Where is the Sacred?
features, essays, sacred space November 15th, 2007
Last Sunday, I introduced my daughter to the art of Frieda Kahlo and Enrique Grau. Mind you, she’s only eight months old, but I’ve now established she’s a big fan of mid-century Cuban art. We went from image to image, I would point out something of interest–at her age it’s more like a cat than example of cubism, but we’re starting young. She made her little noises and would reach for the paintings she particularly liked. She was engaged in the experience and thankfully wasn’t so loud that she interrupted the church service in the background.
Usually, I spend my Sunday mornings making a similar circuit, although the images are Byzantine and not located at MoLaa. I point out Jesus and his mother, the Theotokos and my daughter makes her little noises and doesn’t usually disrupt the service.
I went to Grace Harbor in Long Beach to hear my father’s guest preaching. They’re a mission church and meet in the Museum of Latin American Art. St. John the Theologian, the Orthodox parish my husband and I belong to, is also a mission, and meets in a renovated warehouse.
When I was catching up with Grace Harbor’s pastor, who I think I’ve known for 11 or 12 years, he asked what my husband and I were up to. I asked if he knew we’d become Orthodox 9 months ago and he’d heard the news. He laughed a little and said something like, “Your church looks a little different, huh?” I didn’t know how to explain how important sacred space has become in my worship. A few years ago, I would have thought church in an art gallery was a great idea. For a while, we even considered launching “church in a bar” at the Irvine Spectrum.
Our little Orthodox parish didn’t always have a dedicated building but there has always been the belief that the liturgy is celebrated outside of ordinary time and space.
Since I was a child, I have loved art museums. I can’t paint or draw worth a lick, but I love the visual arts. There would have been a time when I felt that being surrounded by art at MoMA or the Met was a more intense encounter with the sacred than in any Presbyterian (or other protestant) church I attended. While I enjoyed looking at the art last week, it didn’t hold a candle to the sense of the sacred I feel when I enter an Orthodox church.
I’m curious where you experience the sacred. Is it in a church? What kind? A museum? A bar? I look forward to your comments!
November 27th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Peace to you!
I have entered many sacred spaces over the 29 years I’ve spent on this strange and wonderful planet. Stonehenge ranks high among them, but this is in large part due to the setting and the weather that day. First and foremost, the megalithic structure is very MEGA. The structures are HUGE and seem miraculously placed on the flat Salisbury plain. I visited the site on a clear, very windy August afternoon. The wind blew so hard, it was difficult to hear my friend talk to me. The shadows cast by the stones cut across the grass with black, profound surety. The sight of the site inspired silence, contemplation, and awe. Although structures even as old and solid as Stonehenge are merely temporal, they serve as great metaphors for God’s steadfastness. How much greater is God’s stability; he who made the stones, the sun, the wind, the grass, and even my ability to perceive all this!
The other sacred space I’d like to mention was a tiny Orthodox mission parish outside of Mobile, AL that I frequented during the early 2000s. Sadly the mission closed, but while it was active, I was privy to beautiful, intimate, quiet moments of grace. There were often only four or five people in the church usually, but the Saturday vespers were always the highlight of my week. I stood, sometimes in the cold, for hours on end surrounded by the ikons of the cloud of witnesses while Father and Matrushka sang the services. I met Saint Mary of Egypt through her ikon there. I learned a little about how to worship God, thanks to the tireless efforts of that tiny community. I learned how prideful I am. I was humbled by the humility of the people and the place.
How awesome that God is both tiny and huge, elemental and personal, terrifying and comforting. Glory to God!
November 28th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
David-
Your comment made me think of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Not that we’re talking about the Norse gods “living” in the US and doing battle at Mount Rushmore–but his book encouraged me to think about place in a new light.
As Americans, our “places of power” (to use a Gaiman term) seem to be more of the Giant Thermometer on the way to Vegas than the Stonehenge variety. I’m sure that this has something to do with the age and individualistic nature of this country but I also believe that because early Americans didn’t build great cathedrals to mark their experience with the sacred, we as a nation are missing the great religious monuments.
That said, I totally agree with you that sometimes the most sacred space can be the smallest, most intimate place where we can truly come in contact with the divine.