A Sacred Place: Anywhere and Everywhere

The Oxford Dictionary of English defines sacred as “connected with God or a god dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.” From this, a sacred space would have to be viewed as an area that is specifically religious, or connected to a spiritual figure. The term “sacred space” has many connotations, and one of the pictures that come with “sacred space,” is that of religious buildings, or areas which religions hold as sacred.  While these distinct religious places can be sacred, they are not the only areas that people hold sacred.

Many devout people find connections with their god in nonreligious areas. One student writes, as a first thought on sacred space, “I am not tied to some arbitrarily chosen geographical location for spiritual meaning.” This religious student is able to find a deep connection with his or her god outside of a designated holy area, thus showing that there is no universal way to define a space as sacred, it is such because someone thinks it is so.

Though sacred and religious are so closely tied together, it is not only religious people who find sacred spaces in their lives. While the way in which the nonreligious person classifies sacred may be different from the religious person, it is important to understand all views. In his work, “On Cannibals,” Montaigne writes, “I would have every one write what he knows, and as much as he knows, but no more; and that not in this only, but in all other subjects; for such a person may have some particular knowledge and experience of the nature of such a river, or such a fountain, who, as to other things, knows no more than what everybody does, and yet to keep a clutter with this little pittance of his, will undertake to write the whole body of physics: a vice from which great inconveniences derive their original.” This stimulates several thoughts about sacred space. First, why it is important to consider the ideas of others—they may provide new knowledge and insights, which may enhance person views.  Second, it draws attention to nature, and aspect of the world in which many people find their sacred spots.

Nature is often held sacred for both religious and spiritual reasons. As Nigel Spivey writes in “How Art Made the World: Second Nature,” in the religion of the Algonquian people of Canada “ancestral spirits are deemed to reside in a tree of a boulder (128).” This is one example of many in which religious sacred spaces are found in nature.  A common idea throughout the students’ first thoughts is that a sacred space is anywhere one can go to be alone, and where one can feel at peace with the world. These places are often found in nature.

“A sacred space can be anywhere. It can be sacred to an individual, or a group of people. It can have a deep meaning and connection, or it can be arbitrary. A sacred space is somewhere one goes to do something that is sacred to them, whether it be spending time alone, thinking, reading, praying. A place is sacred because someone thinks of it as such.”