Our Mission Statement

Sanctuary House exists to serve the holistic development of body, mind and spirit through spiritual practice and retreats, sustainability, education, healing and philanthropy in diverse locations around the world.

What is Sanctuary House? Attempting a definition, no matter how long, is like trying to define ourselves or love. Defining seems to limit, yet without definition what will we manifest? So we try to creatively walk the tension between the two.
      A fundamental way to define is to describe the basis of a thing. The basis of Sanctuary House is the intention with which we live our lives. Indeed, it is the manifestation of that intention, regardless of what gets built or does not get built. Sanctuary House may turn out to be an interior realization of divine beneficence, or it may be a retreat center. We hope it's both: inner and outer wholeness that will benefit all who seek this sanctuary.
      The vision here is love manifested in community (perhaps 5 to 7 individuals), sustainability (we've built out of strawbale, adobe and dead-standing logs, and we will soon be gardening), meditation, healing and multi-religious retreat. Sanctuary House is built in the round around the labyrinth of Chartres (dromenon). Its four shrine rooms [Jewish/Christian in the South, Buddhist/Zen in the West, Hindu/Vedic in the North, and Sufi/Muslim in the East]. Our prayer is that each of these shrine rooms will embody the authenticity, beauty and power of their respective traditions.

The practical question becomes What is sanctuary? To the extent it is a living experience and not a precious idea, it will take us our lives to make adequate answer. Certainly, it is a place of safety, but not merely safety from human interference, but the ultimate security where we come under the protection of divine will. It is also a place without pedestal, for neither person or persons nor for images, even images of God. Sanctuary is that place where we discover that creation is itself a sanctuary to all who dwell in the Almighty beneficence. In the ambassadorship of that open harmony, Sanctuary House, focusing its expressive energies toward mystic Christianity, cannot help but open its heart to any devout practitioner of an authentic spiritual path. And so all retreatants are most welcome.
      Workshops offered by authentic representatives of their respective disciplines which promote meditation, healing and/or one of the world's major religious traditions will be part of this sanctuary, which, given that each of us is a work in progress, necessarily must be a dynamic peace, a living rest, a walking and even singing meditation that has the capacity to rejoice in the gift of every experience.
      The heart of Sanctuary House is silent fullness that trusts life to be sacred and benevolent and orderly, however mysterious that order might appear. The mind of Sanctuary House is the wisdom of faith, the knowledge of eternal reality available to us all in the immediacy of our lives. The body of Sanctuary House is whatever facilities arise from the sand and sage here in Crestone. But the body wants not to be separate from heart and mind, wants to dance in ritual and song and meditation. And it wants to reach out in this newsletter, in poetry and prayer, and in ways we perhaps cannot yet imagine.

      So much for definitions, even thumbnail ones.

You are Sanctuary House in so far as its vision and expression touch you. It is unlimited, this tiny and humble hope which wishes to actualize the very basis of Religion and live the promise of the nearness (nearer than the jugular vein, nearer than breath, nearer than thought or any idea of love or God) of the Kingdom of God. Sanctuary House is unlimited, as are we all, created in the image of the Almighty.