My Small Journey

September 21, 2015

My Small Journey

As I was writing my paper on sacred place and researching the importance of certain rituals and beliefs that go along with the place or journey I had a sort of realization for a more common and small scale journey.  After I wrote my paper and read Dr. Redick’s paper about his journey through the Appalachian Mountains I realized that I myself partake in a sort of detachment from the everyday world.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning I go for a three mile run outside of campus with just myself and my music.  I find though, as I am running, that more often then not I am not listening to the music, but instead I am thinking about specific things in my life.  My subconscious sort of takes over and I am not focusing on running, but rather on what I am thinking.  During this time there is no one else with me, no other voices to listen to or to intrude but my own.  This allotted amount of time is my own device for becoming detached from the busy world and spend just a little bit of time contemplating about specific things in my life.  Unconsciously I have created my own ritual and unconsciously I have entered a state of mind of reflection and self thought.  I have now become somewhat dependent upon this part of my daily routine and seem to be a bit more at ease when I have completed it each morning.

Detachment from the World's Agenda

September 21, 2015

Detachment from the World's Agenda

While reading Phenomenology of Prayer a particular quote caught my attention.

“Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between ‘things’ and ‘God’ . . . as if [God’s] creatures were His rivals.  We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God”  (page 22).

In the proceeding paragraphs the author writes that the world is based on one’s agenda and I believe this is so true considering how busy people are today.  This quote interacts with the fact that we have to pull away from our daily lives in order to see the non-materialistic things that are normally at the center of our importance even if they are not physical.  It also suggests that although media and a busy life play a role in today’s distractions it’s also ourselves that we have to pull away from in order to experience our conscious mind, especially when it says, “But rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see.”  I feel this part of prayer is sometimes forgotten about and people just seem to go through the motions with partial conscious mind, but not their wholly conscious mind.  It thoroughly displays that one has to make time for the divine and prioritize what is truly most important to them.  One has to make time in their schedule for God to be a priority because it is not something that is simply inherited, but rather something that is earned.

Sacred Place

                  September 21, 2015

Sacred Place

My grandparent’s home, located at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, has always been somewhere that I have loved to visit.  It was not until the last few years that I realized just how special this place was to me.  And although the home has always been there ever since I was born, to me, the subjects fulfilling the home make this place sacred to my heart.  In this place the subjects always make me feel so loved, happy, and filled with pride.  In recent years as I was concluding my high school experiences they took note in all of my accomplishments and told me that I could strive for what ever I wished and that I would one day accomplish it.  Although my immediate family at home does the exact same thing I think what made this place more sacred was being there for only one or two days a month.  As written in the book Landscapes of the Sacred, “Those places are frequently the most ordinary ones entered anew with awe” (32).  This place which I did visit once or twice a month has become a sacred place in my eyes, and I have encountered an instance where sacred place, in fact, is ordinary place.

Kathleen Horning- My Pilgrimage

Kathleen Horning- My Pilgrimage

Topic: Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture

Sept. 20, 2015

            The Introduction of Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture focuses on Christian pilgrimage. As someone who was raised in the Catholic faith, I would no longer consider myself religious. Instead, I would consider myself spiritual. When I was younger, I had hoped to someday make a pilgrimage to Rome as a way to explore and learn more about the religion I grew up with. At this moment in my life, I no longer care much to travel to Rome for holy reasons (but I would like to go for leisure). However, the descriptions of pilgrimage in this chapter make sense to me if I were to change my mind and someday travel to Catholicism’s holy land.

            “On such a journey one gets away from the reiterated ‘occasions of sin’ which make up so much of the human experience of social structure” (p. 7). I can imagine that going to Rome would temporarily rid my mind of all the wrongdoings in my life, and instead focus on strengthening my faith. A lot of Catholic teachings refer to having a strong faith, which will help one’s soul reach heaven after death. In such a religious setting, I would hope to be inspired to not only be a better Catholic, but also a better person to everyone I meet.

            I work at a non-denominational church as a childcare worker, and although I do not attend its services, I know a lot about their faith. A crucial component to their faith is praying to God and focusing less on worldly matters, and more on what life will be like in heaven. “Miracles or the revivification of faith are… for having temporarily given up not only the cares but also the rewards of ordinary life” (p. 6). This is something I struggle with daily. All too often I spend most of my time worrying about all the schoolwork I have to do, how many hours I will get at work each week, and what career I will have after graduation, to name a few. Even as someone who is not very religious, I still think it is important to let go of my stress sometimes and think about what really matters.

            Even if I do not end up going to Rome in order to revive my Catholic faith, I hope I can go someday anyway. I think that travelling to Rome (or another religion’s holy site) would be good for me. Instead of focusing on sin and my worldly issues, I could focus my attention on being a good person.

           

Unity of Life

Unity of Life

Sacred and Profane Beauty/Gerardus Van Der Leeuw

September 16, 2015

Wilderness teaches us that the cosmic and local, sacred and profane, as well as the ordinary and extraordinary categories of life are constantly crossing over the defining borders and structures that society assigns to them. In the marketplace we find clearly defined structures that constitute a set of social and cultural norms that everyone is expected to adhere to. In the liminal space of wilderness all forms of human structure, status, merit, and tradition are stripped away.

Man’s proclivity to be in control creates a division in life. Whereas modern society separates and systematizes the different realms of society into their own objective categories - such as economics, government, religion, education, science, etc. — primitive man viewed life as a unified whole. To them, everything — cooking, buying, washing, etc. — is a religious act. The most ordinary, mundane activities of life became ritualized by primitive humanity. In his book, Sacred and Profane Beauty, Philosopher Gerardus Van der Leeuw says, “the religious is not a particular sensation alongside other sensations, but the summation of them all.” van der Leeuw goes on to insightfully say that,

“The great difficulty, indeed the tragedy of our modern life, lies in the fact that we differentiate between the things that concern us and things which do not concern us. We are musical or we are not; we are religious or we are not; we are concerned with economic affairs or we are not…In a word, we have lost the unity of life.”

A key difference between modern and ancient societies is that modern man is not exposed to wilderness as the primitive man once was. Stepping into the liminal space of wilderness we find a place where everything belongs. Amidst all the diversity found in nature there is an overarching unity and coherency, a divine life energy that binds all things together in symphonic ecstasy. In his letter to the Church in Colossae, the Apostle Paul reveals the force behind this energy: “by him [Jesus] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”(Colossians 1:16-17)

The pursuit to simplify life through increasing control has proven to be counteractive all throughout history. For example, the technological advancements achieved during the Industrial Revolution were meant to make everyday life simpler and easier. In reality, the complexity and complications of life have risen in direct proportion and intensity to man’s increase of control through technology. In our highly civilized societies we have a firm grasp of control over everything that happens to us on a day to day basis. We have made everyday life safe and predictable. We are used to the noise of machines rather than the chorus of creation. Wilderness wrenches every notion of control from our hands, reminding us that we are not in control and pointing us to the presence of a sovereign God who orchestrates, ordains, and sustains all created order, from natural phenomena to human affairs. It is in this wild place of vulnerability that our hearts become opened to the reality that life is a unified whole; that the division we create to control things only serves to harm us and those around us. Wilderness transforms us by relinquishing our control, removing us from the center of our lives, and showing us our relational connection to everything else in creation.

What makes a landscape sacred? -MaK

What makes a landscape sacred?

            

           Some of the earliest examples of "sacred places" are found in the heart of the cave systems, in which earth was both symbolically and physically infiltrated. These sites are where the spirits of the earth were first ritualized physically. The continued use of the same sacred rituals and sites as former ancestors did proves the meaning of reinforcing the sacred nature of a belief system. As said in The Landscapes of the Sacred, "a sacred place is an ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary."(19) Thus, we can conclude that many religions have based their rituals and spiritualities originally from their sacred place or landscape. 

        "(A) A sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (B) This break symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to underworld); (C) Communication with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi: pillar (cf. the universalis column), ladder (cf. Jacob's ladder), mountain, tree, vine, etc.; (D) Around this cosmic axis lies the world (= our world), hence the axis located "in the middle," at the "navel of the earth"; it is the Center of the world."(13) This particular portion of the reading confused me because the center of the cosmic diagram is the I and surrounded by other. Then followed by the subject and object debate. How does one constitute the difference between subject and object? Does this interpretation of the cosmos reflect our individuality or a sacred place specifically? The other being the wholly other or spiritual sense revolves around the I, thus meaning our spirituality reflects the level at which a landscape can be sacred, according to my interpretation of the cosmos diagram. Cosmos is an ordered reality and chaos, being the opposite, but would a reality be ordered without a little bit of chaos? Food for thought. 

Place as Topos and Chora

Place as Topos and Chora

(Belden Lane/Landscapes of the Sacred)

September 16

Aristotle understood place in terms of topos. In this objective, scientific framework of understanding, place does not participate with the people there. Place as topos is a fixed point on a map, distinguishable by natural appearance. Plato saw place in a more transcendent light. He saw place as chora. As Belden Lane insightfully says, “place as chora carries its own energy and power, summoning its participants to a common dance.”(p.39) Place as chora is marked by reciprocity. The place itself participates with us just as we do with it. Such places transform us just as much as we transform them and experience us just as much as we experience them. Place as chora gives off a certain presence and spirit. We often speak of certain places that mean something to us in terms of it's spirit. When visiting New York City as a kid I remember my dad saying, "these streets are electric." Places have a life and energy of their own, independent from the life we project onto them. It could be that place is always chora, always reaching out to us, calling us to come and dance and only in those rare moments of life - a heightening of mental consciousness and bodily mindfulness - when the our soul connects to it’s surroundings is sacrality perceived in a place.