First Axiom Reflections - Landscapes of the Sacred (Adam Stillabower)

 

One of the most important topics that we covered in this course was Lane’s Axioms, as he described them in Landscapes of the Sacred. I thought it was interesting that, in the first axiom, a place that is considered sacred is not necessarily sacred because the individual chooses the place to worship. According to Lane, the sacred place is not chosen; it chooses. I think that is a really thought-provoking way to examine nature and the part it plays in the stories that we hear about in the past. Orders of things are very important, especially in academic works, so I find myself asking why Lane decided to have this one first. I believe that he thought that, in order to find a sacred place or location, one could not start by choosing a place. He wants the reader to find the intrinsic meaning and spiritual significance of a particular place without feeling like they had to specifically choose the location.

This reasoning and feelings are still applicable to the second Axiom; a sacred place in an ordinary place, ritually made extraordinarily. So while the place itself chooses to be sacred to you, it is the ritualistic reverence for the place that makes it extraordinary. I think this point is powerful because that means that, even as we are busy in our everyday lives, we can have our own spot that does not need to be spectacular in any way that we can use to reset and recenter ourselves. This place does not need to hold any significance to anyone else, it becomes special to us once we ritualistically assign meaning to the calling that it provides to us.