Finally, sanctuary enables us to grow by engaging and encountering something inner or other, and then return. There is a close relationship between sanctuary and learning. We have identified sanctuary as refuge, yet sanctuary can also mean challenge and learning. Learning occurs both within the context of what is to be learned, and apart from it. One has to have direct experience, but also reflection from a place of disengagement. The place of disengagement is a temporary sanctuary.
There is a critical point to be mentioned here regarding the role of learning in a sanctuary setting. Significant learning involves a balance between support and challenge. Challenge occurs in the process of engagement—and particularly the engagement of ironic challenges. Support often means the provision of physical, emotional, social, or intellectual resources. Challenge is added in small manageable increments at a speed with which the learner is able to cope. The learning environment can be engaged in a full-blown sanctuary, or it can be created in a mini-sanctuary in which the full demands of the new learning are not yet applied. Most importantly, it is a place where failure can occur. Sanctuary provides safety. It allows the breath of Freedom to enter.
Publicly identified sanctuaries—places and times labeled as sanctuaries—provide the circumstances in which certain kinds of deeper learning, healing, integrating, meaning-making, and self-communication can take place. One could argue that all learning takes places in some sort of sanctuary-based setting, and that the most important integrative and developmental learning we do as adults occurs both in embedded settings (in the world) and sanctuary settings (away from the world).
The Nature of Sanctuaries: Sanctuaries are as old as the human race. Humans, and even animals before them, seem to have always had sanctuaries of one kind of another. At least within a single animal family or species, there are time and places, seasons and locations, when animals of the same species will not hunt or kill each other. Primitive humans have always had their holy spots, their stone enclosures, their sacred trees, within the bounds of which you were safe, no one could harm you, and to which you also went for healing.
Long before the great European cathedrals were built, there were sacred spaces. There were times and seasons when warfare stopped, and healing could occur. Similarly, there were days (“the feast of fools”) when traditional hierarchies were turned on their head and alternative roles could be explored (not unlike our emerging use of Halloween as a day of pretend and altered roles for adults in many contemporary organizations) (Cox, 1969).
A sanctuary is three things: a place, a time, and a state of mind. A sanctuary is a place of safety or healing or transformation, usually a holy place. Sanctuary is a time when warfare or strife stops, a time when enmity can cease and reconciliation ensue, at least for the moment, and a time for reflection. Sanctuary is a state of mind, in an individual, a group, or a culture. It is a moment of rest, a moment when healing can occur, when we can stop long enough to get our bearings again, to find our center, and to set our course anew. It is an important moment, for an individual or for a society, in this mid-21st Century world when the breeze of freedom might be blowing into our individual and collective face. Where do we go when we are challenged by this breeze. Do we seek out false sanctuaries—such as are found in the use of mind-altering drugs, obsessive shopping for un-needed goods, or binge watching and mindless channel surfing? Do we just suffer and remain frozen in a state of inaction and despair? Do we find sanctuary—and then come out renewed and with new insights to benefit from this breeze of freedom?
