Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Where Is Our Sacred Space?

Reverend Darcey Laine
October 9, 2005
Palo Alto, CA

Often when I visit family my 4 year old son wakes first in the morning. I’ll get him started with some fresh clothes, breakfast and an activity, then change into my yoga clothes, roll out my mat and practice for a little before our family adventures begin. One particular morning on a visit to my Father’s house last fall, I unrolled my yoga mat in my dad’s studio. It is a small room with a computer desk, files, books and musical instruments. It is an out of the way place to lay my mat. The yoga practice that day was so so, but as I emerged, I noticed my step-mother Mandy practicing in the room across the hall. I noticed soft music coming from her CD player, and the warm glow of candles and incandescent light. Her yoga practice seemed to match the lovely warm glow of the room. When I got up the stairs to the kitchen someone asked “How was your practice?” “Not as good as Mandy’s” I replied.

By the next morning, I had borrowed a CD player, a space heater and a candle. I noticed that getting everything ready took more time than just unrolling my mat, but that the process of preparing the space helped prepare me to enter into my yoga practice in a different way. I became more aware of the control I have over the space I create for my practice, both in terms of the setting, and my own intention.

Later that fall, I visited the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland to explore whether this was where I wanted to spend my sabbatical. Their space is in a busy part of town on a block they share with a parking garage, a bank and some small businesses. The school is on the second floor of a boxy building above storefronts, but the doorway is ringed by a mosaic archway of flowers and vines. The stairway up to the reception desk follows the history of the universe from the big bang to the birth of humanity in a skillfully painted mural. Each room contained beautiful works of art: sculpture, painting, multi media, photography, and many contained more intimate and temporary seasonal altars. I fell in love with the space at once. Not so much the space itself, which was structurally similar to so many office spaces where I have worked in a cubical in a row of cubicles. What was special was the care and attention, the beauty that was lavished on a formerly ordinary space. It reminded me of a line from hymn #1 in our hymnal: “every casual corner blooms into a shrine.”

It seems that humans have set aside sacred space since before history. Through the rise and fall of many cultures we have played with this idea relationship between sacred space and ordinary space. Some would ask how the concept of sacred space has relevance for post-modern Unitarian Universalists. The word Sacred has several meanings the most common of which is: “dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity” That definition would render the word “sacred” useless in a church like this one which is more than half composed of atheists and agnostics But sacred also means “devoted exclusively to one service or use” it can also mean “highly valued and important”.

I like this idea of space dedicated for something valued and important. I think it can make a difference to enter a space that has a particular use. Late one night as we explored the terrain of Burning Man, my friends and I headed toward the light of a campfire. We were stopped in our trajectory by a long white string that circled the space where people sat in the warmth of the fire drumming, dancing or sitting quietly. We realized that there was a path defined by the string, and that to enter the space properly we would need to find the beginning of the path and enter. No big deal, but a choice. We decided to enter and followed the string to an equally simple arch. There we were greeted by a man holding a smudging stick — a bundle of smoldering herbs used to purify in some religious traditions, and a woman giving out breath mints. “Good Morning” they greeted us as we wound our way into the space. There was nothing one would associate with “the worship of a deity” going on in that space, but it was special. The arrangement of this space had asked us to make a choice about whether we would enter, to set our intention to this time and place.

When the Protestants broke away from the Catholic church in the 1500s there was a sense that the Catholic church had gotten away from its roots, that the ornate churches and robes were a symptom of materialism and idolatry. There was a movement to return to the ideals of the early church, and so protestant churches became much simpler, often without art, without decoration. The puritans in particular antithesised the Catholic traditions, and forbid even music in their services, which were to be focused on preaching and prayer. Vestments, candles and images were excluded. They wanted to move away from a hierarchical church toward a “Priesthood of all believers.”

In the 20th century, the post Vatican 3 Catholic church wanted the church to feel more modern. Nuns were allowed to wear the “clothing of the day” and services were conducted in the vernacular.

These tensions are inherent in our religious traditions. The tension between traditional religious music, art, architecture that is set aside for the use of worship and the desire to have a more seamless integration of secular and sacred culture. There is also a tension between ornate and simple that exists. Think of the stark contrasts between the elegant simplicity of the Zen Buddhist tradition, and the ornate art and vibrant colors of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.

The basic argument goes something like this: The time and place we set aside for worship should be special. It should stand apart from the everyday experience. One way to make things special is to make them beautiful. The religious building is like a community center. We bring art or music to share with the whole community, to enhance and transform. The ornate cathedral, the gold lined painting of the Buddha reflect an aesthetic value for abundant color and decoration. The time taken to create a stained class window, or to carve relief art into wood or stone reflects a labor of love, that money and time were put into what is special — and an assumption that this sacred space is worthy of that money and time. Because “sacred” can also mean “worthy of reverence; honor or respect felt or shown”.

Now bring to mind the simple calligraphy stroke on white paper. When Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Unitarian Meeting House in Madison Wisconson, he designed it to almost disappear in to the landscape. The building we now inhabit was designed by the noted architect Joseph Esherick was designed with a simple and elegent aesthetic.

It is said of Esherick:” Esherick rejected formal concepts of beauty and designs his buildings in relation to their specific purposes. He attempted to find new solutions to the problems of form and function. Critical of the aesthetic theory of design, Esherick emphasizes the functionality of a building over its appearance.”

This leads us to another theology of space: aesthetics are not important, should find the sacred in the most ignoble moments and places. The Therevadan Buddhists teach that we must be objective with whatever we meet. We should learn to experience the beautiful and the ugly, the simple and the fancy with the same equanimity. Some religions practice in very ordinary looking buildings, embodying the idea that there is no difference between sacred and secular. This is something I believe that our UU tradition leans toward the Buddhist tradition. We believe that what is worthy is found in our most ordinary lives and places.

Many Unitarian Universalists, and people of other faiths, say that when they are looking for a sacred place, a place that will help them reconnect with themselves, a place that inspires awe, the places they choose are not made by people, but are those places that grow organically out of the earths processes. Our Transcendentalist forerunners grounded their work and writing in the natural world. There is something in the physical and aesthetic properties of the ocean that is undeniably powerful. We feel different with our feet on mountain rocks than we do in this fertile valley. The beauty and scale of a rushing waterfall, the intimate wonder of a humming bird nesting by our kitchen window. The natural places left in our world are truly worthy of reverence, of respect and awe. Nature is also something we are learning ot set aside in this time when human endeavor could easly blanket the earth. If we want those redwood groves, the ocean cost, the waterfalls and nesting birds to renew and restore us, to inspire us with reverence and awe, we will have to set those places aside, to make them sacred in a very literal sense.

This past August, about 50 of us came together for a day long retreat about “Our Sacred Space.” Amy and I wanted to explore this idea of Sacred Space and what it means to us in this particular community. In planning the event, we tried to balance reflective and worship time with time co-creating this space, that’s a theologists way of saying working hard in a way that builds on the hard work the founders of this church and the trees and plants. It turns out the hard work won. We worked on four projects: planting native plants between the street and sidewalk, smoothing and widening our labyrinth, painting a mural in the toddler room, and sewing a rainbow yurt for our young children. Each of these combined beauty, physicality, and an intention for creating welcoming special spaces. The choices we make about how we are with and in our physical space say something about who we are and what we value, an will participate when we create a particular experience when we are here together.

But each time we are together, we co-create this space just by how we are together. Think about a room in your childhood home. Think how that room felt when it was full of people gathering for Thanksgiving dinner. Think about how it felt when you were angry or hurt. This space is like that. We have power not only to create the form and appearance of this place, but how it feels. We do that each time we come in here. If we bring a feeling of love, that love will be reflected back to us, and others around us will pick up that feeling. If we bring our grief, this place will hold our grief. This is a place we want to hold all our human experience, and to hold that for each other as well. So when we gather, we bring foremost qualities of compassion and respect, so that we have space for all the pain and joy and sorrow of each different life. This is why so many churches call themselves a “sanctuary” because at center this needs to be a safe place. Safe enough, respectful enough to bring our most precious, fragile or outrageous selves, and to make ourseves and our community whole again.

Because ultimately the place itself, however beautiful and powerful is secondary. The sacred space we are creating is in our own Self, at the intersection of body, mind and heart. There are many paths to find an inner wholeness, and one of my favorites happens to be yoga. Because whether I lay my mat on industrial carpeting, or a scenic retreat center, I am setting aside time to be in the space of my own body, the space that I inhabit, and to co-create it, to take the unique body I was given, and work to create a more integrated inspired whole.

As my sabbatical came to a close, I wanted to make space for myself for all I had learned, and the experiences I had. Since we live I a small Bay-Area house, I practice yoga in the small home office which contains our family computer, bills, files and books. Though I lay down my mat facing away from the computer, I still find myself bending over towards the bookshelf and thinking “I have got to read that” and then towards my desk noticing my “to do list” thinking “when am I going to return that call!” I decided I wanted to do something with this space that would require some muscle and time, would be beautiful to look at, and would help me remember this intention. So one morning, I took all the little statues and candles and special stones and shells off my bookcase, and stacked them neatly behind the fold out shelf. I set out a few things on the now empty space that reminded me of the qualities I wanted to remember. (Some would go so far as to call this “building an altar”.) I took down a piece of art in a hard frame that faces me while I practice, and replaced it with a hand-dyed flag. Finally I took a sarong that I have often used to cover a table for worship, and sewed ribbons to the top. I installed hooks on the bookcase, and hung the sarong from the hooks.

Now, when I am ready to practice yoga, I untie those ribbons to allow the sarong to cover my bookcase. I throw another scarf over my desk to cover my unfinished work, roll out my mat and props, and put some Ravi Shanker or K&D in the Cd player. It takes a little bit longer, but the time it takes to prepare the space also prepares me to really be present, to really enjoy my practice, to be with whatever may come up during that hour I set aside.