In A Place Called Sanctuary

By Margot Van Sluytman

When we shape deepened relationship with our personal development as we navigate life's demands and challenges, we may think of packing our suitcase, buying an airline or bus ticket, and leaving our home, leaving the place that is too familiar, that holds the memories, that feeds our angst. We often think of escape. Going to another place. Breathing new air. Seeking hope.

Escape is certainly one aspect of being able to deal with pain and suffering in order to enhance and nurture our personal development, which may include healing. That a 'change is as good as a rest', is true. Escape is linked inextricably with asylum, with sanctuary. Linked to a place, to a space where an individual can trust how she feels, can trust her sorrow; can trust her process. Escape centres on going to a place where you are permitted to be yourself, where you are encouraged to do so, where various forms of support are part of your journey.

In Edna Kovacs' exquisite book, In A Place Called Sanctuary, the escape is to a healing garden of words. No suitcase has to be packed; no sunscreen, sandals, sarong. In fact, the escape route can be your living room, sitting on your favourite well-worn, over-stuffed blue-pansy-sprinkled chair, your feet tucked in underneath you, as you hold this wonder-filled book in your hands, a cup of warm, mint tea balanced on the fat arm of your cozy retreat, your pen resting upon your lap, inviting you into a new landscape of possibility.

In A Place Called Sanctuary, is divided into five chapters, much like journeying into five unique and burgeoning caverns of peace and tranquility. Akin to holding five tickets to five different destinations, where you enter the landscape for your soul, heart, and mind, venturing into rich and nourishing asylum. Once there, you are invited to trust your process of heeding to your pen's dance across the page. No quick fix, nothing elaborate will greet you in any of the chapters. You are not required to read them sequentially. Here is how this sanctuary of a book unfolds and invites you to escape right where you are, invites you to shape your dialogue with personal development and healing.

The Introduction positions you at the door of a burgeoning garden, inspiring you to trust the journey with Edna's words, and to trust how and what you will encounter in this place where sanctuary smiles. You will meet the exquisite companions, Hana and Saraphim New Moon, two cats whose own healing journeys will nudge you with gentle inspiration to trust your entry into the garden of this book, where seasons unfold, and lavender and rose scents accompany you along labyrinthine paths of gentleness. (Kovacs 8)

Each chapter begins with a quotation from a kindred soul-journeyer such as Gandhi and Jorges Luis Borges, that whispers to you to trust your walk. The simplicity and tenderness of the invitation is laced with grace and powerful respect for you the journeyer. Each quotation acknowledges that moving your pen across the page, to find your voice and meaning, is hard work, but good work; acknowledges that this is a difficult path, but that you are worthy of its company. After each quotation, Edna shares a short piece of writing on the meaning of the chapter, positioning the reader on a metaphorical camino, preparing her for her walk. The richness of the short piece is that it acts as a meditation, a breathing exercise for the journeyer to embrace and silently dialogue with where she will venture. Rather than being catapulted into a space of chaos and confusion, yet not being hand held or dragged into a space of sanctuary, the journeyer is offered time, and a way to trust her feet on the garden path that speaks sanctuary.

Each chapter title stirs the imagination. With that stirring comes the possibility of a crack, a chink in the armour of ache and sorrow and uncertainty. Tears might flow. Delight will spill. New questions will come. Yet, there is no expectation that you unearth specific answers or concrete meaning. All that you are invited to do is to enter with your very own self.

Chapter One, Finding Beauty in Hard Places, is a gentle invitation to trust the dialogue with 'the shadow', permitting your pen to wisely navigate the rocky landscape with you; Chapter Two, Lessons From the Roses' Thorns inspires a meditation on clearing out those cluttered spaces, to allow room for energy's flow; Chapter Three, Hallowed Ground, charms you to relive a place and time, when you were connected to the collective consciousness; Chapter Four, The Labyrinth Within the Chrysalis, invites you to walk without judgment, allowing your pen to be as the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis; and, Chapter Five, Living With Grace, offers you a way to remember your intuitive gifts, a way to explore those epiphanies in which you have felt alive and deeply grateful. Simple abundance resonates here, as Edna reminds the journeyer of the majesty of a blade of grass, and the exquisite craftsmanship in one single pebble.

In A Place Called Sanctuary is a garden into which you enter knowing that koi and lotus will greet you, as your pen finds its way across the page, so that you will birth nourishing energy and hope, connected to and connecting with community, even as you sit with your soul, your very self. This sanctuary reminds you that you are always supported, even as you seek escape in order to renew your tattered and worn self.

Kovacs, Edna. In A Place Called Sanctuary: Wrtitings From A Healing Garden. Calgary: Palabras Press, 2009.