Max Cornett- Landscape of the Sacred and the Axioms

 I.  Sacred place is not chosen, it chooses.  The leaves and gravel crunch underneath my feet as I walk up the steep incline. My nose, cold and aching from the wind starts to run. I glance behind me and hear laughter as a smile forms underneath the scarf that’s wrapped around my chin and neck. The four friends that I’m with all make eye contact with me as I slow down, eager to stay with the pack instead of picking up pace. I take my hand out of my pockets and reach for my best friend Lizzie’s hand, grasping it tightly as our fingers intertwine. We stare at each other for a moment before looking straight forward again, climbing the mountain, step after step. For 10 more minutes, the five of us make small talk and share laughs before reaching the top of the mountain, the sun gently setting behind the golden glow of orange and yellow leaves, making everything feel peaceful and right. There was something about this place, something about the top of this mountain- one that I don’t even know the name of somewhere deep in Virginia- that called out to me. The sun seemed to wipe me clean while the air cleansed my anxious mind. An intense calm washes over me as I drop Lizzie’s hand and step into the light, balancing on the edge of a high up rocky hill. My eyes seem to close on their own as tears begin to roll down my face. I am breathing. Just breathing. I am at peace. I am content. 

II. Sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary. I count the brick steps leading up to my grandma’s front door, always leading with my right foot. With 13 in total, I both start and end the steps with the same foot, a perfect and complete sequence of events. The door, a dark greyish blue is peeling in some places and always unlocked, ready to open for anyone needing a home. As the door creaks open, the smell of old magazines, crayons and boiled collards greets me. Home sweet home. Growing up with two parents who worked full time jobs my whole life, I spent more hours at my grandma’s house than I did my own. The house, yellow and always cluttered, became a home base and safe-haven for me that was filled with love, validation, and kindness. To everyone else including my older sister, the house was just another house, a structure with basic amenities that provided warmth and comfort. But to me, this place was a holy conglomeration of safety, respect, adoration, intelligence. My grandma tells me that she believes the two of us were made out of the same stars- kindred spirits. The house was our galaxy, a place that others orbited in, but one that surrounded us with light and belonging. The house is not fancy, it’s not updated or even clean most of the time. But it was time and time again my safety, a place of worship, a place of Divine affection. A place that became my stronghold.

III. Sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. The glass doors on the side of the church swing open as my mother enters first, then my sister, me, and my dad last. My dad hurries to the front of our small pack to usher us down the aisle, leading us to the same pew we always sit in, third front the front, left-hand side. The lightly colored wood is cold as my hand reaches down, balancing my weight before I sit. Looking around, everyone is talking to their neighbors or praying, falling into communication with God in whatever way they can. There is noise all around me, but I feel as though I am locked into silence. I look to my right as the statue of Jesus hanging on the cross stares down at me, eyes half closed in painful resignation. Why can’t I hear him? Why do I feel so misplaced? I look to my left as my family sits in a line, my mom turned towards my sister and my dad so that all I see is her back, shoulders moving up and down as she laughs at a joke one of them has told. I turn back to the statue, examining it as I had for years before. I looked straight ahead at the altar, tall white candles lit on either side, watching the fire dance back and forth. 

IV. The impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal.  You can’t out run your own shadow. Tethered by light, there is no escape from your body as the two mimic each other in a constant mime. Shadows are tethered to us as much as our souls are tethered to our bodies. We can lose ourselves, remake ourselves, but still keep the same soul. Our bodies change, they can be altered, idealized, torn apart, remade, but our souls stay permanent. Sometimes we can see our souls right in front of us, laid out on paper or captured in a photograph. We can point to the physical embodiment of our spirits and feel validated, our souls looking right back at us in perfect representation. Other times our souls feel distant, too far to reach and rolling fast down a hill, just out of touch. We feel misplaced, heavy, forgotten. We all forget who we are in moments, like we’ve been re-scripted into a new character. But, regardless of the distance, we always have our souls. Each one of us is a piece of divinity incarnate, a sacred space in the ground we stand in, simultaneously distant from ourselves and close in our own bodies. We bump into divinity every day, exist in it, bathe in it. We are each a sacred place as our souls move around, close and far, near and distant.