Sacred Spaces--Ch.3

          Back before our parents scared us straight from going outside after dark and forbidding to be outside in the neighborhoods once the streetlights came on, nature was a calming place and used for spiritual invigoration and inspiration. The serene views of the mountains that are key to the landscape in my favorite place of all time, Honduras, Berry denotes the religious emphasis on mountains as a site of transformation. For example, we know the transfiguration in the catholic tradition was on a mountain and several mountains are mentioned in the Bible as holy places like Mount Sinai where the 10 commandments were given to Moses, the Mount of Olives where Jesus prays before his crucifixion and Mount Zion which is where Solomon’s Temple will eventually be built amongst others notable ones. If we think back individually to our most inspirational times where we truly felt connected to the world, a higher power, or our religion, I believe many of us would have pinpointed that feeling somewhere in nature. For me, it’s the mountains in Honduras and the vast landscape of glorious rocky mounds as far as the eye can see in the horizon. For others it’s the calming water than can be symbolic of the living water often depicted in religious accounts and even reminiscent of baptism. Again for others a quiet and serene forest brings forth the notion of a sacred space simply for its peace and tranquility.

We engage in nature because when we are physically active it forms and molds us physically, and when we expand our horizons to venture out in the world it expands us mentally and when we truly stop to take everything in and assess the beauty that pure, organic nature has to offer, I argue it stretches and expands us emotionally and spiritually. This challenges us to protect wild landscapes and what Berry notes as the “romantic soteriology” of nature so that we can preserve the beautiful landscape for our future generations to come. Whether you’re hiking around the LSU lakes for self-gratification for the pure accomplishment factor, or walking the El Camino for a spiritually and physically invigorating awakening, nature is a sacred place and deserves to be protected, especially by groups like the YMCA, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society etc. Berry mentions in chapter two of his book Devoted Nature. Whether it’s a Native American using nature as a religion or Christians reading and relating to depictions of nature in the Bible to missionaries and pilgrimages around the world, exploring the vast environment around us, protecting these scared spaces is a must in order to preserve the spirituality nature evokes if we simply immerse ourselves in its beauty and embrace the insight it has to offer us.