A Safe Place – Where And When Did You Last Feel Safe?

The world can only seem a safe place when we feel safe inside. – Agapi Stassinopoulos

“Where And When Did You Last Feel Safe?” was asked recently in a writer’s workshop.  Challenged to describe a safe place in a twelve-minute free-form writing exercise, I was pleasantly surprised where I went.

I found myself on my maternal grandparent’s farm for my summer visit.  Farmlife was open, fresh, and authentic.  Daily rhythms were uncontrived, dictated by the needs of crops and livestock, rather than sales and school demands.

There were no people other than my grandparents, and they were a part of the rhythm – no they were the rhythm.  No other intrusions of people or traffic.  Quiet.  Even though danger lurked with the possibility of harm from:

• snake bites
• insect stings
• the bull that I gave wide berth to
• a kick by and horse or cow
• barbed wire,

I was fearless.

Boundaries, An Element Of A Safe Place

I knew my boundaries where I was safe, but these were broad and deep.  In that place I:

• rode my pony Dude, to town;
• put the chicken coop in order while gathering eggs from reluctant hens
• explored abandoned buildings and fields and poked around in the dusty corners of the barn.

Bravely taking the jeep down dusty county roads, and the tractor across freshly mowed fields, under the watchful eye of my grandfather, I was free.  I was safe.

Oh, injuries occurred, including cracked wrist bones tumbling off of my first horse, Boots.  Even so, I was invincible.  There was a joy strength in it all.  Nothing some Epsom salts and a dishtowel sling couldn’t fix.

I communed with nature in this space:  a safe place to dream, to breathe, to imagine.  That place still exists in my creative thinking time or when I take to the skies in my plane.

I am free and invincible.  This is the Still Point, T. S. Elliott writes of.  It is a threshold or vanishing place alluded to in scripture*.  A place where I create with My Creator – a safe place.

Your Safe Place

Until putting pen to paper under the prompting of this writer’s group, I was unaware of this story within.  The memories were there and yes, I was aware of those, but I was unaware of the connection to the present. This is an example of a personal transformational story.

Where is your safe place?  Do you have one?  Can you describe it?  Please share in

comments or email me:  nhcullen@cfaith.com

Download the FREE PDF.  It contains a few prompts that may just unearth your safe place story!

*In Psalm 24, the term “ancient doors” has within its original language meaning “a vanishing point” or a threshold,  a door to another place.  There is a timelessness within the connotation.