Sacred space in small places

Sarah Iserhienrhien and Brigitte Shim know a little something about creating sacred areas in small spaces.

Living a spiritual life often requires time for peaceful reflection, and in the hectic lives that many young urban Canadians lead, quiet space can be hard to come by.

Whether staying in your first dorm, moving back in with your parents or living in your first home, there are ways to create tranquil spaces - spaces that can contribute to positive mindfulness.

Sarah Iserhienrhien, 22, is a Ryerson interior design graduate who now works in the city. For most of her studies, she lived in downtown Toronto, but since graduating, has returned to her parents’ home in Etobicoke.

Iserhienrhien works to maintain peace of mind in her personal space.

Through the seasons of endless nights of readings and now working at a new job, this has remained an important part of her life.

Iserhienrhien is Christian and she values space for religious books and easy access to academic materials. She tries to encourage discipline in her spiritual life by creating an ordered oasis in her bedroom.

To her, nature is important to maintaining tranquility.

“It’s the gesture of bringing in some sort of life,” Iserhienrhien says as she looks at her windowsill, decorated with plants and candles. “Having light constantly flooding into the room…it’s easier to get lost and not stay connected to your faith when you don’t feel connected to the outside. So having light come in was always a bonus.”

Brigitte Shim agrees that light and plants play an important role in creating a spiritual oasis in tight living areas.

Shim, 59, is an award-winning Canadian architect and professor at the University of Toronto. She is also a founding member of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects who has created sacred spaces for Taoists, Reform Jews and First Nations groups.

When asked how millennials can create a spiritual balance in their homes, Shim takes lessons from her past work with mentioned religious organizations and says that people express themselves in many different ways when it comes to their space.

“There’s no one way to be spiritual,” she says. “I feel like we need to rethink what that definition is and then I would say a lot more things become possible in an urban context. “

When creating a space for Taoists, Shim says that open space was important for they lived their spiritual lives. She brings up the specific example of Tai Chi.

“Tai Chi is not just exercise,” she says. “It’s actually part of their expression of their spirituality.”

Shim and her business partner, fellow award-winning architect and husband, Howard Sutcliffe, lived in their 1,350 square-foot Toronto home for about 20 years. Their two sons, who are now both away for post-secondary school, were raised there. When her children were young, Shim recalls a curiosity about their living space.

“Everyone goes, when are you moving?” Shim says. “When are you going to move to somewhere bigger, and we thought if we did live in somewhere like Tokyo, 1,350 square feet would actually be big. So we actually never moved.”

It’s this contentment and awareness that contributes to how Shim views sacred space in close quarters. She considers their 15’ x 15’ garden to be a spiritual space.

“We have [a] fountain,” she says. “We have running water all year round…It’s not very big at all, tiny, but it actually is this amazing oasis for us in the middle of the city.”

“Whether it’s a balcony or a view from a basement apartment or a tiny little courtyard,” Shim says, “these pieces of nature in the middle of the city take on a value and meaning that’s really important.”

Anthony Lawlor, an established California architect, also highlights the importance of connecting with nature in a small space. Author of “The Temple in the House: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Architecture,” Lawlor has experience in designing spaces that connect people of all ages with their surroundings.

“One thing about sacred space...is that it gives a tangible picture of what people really believe,” Lawler says. “You go to a Catholic church or a mosque, or a synagogue or a Hindu temple, you can see right there in the symbolism, in the layout of the structure, what the underlying beliefs are.”

For Lawlor, “some kind of order” is the first thing that needs to be created.

“It can be as simple as how you place a chair in the corner of a room if you’re talking about small spaces,” he says. “You don’t need a lot of space.”

For all the thoughtful advice on how to create sacred space, Lawlor is insistent that there is one task that none of us can escape.

“The most practical ways of putting our intention into the physical surrounding,” he says, “is to clean them up.”

Iserhienrhien often applies this suggestion by periodically purging her space. But she also says that it’s important to still be yourself, even when setting up your room after a clean up.

“Living in any type of austerity takes away,” she says. “It has too much focus on the objects itself. I think it takes discipline [to maintain your space], just like your faith does.”