18Aug A place to remember
This Christopher Robin kind of niche is much like the flat rock in the sun under the aspen trees in front of my house. Or like the shady spot on the back porch where I take a glass of iced tea on scorching days. It is like my bed where I pray and journal or go to cry. Niche in the truest sense is the most private of places. It may be anywhere you go when you want to be alone.
When designing her home, my artist friend Abby Merickel included self-designed mosaic tile around her bathtub in nuances of green. This is the place she goes for time-out and some rejuvenation from her two rambunctious boys. It is a place to simply relax, rest, and find renewal. “That’s what I do for flm on the weekend,” she laughs, “because I don’t have a life!” Or maybe Abby knows that rest in a niche is simply a necessity of life, that it is essential for each of us to find a safe place to curl up once in a while. And if we cannot find that place, we can create it—an alcove, a corner, some crevice where we revert to a womblike simplicity and reconnect with our spirit.
An alcove is a place to reinvest in ourselves: to linger, to be spiritually fertile, to be renewed. But why should something so important and big be confined to places so small? Why not have an entire room set aside for prayer and meditation?
Imagine a room in your house carefully decorated with beautiful things, objects symbolizing the sacred to you. Now add soft lighting and at least one comfortable chair. Such a room inspires faith and facilitates peace. Rooms used specifically for creative purposes are closely related. Imagine a place in your home where you can spread out materials and leave them there to be untouched until you can return to the project on the spur of a moment. Imagine a meditation room or studio that’s visual rather than cerebral—the places where Christopher Lowell’s “Seven Layers of Decorating” will never reach.
