The Emergent Sacred
In the summer of 2023, an amalgamation of dread, familial loss, and a malaise of personal and professional pressures was bearing down on my shoulders. It was a season of turmoil. A season of apprehension. When work called me to Chicago for a series of meetings, I was expecting merely a brief reprieve from this milieu.
I was touring the Chicago Botanic Garden before my meetings began when I wandered through the Japanese section of the gardens. Between the ginkgos and willows was a small island called Horaijima, or the Island of Everlasting Happiness. This small island, with its manicured lawn and well-trimmed pines, symbolizes a land of immortals where the souls of the living depart too. There are no bridges to the island, just a stone path trailing off into the water that resumes on the far shore. Only those who have left their body are meant to walk the path.
Fresh off a six-hour drive, meandering in both body and mind, I first faced the white stones and bronze plaque detailing the meaning of the island. I was struck with an immediate vision of my then recently departed great-grandmother playing on the island with her beloved Australian Shepherds. Their crystal blue eyes glancing at me for a moment before returning to their game of fetch. I pictured myself one day sauntering across the pond, joining the souls of those I loved in an eternity of watching the breezy waves ripple against the grass under the tepid June sun.
That day cast a long shadow of tranquility over me. My tumult was not fully resolved, but I did find an enduring sense of peace since my stroll through the garden. There was no blinding light or booming voice resulting in a grand awakening. More a slow, emerging comfort with the unknown.
Over the years Horaijima has become something of a sacred place for me. A space I return to when existential questions boil over into a consuming panic. An anchor for contemplation and a source of spiritual energy. Recently, a friend of mine who works at the garden sent me a rock from Horaijima after I told him this story. It felt like being sent a rock from heaven itself.
Next time I journey to the shores of Lake Michigan, I intend to make a pilgrimage to this horticultural sanctum.
Back in Columbia, there was a large oak tree along a creekside trail. Nestled within this little grove there is an oval path extending from the base of the tree, around the hollow, and back to the sun-lit entrance. Stepping off the path and walking in a circle around the tree turned into something of a ritual for me.
Whenever I visited, I would use the oval as a procession in honor of the seasons, saying a small sort of prayer as I walked along the path. Say it was summer, I would start at the base of the tree giving thanks (to whom or what, I’m not yet sure) for the warmth and vitality of the season. Along the first curve, I would then wish for a bountiful and gentle autumn. Upon hitting the apex of the oval, I would contemplate the winter, far off in the future, opposite the warmth we currently cherish. Finally, rounding the last curve I would end the oval anticipating the growth to be experienced in the upcoming spring.
Using this tree as an anchor, the hollow became a place where I would go to contemplate the changing of the seasons, and the associated emotional and natural sensations associated with the cycle. I didn’t go into the grove with the conscious desire to create a spiritual activity. The arrangement of the tree with the path attracted my interest and soon a spiritual practice emerged out of the relationship between the tree, the path, and myself.
These sorts of bespoke rituals, spaces, and objects have grown in importance to me over the years. While I continue a level of involvement with more recognized faith traditions, my material engagement ranges from limited to tenuous. My spirituality is increasingly defined by this organic evolution.
Despite the importance of these practices in helping me navigate the immaterial, I keep finding myself burdened by a persistent sense of amateurishness. As though these practices, spaces, and beliefs are inherently inferior when compared to traditions with more legacy behind them. It feels that since my time at Horaijima, the stone I was gifted, or the tree I venerated are all outside of the bounds of a recognized tradition, using terms like sacred or pilgrimage disparages established religions and the beliefs of billions of people. But I cannot deny that the feelings these spaces engendered are more powerful than any I had in a cathedral, church, or shrine.
But as I read more about the history of various world religions, I began to question this notion of legitimization by legacy.
In Jerusalem, there is a site called the Garden Tomb. It is an ancient tomb carved into a sun-worn outcropping on the fringes of the old city. Despite its likely construction date being centuries before Christ’s passion, the site has attracted pilgrims from around the world (mostly of evangelical persuasions) who revere the site as the place of Jesus’ entombment and subsequent resurrection. These worshipers are put off by their perceived sacrilegiousness of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is more widely recognized as the site of Christ's death and resurrection. The highly ornamental nature of the church runs counter to protestant sensibilities, which drove 19th-century worshipers to seek out a more naturalistic and austere alternative.
Furthermore, many of the saints within Catholicism can be traced to pre-Christian pagan figures, with their canonization being a part of a process of cultural harmonization. In Ireland, Brigit, a member of the mythical Tuatha Dé Dannan, had a sacred fire in her honor maintained in the town of Kildare where priestesses appealed for the protection of the herds and crops. Coincidentally, Saint Brigid is said to have been born in Kildare, with the nuns of her convent keeping a similar flame in her honor. A similar phenomenon is the tradition of folk saints, where communities honor individuals seen as protecting their communities such as healers or heroes, despite the church’s stance being these are false idols. The figure Jesús Malverde has become such a figure in Mexico, serving as a Robin Hood figure and defender of the poor that victims of poverty and oppression appeal to in times of hardship.
To me, this speaks to a broader human drive to define the spiritual ourselves, that the sacred emerges from ourselves and our interactions with one another and the natural world. Whether it’s negotiated within an institutional arrangement or assembled through a grassroots fashion, this is a natural spark living within all of us.
This organic evolution of individual spirituality resonates with Charles Taylor’s precept that secularization is not the world minus the sacred equals the secular, but instead that secularization is a reimaging of the sources of meaning outside of dogmatic institutions. The material world is made up of a vast array of interactions between us, others, and the spaces we inhabit. The ascription of meaning onto those spaces is a natural directive within all of us. The world is enriched when the same interactions can hold multiple interpretations depending on the occupant.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim posits that religion provides participants with authority, cohesion, and purpose. For worshipers, their spiritual life is a prescriptive force that lays out a path along which we follow, and from walking this path we can find our place in the world. Emergent spirituality upends this notion. Far from a force of universal imposition, organized religion looks more like a constant negation between a doctrinal core and a diverse assemblage of beliefs and cultures. If any one church is more an amalgamation of an array of convictions, then the cohesion and purpose one receives from organized worship are more a function of communal interaction instead of the unifying force of scripture. And if established religions are a mere negotiation between the ministry and laity, what distinction do they have against incipient spirituality?
In an essay titled Perception of Sacred Space, geographers Richard Jackson and Roger Henrie appraise the processes in which individuals define the sacred from the profane in terms of physical space. In it, they write:
“Places serve as reference points for bringing order to the chaos of profane space. Usually, they serve as points where man can communicate with his god or gods. Temples, shrines, cathedrals, sacred groves, mountains or trees may serve as the focus of such mystico-religious sacred space. They are venerated not for their own sake, but for their perceived facilitation of access to supernatural power (emphasis mine).”
The construction of the sacred is an activity woven into our essential nature. Whether it’s within the boundaries of institution or not, we attribute meaning to a wide array of places and objects. Recognizing this fact and embracing it has unlocked a new horizon for my spiritual development. I hope the wider recognition of this reality leads to a broader engagement with religion as something that surfaces from within.
What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening to
Terra Affirma: A Hybrid Wild: A comic celebrating the new ecosystems formed in the shadows of our cities.
How Italy got its citizens — and me — to adopt a rigorous recycling scheme: To create a circular economy, one must design a system to make recycling easy.