Monday, June 27, 2011

On Sacred Space

Yesterday we learned about the four axioms of Sacred Space:

1.  Sacred Space is not chosen; it chooses you.

2.  Sacred Space is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary.

3.  Sacred Space can be trod upon without being in it. (and we were given a lovely example of this in Wendell Berry's poem, "Vacation;" see below)

4.  The impulse of Sacred Space both draws you in and sends you out.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was living it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.


So now, you know, I have to ask: where, for you, is Sacred Space?  And, when you're in it, are you really there?

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