THE SANCTUARY: IN WINTER
It is a simple place: a home, a garden, a room where one can sit without being watched by clocks or expectations. Birds move through the air. Wind passes through leaves. Tea cools in a cup. Nothing here is arranged to impress. Everything is arranged to allow.
The work that happens in this place is ordinary and profound.
Meditation is taught not as a technique to master, but as a way of listening—first to the breath, then to the body, then to the subtle movements of the heart. Stillness is not enforced. Restlessness is not corrected. Each person is met where they are, and invited to stay long enough for something honest to emerge.
In the garden, attention returns to its original pace. Hands touch soil. The body remembers seasons. Growth is not hurried. Decline is not resisted. The garden teaches without instruction: how to tend without control, how to participate without ownership.
Poetry is read aloud, slowly. Not to analyze meaning, but to let language land where it will. Sometimes a single line is enough. Sometimes silence follows. Reading becomes a shared listening, a way of allowing words to open space rather than fill it.
Tea is prepared and shared. This, too, is practice. A pause. A gesture of care. A reminder that presence does not need grand forms to be real. Conversation arises naturally, or not at all.
There are no schedules designed to extract results. No promises of transformation. The sanctuary offers conditions, not outcomes.
People come to rest, to grieve, to sit quietly, to remember how to be with themselves without judgment. Some stay briefly. Some return. Some never speak of what occurred, because what happened cannot be explained without diminishing it.
The physical sanctuary exists to support an inner one.
Welcome Home.
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
Meditation Sans Frontieres 501 (C) 3 Non Profit Registered Charity TAX EIN 81-3411835
This sanctuary is my life’s work and vocation. If this space has nourished you, I invite you to become a supporting member or offer what you feel called to give.
Your support allows me to continue writing, tending this sanctuary, and offering these teachings freely to all who need them.
