Religion in the City – Sacred Spaces

This weekend I am attending a violin performance by Arianna Kim and Robert Waters at Wesley Methodist Church on Massachusetts in Lakeland. Besides being an inner city church, the small congregation of Wesley has an amazing afterschool tutoring and athletic ministry to the Parker Street neighborhood. Because of tough economic times, Wesley has decided to transform its historic sanctuary into a sacred, community center and stage for local musicians, artists and plays.

Sitting at Mitchells coffee house earlier this week a friend asked me if I thought Wesley’s sanctuary was still a sacred space, even though they have stripped away its pews and so much of the sanctuary? Of course I said yes! But it got me thinking about what I felt makes a space sacred?

“…make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them…I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them.” (Exodus 29:45-46)

When some people think of a sacred spaces they get images of tented Tabernacle or huge cathedral churches. Other people think of sacred space as a church palpate or the rail around an alter. However I think the majority of people simply see sacred space they go to for their Sunday morning worship time.

What makes a space, sacred? Is “sacred” a smell like burning incense, is a taste like grape juice or wine at a communion rail? How would you know a “sacred” space if you saw it?

I would like to pose that a sacred space could be any opportunity or space the divine can create hope and renewal for you and your community.

In Ephesians Paul makes the point that when you join with the sacred, your body is made into a temple. “…a holy Temple in The Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:20)

I believe the places and people we deem sacred are the ones which align our spirits with what is true and right. The Buddhist art of feng shui is the positioning of objects like homes and furniture, based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang, The sacred, would be described as the flow of energy around positive and negative effects between objects and one’s life.

I recently spoke to a church-group of parents on the topic of –communicating to children at their level. The first exercise I had them do was to take a blank sheet of paper and draw their childhood bedrooms growing up. I then asked the group to describe their favorite place either in their childhood room or home. Some of the parents talked about their bed at night reading by themselves. Others talked about areas that were –their own—for example, the back of their closet, away from brothers, sisters or parents. I then asked them what was so important to them about that “sacred space”. Now that the group was taken back to those early moments and feelings, I could now ask them if they knew where their children’s “sacred spaces” are. I suggested to them to not only ask their children where their “sacred space” was, but to every now and then go to that space when they were not around and pray for them from the eye level and perspective of the world as they see it.

When we think of our bodies as temples and sacred spaces as any place where the divine offers hope or renewal, then any place can be a sacred. Any size room, any smell, taste or sight can be sacred.

I was recently asked by a Presbyterian Minister friend of mine in town, what has been the most sacred space I have ever been in? My answer without a second thought was “Denny’s”! There is no more sacred place to me. No where I feel more called, challenged or connected to the divine than Denny’s at 2:00 in the morning. Sitting next to taxi drivers, college students, runaways, prostitutes—I have heard and asked some of the deepest questions about life, purpose and God posed in those early hours.

When you think about it, where is your sacred space? And what makes it sacred?