Our connections to the important places of our lives are deeply personal, based on unique experiences and relationships. At the same time, the feelings that bind us to those places can be shared and understood by most everyone because they are tied to universal human experiences and longings — to the comfort of home, the wonder and awe of creation, the sense of wholeness, healing, and love. When our writing is grounded in place, we can reach out and share the ties that connect us to the earth, and through the earth, to each other.

A light snow was falling. It was thirty years and six months ago as I write these words. David and I stood on the sidewalk of Highland Avenue between Carey and North Streets in Sidney, Ohio. Across the street, tired white two-story houses lined the east side of Highland. On our side of the block, the old brick factory of the Sidney Machine Tool Company stretched from corner to corner.

David was home from college for Christmas break. I had made the trip from Seattle to be with my family for the holidays. Though my friendship with this hometown boy had deepened in the past year, it was just in the past few days — just in the past few hours, sitting and talking in the family room of my parents’ house, just in the past few minutes, as I walked him partway home — that I sensed something big might be happening. We were taking tentative steps into a new relationship.

We had been talking for hours, and I needed time alone. I told David I was turning back home. He put his arms around me and hugged me close to him. We were both wearing puffy winter coats, and the thick layers of fabric pressed together between us. He kissed me. It was not my first kiss, or his first kiss. It was our first kiss. His lips were warm. Snowflakes touched my face with tiny sparks of cold and instantly melted. We drew apart and said our goodbyes. David turned and walked away, heading across town for the house where he grew up. In a few days, he would fly back to New Haven to complete his senior year at Yale, and I would fly back to my job in Seattle. I did not know what would happen next or when we would see each other again. I did know that the road had turned.

On that late-December afternoon in 1978, that block on Highland Avenue did not feel sacred to me. I was too full of puzzlement, hope, doubt, and happiness to give a second thought to anything outside myself. It is only in memory, after thirty years of life with David, that I recognize that particular place and moment as numinous.

A numen is a spirit that inhabits and gives life to a place, an object, or a natural happening. The word’s Latin root means both “divine power” and “a nod of the head.” Although the English word numen has its roots in the numina of the ancient Roman religion, the idea of a spirit or life-energy inherent in the things around us — in a waterfall, the moon, the autumn wind — appears in ancient religions and philosophy all around the world. In Japan’s native Shinto faith, spirits that dwell within objects and forces of nature are called kami. The monotheistic religions carry the idea of indwelling spirit forward through the all-pervading idea of the numinous.

 So … where and when can encounters with the numinous happen? The answer seems to be — any place and anytime. Although I believe that is true, I don’t find the answer very satisfying. Because I can’t remember any place or any time. I remember thatplace and this time.

What do I remember about that snowy Ohio day years ago? The season — white snow falling through gray light. A particular place in my hometown — the street block, the dark red brick of the old factory, so dark with soot and age it was nearly black. The muffled press of thick fabric against my body. The touch of snowflakes on my cheek. David’s lips against mine.

snow flurries
beside the machine shop
lips touch a spark

In naming particular elements of the time and place along with what happened there, this haiku contains the heart of the moment for me. Even now, after so many years, its words can bring that moment back to spontaneous life. Even now, a numen makes its home in each and every one of these things, and Love nods her head.

[The preceding is an excerpt from Haiku – The Sacred Art: A Spiritual Practice in Three Lines, by Margaret D. McGee (SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2009), reprinted here by permission of the author.]

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Sheila’s Exercise: Bring forth the indwelling spirit in your writing in three lines

Think of a time and place that had great meaning and excitement for you. Was it the first time you sat in the stands at a baseball game? When you enjoyed your first kiss with someone special to you? When your father handed you the car keys?

A waterfall, the moon, the autumn wind, Margaret lists when talking about the life-energy or spirit in what surrounds us. You can make that energy come alive on the page using your experience — the quality of the light at the time of day the keys were in your hand, the sensation of the ground you stood upon during that first kiss, the stillness of the air that summer day at the baseball stadium.

You can capture any moment you had strong feelings using the elements of the environment. For example, I am thinking about finding the first ripened tomatoes in my garden this late summer:

red globes
among the green leaves
blush of a girl in love

And now I am thinking of the last strawberries this end of the season:

red tints on a few berries
white flowers amidst the leaves
icing on fall’s cake?

Have fun trying your hand at this three-line approach. Share your results with others on this week’s article discussion blog. Remember, writers invoke the power of the numinous in prose as well as in all kinds of poetry, not only in haiku verse. Writing haiku-like lines that rely on the power of specifics to carry emotion as well as information keeps you in practice for rich, moving writing of all kinds.