Saunders, Landscapes of the Sacred: Axioms for the Study of Sacred Place, Blog #4

Axioms for the Study of Sacred Place

          Lane starts this chapter by saying that, "the sacred place is the place rich in story" (p. 15). He attempts to draw axioms that help explain religious experience and its relation to place. He tells of a personal story about how he would go down to the creek to find God, but it never turned out to be what he expected; he expected too much of the place. He then gets into his axioms for the study of sacred places, which this blog will synthesize and critique.

         His first axiom is: sacred place is not chosen, it chooses. I think this axiom is a very good axiom because it allows the sacred to remain subjective to each individual. Just because a place like the creek is sacred to Lane does not mean it will be sacred to me. I may go through the exact same routine as Lane does in order to get there and experience what he may, but I may never get that experience. For this reasoning, Lane says that, "God chooses to reveal himself on where he wills" (p. 19). 

         His second axiom is: sacred place is holy place, ritually made extraordinary. Here, Lane states that certain rituals assist in making a place sacred. However, I would debate this axiom because I feel as if it contradicts axiom one. If the sacred chooses and is not chosen, then the ritual acts have very little say. For example, a person could attempt to make a certain place sacred by doing rituals that are done in other holy places, but it most likely would not work, because God may have no revealed himself there. If God is not there, it is not holy.

         His third axiom is: sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. Lane is saying that a person can enter, and leave a sacred place without ever realizing he or she had just been in a holy place. God's presence can be somewhere without a person being aware of it. Personally, I believe that the only way a person is able to understand that he or she is in a sacred place is by God's grace allowing them to understand it.

         Axiom four is: the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal. I think this axiom is a good one. Simply saying that God is not confined to one specific place; he is able to make another place sacred if he so wills. God is not simply in one location or another, but both simultaneously.