Make the Everyday Sacred

“When we live from our heart intelligence, the fields within them are profound,” Dr David Clements.

Dear friends, join me in exploring how to make the everyday sacred with simple moments in life, from quiet companions to gentle surprises.

Make the Everyday Sacred

We woke to our first morning at The Golden Frog in El Valle de Antón to sacred grace without ceremony.

An ageing dog sat patiently on our doorstep, as if she had been assigned the morning watch. Her name was Machlla, and she carried sweetness the way some beings carry wisdom—quietly, without asking to be noticed. Not long after, as we opened the curtains, a playful blue-grey cat slipped into the room as though she had always belonged there. Rose, we learned later. She made herself at home immediately, curling her presence into the corners of the day.

Una perra anciana se sentaba pacientemente en la puerta de nuestra casa, como si le hubieran asignado la guardia de la mañana. Su nombre era Machlla y llevaba dulzura como algunos seres llevan sabiduría: en silencio, sin llamar la atención. No mucho después, cuando abrimos las cortinas, un juguetón gato gris azulado entró en la habitación como si siempre hubiera pertenecido allí. Rose, lo supimos más tarde. Se sintió como en casa de inmediato, trasladando su presencia a los rincones del día.

And then came Bella, bounding toward us as we walked to breakfast, full of joy and purpose.

The cat refused to leave our room—until she saw the dogs racing ahead of us along the path. Something in her lit up. With a flash of delight, she ran to join us, darting behind us as if laughter itself had given her legs.

Two dogs. One cat. Two New Zealanders laughing out loud, hearts unguarded.
That was how our first morning in El Valle de Antón began.

Later, my soul sister Cindy back in New Zealand saw my photos and said, “Gosh, you look so happy.”
And she was right.

But happiness here is not loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It seeps in.

It is the colours—everywhere, unapologetic.
It is the joy that seems to rise naturally from the land.
It is the rest, the deep exhale of a body that knows it is finally safe.
It is tranquillity without boredom.
Nature without performance.

A light breeze moves through the valley as if the air itself is breathing with you.

We are sheltered inside the bowl of an extinct volcano, held in a cradle of fertile earth. The soil here is dark and rich, still remembering fire. Mountains and hills ring the valley like guardians. Hummingbirds flicker from flower to flower, tiny miracles refusing gravity. Miniature trees—bonsai-like, ancient and patient—dot the landscape, reminding me that scale has nothing to do with significance.

I look at the clothes hanging in the cupboard of our room and laugh softly.
So Panama, all of them.
Colourful. Joyful. Alive.
As if my wardrobe had known where we were going before I did.

The night before, we were served a bottle of wine: Los Cardos – Doña Paula Malbec 2023.
And there it was—on the label, three hand-painted thistles, the national flower of my Scottish ancestors. Watercolour purples, pinks, and blues rising from green stems, mountains soft in the background.

Thistles.

Plants that grow where they are not invited.
Flowers that survive poor soil, wind, neglect.
Beauty that refuses to apologise for its toughness.

It felt like a message slipped quietly across the table.

This is what Care of the Soul asks of us, and what Thomas Moore so gently insists upon:
not transcendence through escape,
but holiness through attention.

The sacred, he reminds us, does not live only in rituals, churches, or moments of crisis.
It lives in dogs who wait at doorsteps.
In cats who choose to follow joy.
In volcanic soil still warm with memory.
In a glass of wine whose label speaks in memory and symbols.
In laughter on a morning path.

To make the everyday sacred is not to decorate life with meaning.
It is to notice that meaning has been there all along.

Here, in this valley, nothing is trying to impress.
And perhaps that is why everything feels like a blessing.

This is not happiness as achievement.
It is happiness as alignment.
As belonging.
As being exactly where the soul can finally rest—and remember itself.

And then there is meaning making, the grey cat so like the ones my mother kept, Renshaw and Edwards (named after convicted lawyers!), but this one called Rose, reminding me of Bette Midler’s song The Rose, which my mother had played at her funeral.

The piece, some say, is about hope, existence, and life isn’t perfect—but we can look for the sacred in the everyday and find the magic.

Finca-Lerida-roses, Boguete, Panama

LYRICS: THE ROSE
Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed

[Verse 2]
It’s the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It’s the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose

Artwork: Cassandra Gaisford, Love is A Flower. SOLD

Songwriter: Amanda McBroom

Roses have always been dear to my heart. My mum adored roses and grew many beautifully perfumed varieties, and for her funeral, she specifically requested that Bette Midler’s The Rose be played.

It seemed poignant that two months to the day of her passing  (Aug 22, 2022) a gorgeous, loved-up couple, a florist (originally from Scotland) and her husband purchased this painting. Mum loved her roses, and she had a long and loving relationship with her husband, before he too passed. I created this painting in memory of my mum not long after she passed.

Love is a Rose is inspired by a beautiful Italian book of flower paintings I purchased from a super gorgeous Italian bookshop owner in Puglia, Italy. Isabella.

The work is also inspired by UK astrologer Pam Gregory who encourages us to share what love has made… to counteract images of terror, fear and warmongering with that of love, light, beauty and joy.

Layered in gestural sweeps of thick pigment, on a bed of customised sensuous black (made from my favourite magenta and ivory black) the palette embodies mind, body and soul, Love is a flower speaks to the heart.

Finding the Sacred, Believing in Dreams

I was deep—deep—in meditation when the thought arrived fully formed, as if it had been waiting for the stillness.

I saw Pablo Neruda in exile, in his house on the island of Salina in Italy, far from the country he loved and could no longer safely inhabit because of his political views. I imagined the simplicity of that life: a house overlooking the water, nothing grand, nothing performative. A wide veranda where he could sit and write. A garden with fruit trees, perhaps a few vegetables. A companion always nearby. And in the distance, the slow, watchful presence of Stromboli, holding fire inside itself the way some souls do.

The image felt intimate, not historical.

And then I opened my eyes here, in El Valle de Antón, at the Golden Frog—held in the depths of an extinct volcanic crater, high in the hills, surrounded by mountains. Tropical flowers everywhere. Hibiscus glowing in apricot, cherry, red, and tangerine. Leaves so green they look almost lit from within. The breeze constant and gentle. The trees large, ancient, protective. Everything lush. Everything healing.

It struck me then how often exile and sanctuary sit side by side in a life. How often the soul finds its true home only after being forced away from the places that could not hold it.

I thought again of Neruda—how being banished from his homeland did not banish his voice. How simplicity became not a compromise but a form of freedom. How beauty became not decoration, but survival.

Later, I found myself reading through my quotes for 2026, along with older ones I’ve decided to carry forward because they are still as true now as they were then. One resurfaced—about success not as applause or achievement, but as vision. It’s from Jessie Burton, who wrote The Miniaturist—about always picturing succeeding.

Right now, I am picturing the kind of house we want to live in, the kind of life we want to inhabit, the kind of future we are quietly choosing.

That is when the phrase clarified itself.

A golden future.

It feels exactly like this place. Like the Golden Frog—only quieter. Fewer people. Perhaps one day a couple of small accommodation units. A place where writers might come. Or painters. Or people who need to remember how to listen to themselves again. I don’t know yet. The dream hasn’t asked to be fully named.

I look up at the sky and the words that float through me are cloud dancer. The 2026 Pantone colour of the year—but here it feels like a way of being. Light without avoidance. Movement without urgency. Trust without certainty.

This is what Care of the Soul teaches so quietly: the sacred is not found by escaping life, but by entering it more fully. By paying attention. By letting ordinary moments carry weight.

I see it now in small things. Two little Dutch girls dancing to music, twirling on the floor without self-consciousness. And suddenly I remember myself—twirling like that once, long ago, in the harsh climate of New Zealand. The floor cold. The world unforgiving. I slipped. I fell. I broke my front tooth diagonally in half. Pain followed. Ridicule followed. Then years and years of healing.

letting go of what you were told to believe

It feels symbolic now.

How joy, when unsupported, can turn into injury.
How colour, when mocked, can retreat.
How movement, when punished, can become fear.

I remember wearing colourful dresses then—how my mother would taunt me and say, “You look like Dame Edna Everage.” How what was expressive and alive in me was made into something ridiculous.

Here, it is different.

Here, I am not too much.
Here, colour belongs.
Here, I look not absurd—but natural.

In Panama, I look like an exotic flower.
Like the hibiscus outside my window.
Bold. Bright. Rooted in warmth. Unapologetic.

Finding the sacred, I am learning, is not about denying the past. It is about choosing a landscape—inner and outer—where what was once wounded can finally bloom.

Believing in dreams is not naïve.
It is an act of devotion.
A quiet rebellion against the voices that once said no.

Sometimes, it begins simply:

With a veranda.
With a breeze.
With a crater holding you steady.
With the radical decision
to believe your future is allowed
to be golden.

And with something even quieter,
even braver:

the letting go of what you were told to believe.

Letting go of the voices that said joy was dangerous.
That colour was foolish.
That dreams were indulgent.
That safety meant shrinking.

Letting go of inherited limits, borrowed fears,
old climates that bruised rather than nourished.

Because the sacred is not found by obedience to old stories,
but by listening for the one that has always lived beneath them—
the one that knows when the soil is right,
when the light is kind,
and when it is finally safe to bloom.

Here, in this warmth,
in this softness,
in this living green bowl of earth and sky,

I choose to believe in dreams again.
Not the loud ones.
Not the performative ones.

But the true ones.
The ones that ask only this:

that I let go
of what I was told to believe
and trust
what my soul has always known.

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