Making Home a Hallowed Space

If I scan through the places I’ve lived, I remember how each one felt. The slept-in-bed and dining room table in morning light, still set with last night’s dinner. The turret window, the loft, the brick wall. Some have felt more welcoming than others.

In The Grace Outpouring, Roy Godwin talks about praying through each room of the Welch retreat center Ffald-y-Brenin that he’s run for decades with his wife Daphne. Shortly after they arrived, Godwin writes, he, Daphne, and a friend prayed blessings over each room. They sensed in prayer the Holy Spirit telling them to set the crooked places straight. They weren’t sure what that meant, to straighten the crooked, but felt led to place their hands on each wall of each room and pray. They brought in a ladder and touched the ceiling and blessed it. They blessed the four walls, the floors. Room by room, for hours. Visceral, unexpected, hands-on prayer.

I’m curious about the idea of blessing rooms. Godwin’s account makes me think of friends who, in a season of heaviness, chalked their doorways as a way to welcome God’s presence. In traditional chalk blessings, done during Epiphany, a code that looks like algebra is written over the front door of the home of families from ecumenical traditions. It looks something like this: "20 † C † M † B † 19".

C M and B are “the initials of the traditional names of the three magi: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar,” according to Br. Daryl Moresco OCarm. “They also abbreviate the Latin words Christus mansionem benedicat, ‘May Christ bless the house.’” 19 represents 2019. Some families use chalk that’s been blessed by a priest or clergy.

I’ve not tried door chalking, but I’m fascinated by it. It’s on my mind as we move past Passover and out of the Easter season. The marking of doors in Passover — a setting straight of the crooked places — is rooted in fortification. We ask God to protect us. We admit that we can’t protect ourselves with our scandalously failing hearts.

In Hebrew, the word Tsedek speaks to the idea that in order to flourish, things need to be set right in relationship with the world around them.

We bless home because we want to demarcate the space, to set it apart and make it meaningful and full of light. We want our space to be in a good relationship with us and others who we welcome — a place to celebrate and to rest.