To Find A Place:

Sacred Living in a Secular World

By Don Hudson

It is no secret that most of us live hectic, frenzied lives. One writer has said that we live lives of "quiet desperation." But I would say that, as people living in a postmodern culture, we instead live lives of frenzied desperation. As a culture, our complaints have become so commonplace that they have slipped into surrealistic cliches: "Life is so very complicated-I wish we could live more simply." "My grandparents never lived with this kind of stress-I want to go back and live like they did." "I need to slow down, but I just can't." If we took the time to think about it, most of us would have to admit we live very differently than we want or dream.

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of our postmodern world is that we have more capacity for communication than any other time in the history of humanity-and yet, there is a widespread feeling of disconnection. We are preoccupied with distractions while at the same time being imbued with a stark feeling of loneliness. We are surrounded with satellite television, radio, e-mail, computer networking, fax machines, and of course the mother of all beasts, the internet. There is a profusion of data, but very little knowledge that connects with people; there is a deluge of information, but very little wisdom that helps us live skillfully.

Please don't misunderstand me: I am not a closet Luddite decrying the evils of the information age. We live in an exciting age, in which technological developments are improving our lives and can carry the Christian message into heretofore undreamed of arenas. However, the information age appears to accelerate the world we live in: we are in a dead heat to speed up our lives. We end up living similarly with the way we buy computers and modems-the faster, the better. Time has become one of the most dreaded enemies of the twentieth century. We waste it, we kill it, we endure it, we hasten it, we spend it. If you are in any way like me, then, you too realize how rarely you enjoy time.

A few weeks ago, I was standing in line at a bagel shop and saw a dear friend whom I rarely have the time to see. (Once again our schedules dictate our distance.) He and I were both talking about how busy and complicated our lives had become in the last few years. And not all of our conversation was postmodern whining. As we discussed the madness of our lives, we also were thankful that we were in vocations we thoroughly enjoy. Then we moved to one of those questions that will never be answered: "How could we make our lives more simple?" I gave my usual response: "I hope my busyness is temporary. Once my dissertation is over, then-" I yammered on. Somehow every time I say this, I know I'm returning to one of my favorite countries-the land of wishful thinking.

My friend then piped up and said his wife was reading a new best-selling book on living more simply. "Great book," he said, "if you are independently wealthy, live in the country, don't have kids, and don't want to accomplish anything significant for other people." Being a trained counselor, I noted a touch of sarcasm; however, being a card-carrying cynic I joined in with him and burned the book in intellectual effigy right there in the bagel shop. (I understand the book really is a good one-but to date I've been too busy to read it.)

After my friend and I finished our conversation on the simple life and parted, I drove to work thinking about sacred place-that's right, sacred place. More specifically, I began to think of a particular sacred place in my own life. In my mind I went back to a stately willow tree standing at the corner of my grandparents' farm in east Tennessee. As a young boy, I with my mother and sister lived on this farm for just a few years.

During my time there I spent many days playing in the barn, fishing in the pond, and scavenging in the woods. There were other days too when I would spend long moments under the willow tree looking out over the farm. I could sit under the tree, lean against the huge, smooth stump, and look out between the hanging willow branches. To this day I fondly recall an occasional summer breeze gently sweeping the branches aside, as if God were parting the curtain of my personal tabernacle. That place beneath the tree became for me a sanctuary, a holy of holies where, even as a young boy, I found myself returning again and again to think about my life.

That tree was, and still is today, one of my sacred places-my sanctum sanctorum. Simply put, it was a sacred place for me because I met God under that tree, and God met me. Though I have not been back to that tree in almost thirty years, while I was driving to work in my car that day I remembered my willow tree, and in so doing I returned to a sacred place. Remembering my willow tree, and thinking of that sacred place, was an answer to my question: "How can I live a more simple life?"

Perhaps a better question would be, "How do I live a sacred life?" If we are to live well-if we are going to live sacred lives-then we must have sacred places that bid us to come back again and again.

Growing up in my church, I was taught that secular living meant drinking alcohol, sporting long hair (over the ears), wearing jeans to church, or associating with someone who associated with someone else who associated with Billy Graham thirty years ago. (I remember passionate sermons comprised entirely of these four points. Back then I would listen with great confusion because I knew this particular pastor consumed loads of soft drinks, sported a very angry crewcut, wore atrocious polyester suits, and ministered to a congregation where one-third of his members associated with the tobacco industry, since they were tobacco farmers. Hypocrisy lurks behind every legalism.)

I have long gotten over my youthful agreement with such teaching and the later guilt of my disagreement. Yet even back then, I was troubled by this small definition of sacred living. Was there not more to the Christian life than an obsessive focus on subcultural trivialities? Is there not more to secular living and thus, in opposition, more to sacred living? I believe so. The purpose of this essay is to talk about one element of living well, or living sacredly, not all the aspects. (A note of caution: though I believe that sacred place is an important, even necessary component of the Christian life, it is not the only or the most important component. I want to speak of sacred place because of what the scriptures say about it and because of what it can bring to our hectic, postmodern lives.)

In the beginning I confronted the idea of sacred place-or, rather, sacred place encountered me-in a class devoted to the study of ancient Israelite worship. From that moment on, the concept of sacred place has aroused my interest and captured my imagination. Something about sacred place seemed to me to be meaningful and therefore irresistibly compelling.

We will begin our study by exploring the theory of sacred place relying heavily upon one of the most important books from this century, The Sacred and the Profane, by Mircea Eliade {1}. In the first section, I will try to answer the question, "What is sacred place?" This invokes the question, "What does sacred place bring to my life?" In the next section, we will look at the concept of sacred space as it occurs in the book of Genesis. We will ask, in other words, "Does God say anything about sacred place-and if so, what does he say?" In the last major section we will look at sacred space in the worship of ancient Israel. In essence, the question here is, "Does sacred place have anything to do with our worship of God?" The conclusion will return to a previous question: "What will sacred place bring to my secular world?"{2}

The Reality of Sacred Space

Mircea Eliade, in The Sacred and Profane, begins his discussion of sacred place as it relates to the idea of the "holy" in Rudolph Otto's work Das Heilige (The Holy){3}. Eliade agrees with Otto that the sacred is not some ethereal abstraction that has very little to do with our everyday lives, but is instead a personal "power" coming forth from God. This "awesome power" brings "mystery and majesty" to our secular lives, thus having the potential to make them sacred. The Holy One, that is, the infinite presence of the "wholly other," encounters the finite human with the sacred and thus brings transcendence to the human world. In other words, when we think of the sacred, we cannot do so without thinking of God as one who is wholly other than we are, and he chooses to break through to our mundane worlds-to the regular, everydayness of life-and reveals himself to us.

In keeping with this thinking, sacred place is a place where God meets us. (My guess is that even now as you are reading this, you are thinking of places where God has broken through and met you. You most likely have a place or places in mind; those are your sacred places.) Furthermore, sacred place consists of three very different but important realities: it is a place that is set apart from all the other places in the world, it is a place where we meet God and he meets us, and it is place that evokes our communion and worship. In summary, then, sacred place can be any disrupted, set-apart place that calls us to worship and provides a context where we can connect with God.

In his chapter on "Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred," Eliade presents the three building blocks of every sacred place: disruption, orientation, and communication. I highlight these categories not only because they are important for understanding sacred place, but also because they are categories that we will see again in the book of Genesis and later as we study Israelite worship. Moreover, these concepts proceed developmentally from one point to the other: the disruption of God leads to orient ourselves in a chaotic (profane) world and then to communicate with our God.

Sacred space brings beauty and order to our lives, but it always begins with difference. Recall my memory of the willow tree: Most days I would play in the barn, fish in the pond, or gallivant through the woods. But neither the barn, the pond, nor the woods ever became a sacred place for me. I recall them with great fondness, but there is no great "difference" between the three.

However, when I compare one of the three with the willow tree, immediately there is no comparison. The willow tree is sacred. I played in the barn, but I connected with God under the willow tree. There were a number of times that I believe God met me in one of the most confusing times in my life. Many days I thought of the willow branches as the wings of God, and the breeze to be the touch of his beguiling but elusive presence.

Sacred place then, in Eliade's thinking, "breaks upon" a profane world-a world in which there is no difference. As opposed to so much of modern or new age thinking, a sacred place is a place of disruption and difference. (As we shall see later, it was the redemptive violence of God that broke into a chaotic, profane world in the beginning and in this way he created the world.) Profane space or chaotic space would be a world where there are no differences, where place is the same in that one place and is no more significant than another. Creation without difference would be a creation without sacred place. The whole world then would be profane space which, of course, is a world of chaos, confusion, and relativity.

Let me put it this way: Think of a world with no differences-no female to the male; no African-American to the Caucasian; no eastern way of thinking to challenge western thinking, no Episcopalian to the Baptist, and so on. In fact, those who dream of a world with no differences are those who dream of a profane world: racists, fascists, nationalists, and sexists. Thus, throughout history, sameness without difference has been the destruction of national, social, and individual boundaries.

Throughout history, difference or differences have intrigued and terrified humanity. To be in the presence of something or someone different evokes awe and wonder. When we experience difference, we are stopped for a moment, and we gaze or think. (I will never forget, for example, the first time I sat under the willow tree.) Yet something more sinister happens at the same time: difference threatens my world, my life, my thinking. Difference makes me think of someone other than myself. What am I to do in the presence of the wholly other? That is why God is so terrifying: when he breaks through to us, he evokes awe and wonder, but he also evokes loss, the loss of a world defined merely by myself and for myself.

Sacred place is a disruption of difference-a place set apart from other places, the intrusion of God into my mundane world. Out of the everyday sameness of life come a few moments whrld. In other words, when we think of the sacred, we cannot do so without thinking of God as one who is wholly other than we are, and he chooses to break through to our mundane worlds-to the regular, everydayness of life-and reveals himself to us.

In keeping with this thinking, sacred place is a place where God meets us. (My guess is that even now as you are reading this, you are thinking of places where God has broken through and met you. You most likely have a place or places in mind; those are your sacred places.) Furthermore, sacred place consists of three very different but important realities: it is a place that is set apart from all the other places in the world, it is a place where we meet God and he meets us, and it is place that evokes our communion and worship. In summary, then, sacred place can be any disrupted, set-apart place that calls us to worship and provides a context where we can connect with God.

In his chapter on "Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred," Eliade presents the three building blocks of every sacred place: disruption, orientation, and communication. I highlight these categories not only because they are important for understanding sacred place, but also because they are categories that we will see again in the book of Genesis and later as we study Israelite worship. Moreover, these concepts proceed developmentally from one point to the other: the disruption of God leads to orient ourselves in a chaotic (profane) world and then to communicate with our God.

Sacred space brings beauty and order to our lives, but it always begins with difference. Recall my memory of the willow tree. Most days I would play in the barn, or fish in the pond, or gallivant through the woods. But neither the barn, the pond, nor the woods ever became a sacred place for me. I recall them with great fondness, but there is no great "difference" between the three.

However, when I compare one of the three with the willow tree, it becomes immediately clear there is no comparison. The willow tree is sacred. I played in the barn, but I connected with God under the willow tree. There were a number of times I believe God met me there in one of the most confusing times in my life. Many days I thought of the willow branches as the wings of God, and the breeze to be the touch of his beguiling but elusive presence.

Sacred place then, in Eliade's thinking, "breaks upon" a profane world-a world in which there is no difference. As opposed to so much of modern or new age thinking, a sacred place is a place of disruption and difference. (As we shall see later, it was the redemptive violence of God that broke into a chaotic, profane world in the beginning, and in this way he created the world.) Profane space or chaotic space would be a world where there are no differences, a world where all place is the same-where one place is no more significant than another. Creation without difference would be a creation without sacred place. The whole world then would be profane space, which of course is a world of chaos, confusion, and relativity.

Let me put it this way: Think of a world with no differences-no female to the male; no African-American to the Caucasian; no eastern way of thinking to challenge our western thinking; no Episcopalian to the Baptist, and so on. In fact, those who dream of a world of no differences are those who dream of a profane world: racists, fascists, nationalists, and sexists. Thus, throughout history, sameness without difference has been the destruction of national, social, and individual boundaries.

Throughout history, difference or differences have intrigued and terrified humanity. To be in the presence of something or someone different evokes awe and wonder. When we experience difference, we are stopped for a moment and we gaze or we think. I will never forget the first time I sat under the willow tree. But something more sinister happens at the same time: difference threatens my world, my life, my thinking. Difference makes me think of someone other than myself. What am I to do in the presence of the wholly other? That is why God is so terrifying: when he breaks through to us, he evokes awe and wonder-but he also evokes loss, the loss of a world defined merely by myself and for myself.

Sacred place is a disruption of difference, a place set apart from other places, the intrusion of God into my mundane world. Out of the everyday sameness of life come a few moments where God meets us, and we call those places of meeting sacred. It is the disruption of chaos or sameness that brings sacred place into being.

Without sacred places in a world of relativity and sameness, we are left with no way of orienting ourselves. Another way of saying this is that in our postmodern culture individuals look to themselves to orient their worlds. Yet we need more than ourselves to bring meaning to our worlds; we are in need of a God who will meet us and guide us along the way.

Think of your own sacred places. Whenever I have taught on this topic, I have been amazed by the response to my question, "What are your sacred places?" I have heard everything from being alone in a car, to spending time in a certain place in the desert, a barn, or a field, to a particular table in a coffee shop. Countless women have said that one of their sacred places is the bathtub because that is the one place they can relax, get away, and meditate.

Now think of what your sacred places bring to your life. Do you not return either in memory or in reality to make sense of our world? To go there, reflect, and try to answer the good questions? To have a place where you can meet God and move on from there? There are many days when I cannot wait to get back to my sacred place, for it is the break effected in space that allows the world to be constituted; it reveals the fixed point, the central axis for all future orientation. "When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany (revelation of God), there is not only a break in the homogeneity (sameness) of space; there is also revelation of an absolute reality. . . ."{4}

Eliade reminds us that we yearn for sacred place so we can find a fixed point in an otherwise relative world. Humanity in this unsafe world is continually in danger of becoming awash in a sea of chaotic relativity, which would once again mean the loss of the self because there exists no contradistinction between selves. Our sacred places function as a fixed reference point, a tangible north star to navigate our way through our secular worlds. And by giving us a fixed reference point, sacred place makes sense of our lives.

Sacred places bring difference and orientation to our lives. In this final concept we need to understand the goal of orienting our lives around the sacred: communication with God. No doubt, sacred space exists for the primary purpose of placing us in communion with the sacred world. Because we live in a secular world, because we no longer live in the garden, we experience great alienation, and it is here that sacred place offers the potential avenue to bridge the gap between the secular and the sacred.

Differentiation affords the opportunity to define who we are in the presence of God and other people, to distinguish ourselves in the midst of sameness. Orientation provides a place to move out of and a north star to head for. To this day I draw encouragement by remembering the willow tree, because it was there that God met me. When God is most silent in my life, remembering the place beneath the tree gives me the hope that he will meet me again.

As a result of the fall we no longer live in a sacred world, and so we are disconnected from God and those with whom we are in relationship. One of the great sins of the secular world is alienation or disconnection. Sacred place can be an avenue to repair alienated relationship; it evokes speech and conversation where there once was only a deafening silence and confusion. This is the irony of sacred place. In the end, it is not about place but relationship. Difference, orientation, and communication are essential categories in sacred space to bring us into relationship with God and others. In the most basic terms, sacred place is the context for relationship. Our sacred places are places where we commune with God, where we connect with the sacred world.

Let's turn now to the book of Genesis to observe these three building blocks under the categories of sacred place.

In the first place, Genesis begins with God speaking into the chaos of the profane world-the formlessness, the meaninglessness, the darkness, the omnipresent profane space.{5} Creation does not begin with the god on his "princely throne" as in the Akkadian creation epic or the dismembering violence of the Babylonian creation account, Enuma {6}. God's spoken word encounters the wasteland of the world to disrupt chaos and bring beauty and order from that chaos. God speaking into the chaos was a fearsome intrusion of word into silence. There is a violent disruption of God's word, but it is a disruption for the sake of order and beauty. In the beginning was the word, and this word is a disruption; it creates a sacred world out of a profane world.

It is important to realize that the real problem of creation in the Genesis creation story is the contest between sacred and profane space. In other ancient creation stories, the obstacles are relational-the gods rage and war against one another. In Genesis, the Divine Warrior wars not against other gods but against the profane world that is "formless and void." It is impossible to have relationship in a profane world. The intrusion of God into profane space is required before relationship can exist.

The creation account of Genesis 1 is a creation of disruption and difference. In Genesis 1:3-5 God speaks light into darkness. Then in verses 6-8, God speaks the "dome" into existence, which once again is an act of separation of the waters from the waters. In verses 9-10 the waters are again gathered together and divided by the new dry land. Verses 14-17 portray God as creating the "greater and the lesser" lights to separate the day from the night. In verses 20-21 the creatures created on the fifth day are classified separately according to their environments-the swarming creatures in the sea and the flying creatures in the sky. The creatures in verses 24-25 are to bring forth according to their kind, and they are divided into wild animals, domestic animals, and crawling creatures. The final division in this creation story, which is the pinnacle, tells us that humanity was created in God's image, but that image is once again an image of difference. Humanity is made in the image of God, and that image is both male and female (verses 26-28).

We can observe disruption and difference in comparing and contrasting the differences between the two stories of creation in Genesis 1 and 2. In 1:1-2:4 God is distantly involved in the creative activity by merely speaking creation into existence. In the second creation story (2:4b-25), God is intimately involved in creating humanity: he fashioned man out of the earth (7), he breathed life into man (7), and he planted a garden in Eden (8) {7}.

The creation of the world, the making of sacred place, proceeds by the disruption of God's word, which begins with the difference between light and darkness and ends with the ultimate difference-the female and the male made in the image of God.

The competing ideas of sameness and difference are prevalent throughout the Genesis creation account. This can be seen most clearly in man's first words affirming oneness or sameness: "This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh" (2:23). But in the very next verse God requires that the man leave his mother and father (2:24) and cling to his wife so that they "become one flesh." So which is true? Are male and female the same, and are God and humanity the same {8}? Or are male and female, God and humanity, different?

Of course the answer to both is yes-but it is this contrast of difference and sameness that has been humanity's dilemma since the beginning of time. Most of our social and psychological problems stem from this dilemma of sameness and difference. A few examples come to mind: codependency is the focus on sameness to the exclusion of difference; and schizophrenia is a radical focus on difference to the exclusion of sameness. Please don't mistake my meaning: I'm not saying that this is the problem in its entirety, or that this will solve the problems in their entirety. But it is interesting to note that these universal concepts are lived out in may arenas.

I have noted how God spoke the word and in so doing established sacred space and banished the chaos of profane space. We see the absolute opposite of this redemptive speaking in Genesis 3. The first man, created in God's very image, gloriously named all the animals (2:19) and his mate (2: 23). The poetry of Genesis 2:23 is particularly beautiful because it expresses in relational terms the intimate connectedness of the different sexes. However, in Genesis 3:1-7, the serpent tempts the woman not by explicitly lying to her but by enticing her to profane the tree which God had set apart "in the middle of the garden."

I say the serpent is "not explicitly lying" because humanity did not die immediately, the man and woman did experience the knowledge of good and evil, and their eyes were opened just as the serpent had prophesied. Of course, I am fully aware of 2 Corinthians 11:3, "But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning. . . ." The question though must be asked as to how the serpent deceived Eve by his "cunning." Is it not that the serpent representing primeval chaos used truth to entice humanity to profane that which the Lord God had set apart, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The temptation then was more a seduction to cross the boundaries of the sacred, which would in turn imbue existence with profane space.

Profane space-that is, the fall of humanity-did not enter solely by the deception of Eve, as much as the church has taught this. Rather it also entered through the silence of Adam, with his refusal to speak into the chaos of that particular moment. In the ancient near east, a serpent typically represented deceit, confusion, and chaos. The serpent reintroduces chaos into the sacred world and Adam, though he was there in the conversation ("and she gave the fruit to her husband, who was with her"), fails to speak. Therefore the fall began not with Eve's deception but with the silence of the man which was the exact reversal of the Creator's speaking into chaos to banish the profane space. At the point when the serpent interjected seduction and confusion, Adam had the opportunity to be "creative" in two ways, positive and negative. Adam could have been creative in the sense of speaking however he deemed necessary to counteract the serpent-to create ex nihilo-and to be creative, as his God was in speaking word as sacred space to expel the profane space incarnated by the serpent. The consequence of Adam's determined lack of communication was the immediate loss of communion with his wife and his God. Silence ushered profane space back into the world.

Immediately after eating the fruit the eyes of the man and the woman were opened, and 3:7 states that "they knew they were naked." Genesis 2:25 stipulates that before the fall the man and woman were naked but there was no shame in the difference of their nakedness. Now, as a result of this sin, difference leads to shame, which in turn leads to disorientation and silence. The man and woman hide their most private and unique anatomical distinctions with clothing (3:7), and they hide from the creator as he warmly seeks them (3:8-9). Shame as a result of profane space no longer allows the presence of relationship; silence is the consequence of silence. The human body and sexuality-which was the act of converging the otherness into oneness-was no longer viewed as sacred space. Humanity must then dismember and silence the bodies of others to remove difference.

No longer would the sacred exist in perfect form and without existential tension on this earth. And no longer would humanity have direct access to the world of the sacred. With the expulsion of humanity from the garden, from sacred space, came the loss of difference, orientation, and communication. Humanity thus lives within a world that co-mingles sacred and profane space. Thus, humanity is compelled to live in the midst of the ambiguity and the ambivalence it evokes. Sameness is worshiped, and difference as threat must be exterminated-hence, sexism, racism, and genocide. Orientation is stifling and something to be thrown off, or it is to be neurotically idolized in an attempt to refuse the chaos of life. And communication is both feared and championed: feared because humanity is not comfortable with presence or absence, so speech becomes silence or violence, and championed in such a way that leads wholly otherness exclusively toward the self.

And yet, humanity made in the image of God-humanity as sacred space-yearns for the recapturing of sacred place that once was theirs. Difference, orientation, and communication are divinely imparted truths that terrify humanity, but at the same time they cannot be resisted. We yearn to bring sacredness to our hectic, alienated, secular lives.

Sacred Space in Ancient Israelite Worship

Israel as a community based the creation of the world on a profound understanding of sacred space as being foundational to the comprehension of themselves, their God, and their relationships. According to Genesis 3 and all subsequent narratives, humanity does not exist in perfect harmony with sacred space. God no longer "walks in the cool of the evening," and so humanity must seek redemptive wholeness through other means than the direct presence that the garden afforded. Thus Israel's writings and liturgies demonstrate the compelling need to return to the sacred space of bygone days.

The first category of worship relating to sacred space is that of the centralization of the worship. Centralization, or in other words, sacred space, was an ideal established in Deuteronomy 12 to establish the importance of the place where worship was to be practiced{9}. Deuteronomy 12 was a forward-looking narrative that set down the conditions for establishing the place for worship. "These are the statutes and ordinances that you must diligently observe in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to occupy all the days that you live on the earth" (12:1).

Once the Israelites conquered the Canaanites and began to inhabit their land, they were initially, even before establishing their own particular sanctuary, to decimate and remove all the places the former inhabitants had set apart to worship their gods. These places of worship were on the mountains, on the hills, and under trees {10}. The Israelites were to use extreme force in destroying these profane places from their very existence: "You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods. . . . Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places."

After the nation of Israel destroyed the profane places of worship they were then to establish their own place of worship. But this place was not just any place they would choose; the sacred place for worshiping their God would be one that he alone would choose. "But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there" (12:5).

Interestingly, as Israel has to seek the place of worship, God gives no indication as to where that place will be, or how they should determine the proper place. It is significant to note, though, that it must be a place that God will choose. This choosing of the sacred place by the deity was the norm in ancient history {11}. The Israelites must worship at the place where God's presence broke into the world to establish connection, communication, and relationship with his people. The sacred place was not an arbitrary decision left exclusively to humanity's understanding and discernment; this would not involve the role of God and hence could not be a place to reconnect to the sacred world{12}.

This fact, by the way, indicates that worship in the Israelites' conception was not mere symbolism; rather, God broke through in history. Furthermore, this sacred place was one where God would choose to place his name, indicating that his very presence would dwell among humanity but within severe limitations: his dwelling place on earth would be different from all places on the entire face of the earth. And as we know about the tabernacle and temple later on, God chooses to dwell in total separateness except for the day of atonement when the high priest entered his presence (Leviticus 16). "And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you" (12:7).

The sacred place is set apart by God for the purpose of Israel's worship and rejoicing. This picture is analogous to the garden when man and woman in perfect communion could enjoy the presence of God and thereby rejoice in it. "In all the undertakings" sounds strangely reminiscent of Genesis 1-2 when God promised blessing to all of humanity's endeavors. God will set apart a sacred place where the Israelites can relish their difference within community, orient themselves in worship and society, and communicate with their God as their parents did.

This establishing of the sacred place occurs only after God gives them rest: "When he gives you rest from your enemies all around you so that you live in safety, then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the Lord your God will choose" (12:10-11). Rest in the land, located around the centrality of the sacred place, is another essential motif that hearkens back to the creation account in Genesis. This concept of rest is symbolic and indicative of the harmony that only sacred space can offer east of Eden.

The centralization of Deuteronomy 12 is replete with creation motifs which assume the prominence of sacred space. The Israelites immediately upon entering the land were to differentiate by obliterating the profane spaces and to centralize their worship oriented around the place that God would choose so that they might commune with the sacred world once again. God chose to confront the chaos of humanity by making a tangible, real place sacred so the community could orient themselves in order to have relationship and to repair broken relationships.

Sacrifice is the second component that will illustrate the importance of sacred space in Israel's understanding and practice of the worship. The ancient practice of sacrifice is usually very odd to modern humanity, seeming bizarre and violent. To ancient humanity, though, the practice of sacrifice was central to their worship. Sacrifice was the "means of communication between the sacred and profane worlds through the mediation of a victim" and the "means of redressing equilibriums that have been upset."{13}. According to these statements, sacrifice was a reconnecting of the two worlds and a reorientation in a fragmented world through the act of dismembering a victim. With sacrifice there was communication through silencing, wholeness through dismembering, intactness through fragmentation, life through death.

To come to the tabernacle was a return to sacred space so that one could worship God through the forgiveness of sin. The worshiper's approach to the entrance of the tabernacle but exclusion from entering the tabernacle itself reminds us of humanity's inability to reenter the sacred garden. The worshiper continuously existed within the tension of sacred and profane space this side of the garden. Sacrifice expressed the many interconnections inherent in the act and objective of worship-God toward humanity, humanity toward God, humanity toward humanity, animal as mediator between humanity and God.

The bull shall be slaughtered before the Lord; and Aaron's sons the priests shall offer the blood, dashing the blood against all sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. The burnt offering shall be flayed and cut up into its parts (Deuteronomy 5-6).

This act of offering was a violent one indeed. We can imagine the blood being splattered against the altar and the entire offering being dismembered and then consumed in a funeral pyre that is "a pleasing odor to the Lord" (9). This dismembering of the sacred sacrifice was the symbolic but direct means for the reconnection of fragmented humanity.

So it was for Israel, that if individuals entered a state incongruent with good relations with God, they had to undergo rites to restore them to a normative status; similarly, a person who wronged his neighbor or the nation itself needed to be subject to a ritual of restoration {14}.

The recovery of sacred space demanded an extremely high price; the creative order had to be fractured and segmented to provide for consummate intactness and redemption. Sacrifice as sacred space provided disruption and distinction indicating holiness and radical otherness, orientation as a tangible manner of forgiveness and existential guilt, and communication as a glorious reunion with the once distant God. Sacrifice symbolized the ambivalence of unity and disunity, wholeness and disorder, mercy and wrath, life and death.

Eliade has warned us of the modern tendency to live in a "desacrilized" world that thinks of sacred space as irrelevant or nonexistent. The results of profaning sacred space can be observed in both ancient and modern times. The nations outside of Israel and eventually Israel itself practiced the sacrifice of humans, which was a radical reversion of the overarching intention of sacred space {15}. The very nadir of the Old Testament is the story of a Levite (set apart to render wholeness by sacrifice) dismembering his own wife in a grotesque ritual (Judges 19-20). The disembodiment of the concubine embodied the dissolution of society itself by an inward unraveling of a basic fiber of society-sacred space as protection of individual boundaries!

The profaning of sacred space by modern society is readily discerned on the news, in newspapers, in weekly news magazines, etc. Racism and sexism are typical embodiments of the melding of sacred space into profane space. Though modern man is radically different from his or her ancestors, we are nevertheless created in the image of the Sacred. To this day we are yet consumed with the eternal quest for the recovery of the sacred-for then and only then will there be difference for the other, orientation for stability, and communication for redemption, which is the essence of life itself.

What can make our lives more simple? What is it that can bring sacredness to our secular worlds? One of my answers is sacred place-that place that we set apart from other places, the place that brings order to our chaotic lives, the place where we meet God and he meets us. Like no other generation before us, we are compelled to find a place, a place that will be sacred.

{1} Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).

{2} Notice the method of study that I am setting forth. First, I begin with a way of thinking, a methodology, categories, etc., from a great thinker. Second, I take his or her thinking to the scriptures and let the new way of thinking inform the text and the text inform the new way of thinking. In other words: in this case, I utilize Eliade's insights (I see the text through his eyes) to read the biblical text. Then I attempt to gain new insights into the text while at the same time allowing the text to critique Eliade. Third, I bring my life to Eliade's concepts and the reading of Scripture in an endeavor to answer the question, "Does sacred place have anything to say to me, to my life, and to my relationships with God, family, friends, and acquaintances?"

{3} Eliade, op. cit., 8-10.

{4} Eliade, op. cit., 21.

{5} This "speaking" of God in Genesis 1: 3, 5-6, 8-11, 14, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28-29 is the most radical element of the creation story, especially as we compare it to other ancient stories of creation. In most of the other creation stories, the god or gods war, destroy, dismember, rage, and masturbate the world into existence. Their frenzied, violent creation is radically different from the Genesis creation story.

{6} James B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East, 2 volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), Vol. 1, 1-5, and Vol. 2, 31-40.

{7} This difference, of course, has been the source of contention for critics for generations. According to them, difference indicates disunity rather complementary prisms through which to view multitudinous dimensions of the Creator. U. Cassuto, Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1961), 110-11.

{8} "The statement in verse 27 (chapter 1) is not an easy one. But it is worth noting that humankind is spoken of as singular ('he created him') and plural ('he created them'). This peculiar formula makes an important affirmation. On the one hand, humankind is a single entity. But on the other hand, humankind is community, male and female." Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 33-34.

{9} G.J. Wenham, "Deuteronomy and the Central Sanctuary," TB, 22 (1971), 103-18; and E. Nicholson, "The Centralization of the Cult in Deuteronomy," VT, 13 (1963), 380-89.

{10} W.F. Albright, "The High Place in Ancient Palestine," VTS, 4, 242-58; and A. Biran, Temples and High Places in Biblical Times (Jerusalem: The Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, 1981).

{11} "The choice of places where the cult might be practiced was not left to man's discretion. In such a place, the worshiper could meet his god; the place had to be indicated, therefore, by a manifestation of the god's presence or by his activity. " Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, Vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 276. See also Moshe Weinfeld, "Cult Centralization in Israel in the Light of a Neo-Babylonian Analogy," JNES, 23 (1964), 202-12.

{12} Deuteronomy 12:8: "You shall not act as we are acting here today, all of us according to our own desires, for you have not come into the rest and the possession that the Lord your God is giving you"; and, "Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place you happen to see. But only at the place that the Lord will choose . . . " (12:13-14a).

{13} H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, 1964. Note also Collins and Davies, op. cit.; N.B. Snaith, "Sacrifices in the Old Testament," VT, 7 (1957), 308-17; W.O.E. Oesterley, Sacrifices in Ancient Israel (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1937); F.D. Kidner, "Sacrifice-Metaphors and Meaning," TB, 33 (1982), 117-36.

{14} Davies, op. cit., 393.

{15} Alberto R.W. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (Missoula: She recovery of the sacred