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About a year prior to my visit to the butterfly solarium, my husband’s uncle, who was a retired minister, was preparing to go into a retirement home.
He was
getting rid of a lot of his household possessions. One thing I spotted was
a podium he had made. When I
asked if I could have it, my husband wondered what in the world I was
going to do with it. I
honestly didn’t know the answer to the question at the time.
It now stands in the chapel. Perhaps it was over a year later, I shared my idea of
building a chapel with my closest spiritual friend Carlene, who was
dealing with breast cancer. She
has since passed away. She gave me the full support I needed and shared in
my dream of creating a chapel. I identified with the scripture of Jesus when he went alone
to pray. I very much needed
that same aloneness. Prior to
this time, creating a chapel was the last thing I would have ever thought
about doing. I had received the message several years ago that my job was
to just plant seeds (ideas )in the minds of others.
I was not responsible for getting them to grow or to tend to them.
Well it appears that creating sacred spaces is one of the seeds I
am to plant. Sacred Space
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My own chapel has no water or electricity, which means
evening worship is by candlelight. For
heat, my husband gave me a little gas heater for my birthday.
I was thrilled to be able to go down to the chapel on cold days.
My chapel is behind our house down a little wooded pathway, where
no phones or pagers or, for that matter people, can interrupt time alone
with Him. I recommend that a chapel be placed far enough away from all
activity, but not so far that you have to pack a lunch to go there. Well back to my story, I next found a small old church pew with a hymnal rack on the back of it. I promptly bought it and stored it. The same day I happened to pass by a company that sold outdoor wooden storage buildings.
I
stopped to talk with someone about
their smallest 8x8 building. My
husband is a great carpenter and handyman who could easily have built the
chapel, but it would have cost more than I wanted to spend.
I also have to admit that I was all for moving quickly.
He was going to have enough to do with adding the two little
windows, and finishing the inside. It was also important to me that the chapel be simple and
small, that it would hold no more than one to two people. I had a picture
of an old white country clapboard chapel, that I had seen and I wanted to
duplicate it on a smaller scale. Later that day, we to the company and arranged for them to build one. They raised the ceiling a foot and substituted two smaller doors for the the one big door. The cost at that time for the building, including delivery and set-up, was a modest $850. |
