cultivating and rejuvenating communities through creating sacred space. Many physical buildings act as such – a mosque, a temple, cathedral, meditation room, gardens, yoga shala, our homes, and so on. But how do we still find the same headspace we have in structures of sacredness when we are in chaotic places?

I think this is where intentional placemaking plays an imperative role. It sets the groundwork to allow for vulnerability, openness, and reflection for those who enter the space. Is the structure inviting? Whom do you want to enter? If you are restoring an already sacred space, how do you maintain the integrity of its solemnity? How do you maintain the integrity of any structure to reflect the culture around it?

To me, an important factor in creating sacred space is creating an atmosphere of a slowed pace, and physically allowing space for people to come as they are. Allow them to breathe, spread out, slow down. Breath is the teleportation into introspection.  If the place you create allows this open acceptance to meet people where they’re at, makes them feel welcome, makes them want to come back and bring others, then ideally they will start to learn how to find serenity not just in the walls of the structure you set forth. As a past mentor of mine once said, “you don’t have to be somewhere beautiful to find beauty.” I see a large part of my role as a  future community consensus developer as a storyteller and creator of a welcoming, inclusive space reflective of the culture, allowing people to freely and willingly enter, make it their own, and take it with them wherever they go.