Sacred Places Revisited

I’m putting together a collage of photos from our motorcycle trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes with Jim and Joyce this summer so I popped on over to the Sleeping Bear Dunes group I belong to at Flickr to see if I wanted some add-ins and came across this stunning shot just taken.

Y’know how there are some places that feel hollow, emotionally hollow? Malls feel this way . And some public places get that way, even if they didn’t start out that way. A lot of public parks have a just-barely feeling. Like if you concentrate you can feel it, but if you’re there to roast hot dogs you will miss it.

But at the Dunes, I can feel God, even when God eludes me elsewhere.

I feel this same way in my home state of Virginia, pretty much anywhere in the state, but especially in the mountains. I feel this way, in particular, at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. When I go there, which is often, actually, I stand where Jefferson put his viewing seats and burn the images into the back of my eyes, into a place where I can call them up. To a place where, when I’m long back to Michigan, I can wrap a blanket around me and lay down in my mind, and look out over the mountains.

Jefferson died with a personal debt greater than the debt of the federal government, mostly from building and re-building and maintaining his home on that mountain. And I can understand that, the simple refusal to ever permanently leave that place. I plan to go to stay myself, I want my ashes spread in those mountains.

What are your sacred places?