Hello friends, happy Sunday. Welcome to Altar Space.
This week I am pleased to be sharing this wood carving that I have hanging in my altar area, next to my working space. I think I’ll share this wood carving and then also this painting, because they’re kind of similar, aren’t they? They’re both these beautiful images of embodied women — I seek to be an embodied woman.
This wood carving was a gift given to me by one of my mentors, the Reverend Renée Machiniak, not long after I had my profound spiritual experience in 2021, when I was setting off on this journey of trying new things — declaring a new church jubilee, imagining new ways of being church in the world. I was at the Almont New Church Assembly. I believe I gave a lecture that year on dancing, and I invited everybody to dance afterward. And she gave me this wood carving. She found it at a garage sale, I believe.
At the bottom of it, it says The Ascension. It’s an image of a woman eliciting this idea of ascending, of ascension — which, within Christianity, is about when Jesus returns to heaven. And there are a lot of people who speak about ascension as another word for regeneration, for growing, for reconnecting to the spiritual level of our being and changing — changing, getting out of the mire, out of the heaviness of life, releasing all of the negative voices of our inner critics that run so much of this earthly show. Releasing that low-vibration survival mentality and way of being, and stepping into the thriving of the spirit — the trust in the eternal, the sense of our oneness and our wholeness. That’s what I’m about. And Renée is about that too. She saw that in me, and she gave me this gift. I’m so grateful — grateful for her friendship.
Interestingly, Renée was also my mentor when I was in seminary. I had my first internship with her, and she was the one who taught me to preach without notes — to step away from the script and speak from the heart. She’s been on my journey for a long time, helping me to ascend, to claim my inner knowing and bring it into being in the world. I don’t know if I’d still be walking this walk if it weren’t for her. She has been so encouraging.
So I keep this in my altar space, and it’s an interesting complement to this piece over here: a beautiful drawing made by a friend of mine in my first year of college, which I believe I spoke about recently when I was talking about my mandala. I didn’t last that first year of college — I was in a deep existential crisis. In the midst of that crisis, I did have a couple of really good friends, and one of them gave me this when I left college, hoping I would return. I didn’t, sadly, but it’s a beautiful image of a woman.
When I think back to myself at eighteen, nineteen years old, I had no idea that I would be considering ascension one day — that there was any way to escape, or transcend, or overcome some of those messages of heaviness and survival. I was deep in survival that first year of college. Deep in not feeling good enough, not feeling like I had anything to offer, having this sense that everybody else knew what was going on with life and I didn’t. And yet there was beauty. This was a beautiful gift from a beautiful friend. Again — how would I have made it through that first year of college had I not had my wonderful friends, Jee and Mildred, if you’re watching?
So I keep this picture in my altar area to remember that time and that space — to remember the beauty that came even through the heaviness of my first year of college, and to remember how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to go.
So those are today’s altar pieces. I hope you have enjoyed the sharing. Alright — blessings, friends.
Share images and stories from your altar in the comments!
I’d love to see what spaces you are creating ❤️
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