By Ali Van Kuiken
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When I think about self-care, I think about the things that I do: activities, how I spend my time, spiritual practices, how I deal with stress. Recently I have been thinking instead about how my space shapes and influences me. This pondering was sparked by My Hygge Home by Meik Wiking (hygge: pronounced hoo-ga). Hygge is a Danish word connoting coziness, intimacy, comfort, and safety. The concept is not easily translated which is why there are entire books written about it, such as Wiking’s other book The Little Book of Hygge. Through comforting images and reflections on practices that can help bring more hygge into our lives, My Hygge Home presents the idea that our space shapes us.
The concept is in some ways similar to the attention placed on space and belongings by Marie Kondo or Becca Ehrlich, the Christian minimalist. Yet for me, someone with way too much stuff, focusing on getting rid of stuff has not been overly helpful. I agonize, I cringe, I moan and sigh and generally have a hard time getting rid of things with sentimental value. In contrast, reading Wiking’s books on hygge have helped me think about the spaces I inhabit differently. Instead of thinking about all the stuff I “should” get rid of, I can think of what I want my space to look like. What kind of space would be comforting to me? What kind of space feels safe?
These are the sorts of questions I ask when I lead a “peaceful place” meditation. The type of place I imagine during that meditation always contains books, tea, and a comfortable chair. It also often has trees. When I paused during my reading of My Hygge Home and looked up at the mantel above our fireplace, filled with random items set there to be out of reach of children, I realized that being near that mantel only made me feel anxious and out of place inside. So over the course of a few days, I gradually removed all the unnecessary items from the mantel, gave it a good cleaning, and left only the few that brought me a sense of inner peace: a family photo, an oil lamp, a small vase of fresh flowers, and a recently received birthday card. No doubt, if I managed to transform my other spaces in this same way I would receive even more benefits for my mental health. As Meik Wiking notes, “we shape our homes – and then they shape us.”
The implications for this way of space-shaping are widespread. For clergy the most important aspects to me are the ways our home and work spaces shape us and the ways our liturgical spaces shape us. When I was in seminary, I took a class on liturgical architecture. During that class we had an assignment to take a liturgical space and renovate it, imagining we had an unlimited budget. I took photos of the space where I worked part-time: the chapel of a psychiatric hospital. Then I considered what would make that space welcoming. I imagined adding curtains, a rug, a nice lamp. I reconfigured the chairs in the sanctuary space to be facing each other instead of facing forward. I placed the pulpit in the middle of the congregation to locate it in the midst of the people. Some of this renovating was done via PhotoShop, but some changes were made to the actual space. The lasting change, which I was forever proud of, was to keep the chairs in a chevron pattern, facing forward but also facing toward each other. We shape the space, and the space shapes us.
One of the things I appreciate about the concept of hygge is that it isn’t trying to sell me something. It is a concept that values thriftiness, time with family, comfort, and happiness. While I have additional values, I appreciate being reminded of those in “the hygge manifesto” as described by Wiking and feeling the permission and encouragement to integrate them into my life and the spaces I inhabit.
The Rev. Ali Van Kuiken is a chaplain at a psychiatric hospital in central New Jersey where she lives with her husband, children, and cat.
