Sacred Space

First Unitarian Univeralist Church of Berks County
Rev. Sandra Fees
May 25, 2008
Sacred Space
Page 1 of 4
© 2008, Rev. Sandra Fees
Excerpts may be quoted with attribution.
Since earliest times, human beings have sought to create sacred space.
Our desire to create and experience sacred space continues to this day.
We seek places where we can feel close to our deepest self, connect to
the wider world, and experience the holy.
While once, there were places that were clearly designated as sacred
and others clearly delineated as secular, those lines have become increasingly blurred. The
sacred is everywhere. The sacred exists in all times and all places. If the sacred is everywhere,
then all places are holy. We can encounter the holy as easily in the woods or at home as we do at
church. Any place can be a sacred space.
While we may agree that this bears some truth, in practice we are likely to experience a
difference between a visit to the supermarket or the local landfill than to a church or a park.
Some places are less likely to evoke a sense of sacredness.
What is it then that makes some places seem holy to us? And why is it we still need them at all?
Some of what makes a space holy has to do with intention. It has to do with our own attitude, the
demeanor we bring to a place. A sacred place is a spot where on the whole we behave
differently. We are on our best behavior, you might say. We are called upon to be our best self.
The space is thus sacred because we decide it is. We acknowledge it, perceive it, and experience
it, as sacred, and therefore we treat it differently. We may even find that we treat each other
differently and may even experience a special recognition of the presence of God there.
Usually this means we treat a sacred space with a different level of respect and reverence. When
we come to church, for example, we don’t sit in the pews and eat a big bag of potato chips and
drink soda from a bottle like we might do elsewhere. We mostly don’t bring any food or
beverages into this sanctuary.
By treating this sanctuary with care, we consecrate it. We make and keep it beautiful. We bless it
and set it apart as special and holy, as somehow a bit unlike so much of the rest of what we
encounter in our lives – whether at work, school, or on the highway.
Groups of religious people have collectively chosen to set certain places apart and to designate
them as sacred. We know that Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, synagogues, mosques, cathedrals,
churches, and Sikh gurdwaras have been designed as places of worship. They carry a shared
religious purpose. Religious ceremonies are celebrated there.
People gather to explore the nature of God, to learn about ethics and morality, to understand their
responsibilities to each other and the world, and to explore the meaning of life. Places of worship
emphasize the human journey. They also seek to help each of us find our place in the world and
understand our relationships with ourselves, each other, and God.
Sacred Space (cont’d.)
Rev. Sandra Fees
Page 2 of 4
© 2008, Rev. Sandra Fees
Excerpts may be quoted with attribution.
The Reverend Dr. James Wind, president of the Alban Institute, which is a nonprofit interfaith
organization, says, “These special places make room for our spiritual selves to emerge, for
sacred stories to be told, and life-giving practices to be learned. They make room for us to meet
God, rekindle hope, experience self-emptying love, and face the dark side of our humanness with
the light of grace” (Congregations magazine, “Space Matters”).
This is true of our church. It is one of the primary places where we come to give worth to life, to
explore life’s meaning and purpose, to give thanks, to be held accountable and responsible to
something beyond ourselves and our individual personal existence, to celebrate, and to grow
spiritually as a person of faith. We bring an intention that makes it sacred.
It is also the case that we sometimes develop a reverential attitude toward a particular place
because something of a mystical or spiritual nature has happened in that place. Something fairly
distinctive happened there. The presence of God, for example, may have been experienced in
some unique way by a religious community. For the three Abrahamic faiths, this has occurred on
several occasions in Jerusalem. For Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is sacred
ground. This is the traditional site of Jesus' burial and resurrection.
For Muslims, the Dome of the Rock holds special significance. There, the prophet Muhammad
ascended into heaven. For Jews, the area associated with the second temple, including the
Temple Mount, is most holy.
Places such as these where there has been a manifestation of the divine sometimes become
destinations for religious pilgrims. Pilgrims travel to the site to participate in a shared experience
of God. The faithful gather as part of the much larger body of their faith tradition. They gather to
put flowers on a site, to light candles, to place a symbol there, or to pay tribute.
In many of the world’s religions, pilgrimage is a central tenet of faith. The Islamic tradition is
perhaps the one best known for the role of pilgrimage. Every able-bodied Muslim is expected to
make a pilgrimage once in his or her lifetime. The Hajj is to Mecca, the holiest city of Islam.
There the pilgrims circle the kabbah, which is the house of worship Muslims believe was built by
Adam and later rebuilt by Abraham (“Sacred Space,” Sept 6, 2002, #601, Religion and Ethics
Weekly, Bob Abernathy, anchor).
We Unitarian Universalists also have pilgrimage sites. One is in Boston, another in Transylvania.
I was fortunate, like some of you, to have attended our denomination’s General Assembly in
Boston in 2003 when 10,000 Unitarian Universalists gathered in that city. I also helped lead a
trip to Boston for a young adult group some years ago. I looked upon both as pilgrimages in my
faith tradition.
Boston, you may know, is the site of our denominational headquarters, the Unitarian Universalist
Association, on Beacon Hill. It is where our president, moderator and other staff members are
located. It is where our bookstore is housed.
It is not a coincidence that our headquarters is in Boston. That is considered the birthplace of
Unitarianism in America. King's Chapel was founded there by Anglicans in 1686. That
Sacred Space (cont’d.)
Rev. Sandra Fees
Page 3 of 4
© 2008, Rev. Sandra Fees
Excerpts may be quoted with attribution.
congregation became the first in the United States to embrace Unitarianism in 1784. Boston is
also the birthplace of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
A second pilgrimage site is Transylvania where in the 16th century Unitarian congregations were
established for the first time. They continue there to this day in what is now modern day
Romania. Every year about a thousand Unitarian Universalists visit Transylvanian Unitarians.
They are Unitarians and not Universalists, by the way.
Many of our American and Transylvanian congregations have become what are known as
Partner Churches. These partnerships provide for mutual support and education between North
American and Transylvanian Unitarian churches. I hope in the years to come that our church
might consider a group trip to Boston or Transylvania or both. It is a personal goal of mine to
make a pilgrimage to Transylvania at least once in my lifetime.
I have to admit that when I decided to preach about sacred space on Memorial Day weekend, it
was not at first obvious to me that there was a distinct connection between the two – between
death and sacred space. But of course there is. Sacred space is commonly associated with death.
Death is sacred. Death is one of life’s rites of passage. For many, it is seen as the moment of
connection with God or with divinity. Cemeteries are hallowed places for Christians, Jews, and
Muslims. Hindus burn their dead and pour their ashes into the sacred Ganges River (Religion and
Ethics Weekly). As cremation becomes more common in this country with ashes scattered or
buried in many places, the connection between death and sacred space may begin to change.
On this Memorial Weekend, I do want to give honor to one special place where members of the
military lost their lives and were buried. That is Gettysburg. I have been to Gettysburg a few
times. I remember most vividly a trip there over a decade ago. When we got to the Valley of
Death, the area between Devil's Den and the Round Tops, I fell silent. I had to catch my breath
before I even remembered what had happened there. There the dead of both armies had littered
the landscape after battle. It took over a week for the dead to be buried.
At that place where lives were lost and the dead were eventually buried there is the power of so
many who gave their lives and all who come to pay tribute and remember. It is sacred space.
When Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, he said of the whole area, “Nothing I can
say will make this place sacred because this place is made sacred by the actions of the heroes
who died here.”
The places where our heroes have died and been buried are indeed sacred. Not just Gettysburg of
course. We make memorials to and for them. We mark the places of their dying and return there
to give honor and respect.
So far I have been talking about places that are sacred for groups of people and that have strong
religious connections. There are also private sacred spaces that are just as important to us as the
ones we share as part of a community.
Sacred Space (cont’d.)
Rev. Sandra Fees
Page 4 of 4
© 2008, Rev. Sandra Fees
Excerpts may be quoted with attribution.
Probably each of us has a special place, at least one, that supports our personal spiritual life. Our
private sacred spaces may include tree houses and back porches and home altars and ponds and
gardens and beaches and sailboats and artists’ studios and hammocks and coffee shops and
mountain trails.
What makes a private space holy is not so different from what makes it so for a group of people. A
private space is holy because of the intention and attitude we bring to it. It is holy because we have
had an experience of God there, or an epiphany, or celebration, or even a crisis. It is holy because
it provides us sanctuary, safe haven and healing, in a sometimes precarious world. It is a place we
trust to hold us and the stirrings of our deepest self.
Just as we need sacred space as a community of faith to remind us of the cosmic journey, we
need our own little corner to remind us of our individual life’s journey. Such places remind us of
the deep questions of life and death. They provide the spaciousness to explore the answers and
know what it means to feel fully human. Safe surroundings allow us to be vulnerable to change
and growth. Our imaginations can be set free and our lives dreamed into being.
There can never be too many places we experience as sacred. We need to continue to create
sacred space wherever we can – to bless the places we inhabit and frequent. Our cities need to be
revitalized with beautiful parks, murals, museums, and well-maintained houses of worship. The
whole of creation needs our tender care. Earth, where it has been desecrated, needs to be returned
to Eden.
Perhaps more than anything, we need, as Patrick Murfin said, “to build temples in our hearts.”
These are the temples of our being. Yes, in the end, we need our great cathedrals and our private
altars. So too we need the sacred space that has no walls and lives in the heart. May we build
temples in the heart. May we fill them with wisdom, healthy skepticism, reason, tolerance, and
love. May we build a temple for every heart.
May it be so. Amen.