Do you have places of deep spiritual meaning in your life? Do you have places where you go to find calm, strength or to remember the loved ones or some important events in your life? I do have a number of such places and I hope you have them too. Interestingly the Bible is full of such locational references.
Then Gideon built an altar to the LORD, and called it, “The LORD (is) Peace” and it stands at Ophra to this day.
This is just one of many dozens of geographic pointers in the Bible. Altars, towns or hamlets together with many other human structures as well as springs, hills, gulches and rocky outcrops are named and connected with biblical matriarchs, patriarchs, Jesus and his disciples often with similar reminders that those places are there to this very day.
Unfortunately, when we read the biblical stories these days, we often thoughtlessly skip over these verses. But if you study other religions and folklore of other peoples, you soon realize, that these geographical anchors are very important. These locational references are often the very reason for the existence and survival of such stories. They connect the faith and spiritual life with the world around.
This hill was visited by King Arthur, in this pond the princess Libuše (goddess Lada) took her bath, this rocky outcrop in the river is a remnant of the hero Maui’s stone canoe and this puffing volcanic Aeolian Island is a chimney directly from Hephaistos’ workshop.
But what can we do when our religion became global, when the original geographic spiritual roots in Palestine are thousands upon thousands of miles away? What to do with this alienating disconnect between our faith and our surroundings?
Mormons fabricated completely new addenda to the old religion in order to build connection between their faith and their new homes. Other fundamentalists hop these days on jetliners and go for religious pilgrimages, overwhelming those fragile original places in distant lands and turning them into tourist traps and religious Disneylands. While others resign on any connection and create their new, secular, fictitious frames of references lifting them up from modern stories of films and TV - for instance this is Seinfeld’s diner or there is that deli where Harry met Sally...
I believe there is a better way than such fabrications. It consists not in translating and locating those old biblical places, it consists in recognition of special places for our own spiritual journeys. Come this Sunday as we continue our search for new spirituality (or revived spirituality) this time connecting our faith with special meaningful places in our own lives.
Then Gideon built an altar to the LORD, and called it, “The LORD (is) Peace” and it stands at Ophra to this day.
This is just one of many dozens of geographic pointers in the Bible. Altars, towns or hamlets together with many other human structures as well as springs, hills, gulches and rocky outcrops are named and connected with biblical matriarchs, patriarchs, Jesus and his disciples often with similar reminders that those places are there to this very day.
Unfortunately, when we read the biblical stories these days, we often thoughtlessly skip over these verses. But if you study other religions and folklore of other peoples, you soon realize, that these geographical anchors are very important. These locational references are often the very reason for the existence and survival of such stories. They connect the faith and spiritual life with the world around.
This hill was visited by King Arthur, in this pond the princess Libuše (goddess Lada) took her bath, this rocky outcrop in the river is a remnant of the hero Maui’s stone canoe and this puffing volcanic Aeolian Island is a chimney directly from Hephaistos’ workshop.
But what can we do when our religion became global, when the original geographic spiritual roots in Palestine are thousands upon thousands of miles away? What to do with this alienating disconnect between our faith and our surroundings?
Mormons fabricated completely new addenda to the old religion in order to build connection between their faith and their new homes. Other fundamentalists hop these days on jetliners and go for religious pilgrimages, overwhelming those fragile original places in distant lands and turning them into tourist traps and religious Disneylands. While others resign on any connection and create their new, secular, fictitious frames of references lifting them up from modern stories of films and TV - for instance this is Seinfeld’s diner or there is that deli where Harry met Sally...
I believe there is a better way than such fabrications. It consists not in translating and locating those old biblical places, it consists in recognition of special places for our own spiritual journeys. Come this Sunday as we continue our search for new spirituality (or revived spirituality) this time connecting our faith with special meaningful places in our own lives.
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| This is Kīlauea erupting under the Milky Way (and even some shooting stars) - my personal place of spiritual awe and recharging. |
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