Home and Place

If place is thought of in terms of memory and experience, home is generally the first place we begin to orient our lives within. Home is the norm for place by exhibiting our rootedness and attachments. Home is the domain of our cultures private life. Depending upon who speaks of it “home” contains different connotations. For some home represents nurture and care. For others it is a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the world. For still others, particularly feminists, home is a place of oppression, abuse, or drudgery.[1]

One main source that most who speak about place turn to is the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard’s and his well-known work, The Poetics of Space.[2] Bachelard is concerned with the psychological aspects of place by doing “topoananlysis:” exploration of self through places.[3] Using the home as the primal space of our first memories, Bachelard suggest that this understanding then frames our interactions in all spaces outside the home. Each room or place in the home is constituted by different memories and images. The soul becomes the place where memories live and bloom recreating that place within the soul where we then live. It is the internal house of memories, which may or may not relate to any existing external place yet equally as real, that guides our external interactions in the world.

Closely related is Heideggar’s conception of dasein. Rather than just “being,” it is a “being there” signifying a placedness or dwelling as the essence of being.[4] Existence means being implaced. Places are not things we stumble upon, rather because of our embodied being in the world, places arise as a result.[5] “Space is not projected by Dasein, nor is Dasein simply located in space.”[6] Instead it takes space within and creates something new: room and leeway. The creation of place is an intimate endeavor for Heideggar.

Heideggar is said to be reacting against modernity’s tendency to abuse things as pure scientific objects. Humanity is not a subject apart from the world, but is by its very nature an integral and immersed member.[7] Things, including humans, cannot be abstracted clearly from their environment or dwelling. Heideggar retraces bauen, an Old English and High German word for building or dwelling. But this meaning has been lost.

“He goes on to point out that a covert trace of it has been retained in the word ‘neighbour’ which implies to cherish, and protect, to preserve and care for, and suggests that a proper understanding of building would relate to its sense of continuity, community and of being ‘at home.’”[8]

Heideggar is helpful to see how intimate places really are to our human nature. Bachelard, Heidegger, and Edward Casey have all argued for the precedence of place prior to space suggesting that we know first in particular places before we know space as a whole or in abstract.[9] In the case of Bachelard, we come to know rooms, before we know the home; and the home before the outside world. This phenomenological approach acknowledges to be human is to be embodied in place, and that place is primary because of the “experiential fact of our existence.”[10] Rather than looking for empirical information on what a place is like, they ask “what makes a place a place?”[11]

[1] Cresswell, 25.
[2] Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958).
[3] Bachelard, 8. Inge, 17.
[4] Inge, 18-19; Cresswell, 21-22, Casey, 245-273.
[5] Casey, 250.
[6] Ibid., 257.
[7] Inge, 18.
[8] Inge, 19.
[9] Sheldrake, 7.
[10] Cresswell, 32.
[11] Ibid., 23.

Sacred Space as Revelation or Human Construction?

One question that I continually go back and forth on is whether sacred places are places of God’s revelation, a certain thinning of the veil perhaps, or created as a result of human memory and ritual. Is God really being revealed in this place or do we “see” God’s hand symbolically as an extension of illumination and subsequent projection upon certain places? Inge’s biblical and historical examples suggest the first option where we experience God’s revelation. Yet both authors say that over time, places accumulate meanings and memory and rise in importance. I don’t think W. Paul Jones’ delineation between sacred and tourist spots quite answers my question either.[1] Places like the Vietnam Memorial or Gettysburg have a sacred character for many non religious people. I guess I am struggling with definitions of “sacred” and “revelation.” Has something been revealed by God and of God’s being that claims that particular place as sacred, or are we projecting upon it or infusing it with meaning seen in the light of Christ’s redeeming work. Perhaps it is Inge’s use of both revelation and sacramentalism that is confusing me.

[1] W. Paul Jones, A Table in the Desert: Making Space Holy (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2001), 46.

kairos - chronos

Kairos-Chronos
Digital Composite
2002

Kairos, Chronos

“Being time is never wasted time. When we are being, not only are we collaborating with chronological time, but we are touching on kairos, and are freed from the normal restrictions of time. In moments of mystical illumination we may experience, in a few chronological seconds, years of transfigured love.”
Madeleine L’Engle

An experience in Wheaton Illinois visiting friends
brought me to these thoughts.
I was lying on a bed
looking between the spaces of a horizontal blind at a winter killed tree.
Only a few leaves remained.

Although it seems contradictory,
it moved both awkwardly and gracefully in the wind.
I liken it to our own idiosyncrasies.
We recognize another’s movements.
A walk or run.
Handwriting. Scent.

Those attributes make up the essence of that person.
And when we recognize this,
we are aware of the beauty of particularity.

I saw the trees essence.
I saw it moving in the wind.
I lost myself in its dance.
Indefinable time passed.
I became aware of the monotonous ticking
of a battery-powered clock on the wall.

My mind jumped.
I shrunk back.

I found myself longing to escape through the window
from chronos (human time)
to the simple beauty of kairos (divine time).

This piece is a culmination of that thought.
The bright yellow of the clock stands out,
stealing our attention away from the reeds.
Human time, finite and distracting,
often blinds our view of what matters.

Place and Sacramental Experience

Sacramental Experiences
Inge also works from a sacramental framework. He suggests a relational model of place, people, and God that he extracts primarily from the Old Testament.[1] As embodied creatures, place becomes integral to our interactions with God. Following Brueggemann, Inge says that history becomes lodged in place as “storied places.”[2] Profound events and memories embedded in place as mediators of divine presence are built into salvation history. The incarnation casts Jesus as the “new temple” as the place where God meets humanity.[3] By relating embedded events or storied places to the incarnation of Christ, which “initiates an unprecedented celebration of materiality,”[4] specific places and by extension the world takes on new meaning.[5] For Inge, neither time nor place have inherent sacramental qualities apart from each other.[6] Rather they cohere in sacramental events of times and places as the “seat of relations and of meeting and activity between God and the world.”[7] More particularly Inge says that sacramental events are “pure gift” of God’s action and human response.[8] Inge cites several examples in our Christian history: Constantine at Milvian Bridge, John Wesley at Aldersgate, Paul on the road to Damascus and Moses and the burning bush. Because these sacramental events are undertaken by first by God and received by particular humans, Inge rejects an intrinsic sacramentality of religious places.

Inge also suggests that the sacramental life of inside the church should have external implications as well. Experiencing God’s grace and presence in the sacraments should encourage us to seek the same disclosure in the world. And by seeking the sacramental in the world, should increase our appreciation of the sacramental life of the church.[9] Place becomes a powerful idea in connection with the site of the sacraments.

Inge recalls geographer Edward Relph’s words, “places are constructed in our memories and affections through repeated encounters and complex associations and place experiences are necessarily time-deepened and memory qualified.”[10] Places are unique not just because of geographical or architectural elements, rather places are unique and inseparable from the individuals and communities associated with it and tell its story”[11]

One of the things I greatly appreciated about Inge’s work was such a simple point. “The role of such place is to root believers in their faith and point them towards the redemption of all places.”[12] My initial concern with his work was the appeal to experience. Where would these experiences end? With the self? My fear is that such experiences only serve to insulate the individual instead of being rooted in the world. The experience begins and ends beyond the individual. Its starts with God’s action, received by humanity, and sends them to participate in further place making.

I agree with Belden Lane’s comments on Inge’s book that it is a fine summary of the landscape of place rather than a great contribution to the field. It is a very worthwhile journey for the reader to be brought into the conversation, but his constructive proposal place is only loosely defined.


[1] Inge, 46.
[2] Ibid., 54.
[3] Ibid, 55.
[4] Ibid, 52.
[5] Ibid, 66.
[6] I assume that this would too quickly devolve into idolization of the tangible world or too easily be considered pantheism.
[7] Ibid, 68.
[8] Ibid, 81.
[9] Ibid., 82.
[10] Ibid., 84.
[11] Ibid., 84.
[12] Ibid., 86.

december fourth, two-thousand and one

DECEMBER FOURTH, TWO-THOUSAND AND ONE

DONE WITH MY STUDIES I HEAD OUT FOR A SMOKE
WERE YOU HERE
I WOULD WAKE YOU
I DON MY WOOL COAT
FLIP UP THE COLLAR
MY BLUE JEANS CUFFED
I BECOME A JAMES DEAN
OF MY OWN IMAGINATION
THE STREET BECKONS
MY STREET
NOT SO LONG AGO
BATHED IN A HUMID SUMMER RAIN
NOW BLANKETED IN SNOW
ITS ABOVE FREEZING
BARELY
I HEAR WATER TRICKLING EVERYWHERE
ONLY ONE BLOCK AWAY
STREET LIGHTS BECOME BARELY VISIBLE
CLOAKED IN FOG
I INHALE
SMOKE SEEPS FROM MY MOUTH
TO BECOME ONE WITH THE MIST
I HEAR A MUFFLED SOUND OF MUSIC FROM ONE
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS GLOW FROM ANOTHER
I PASS AN ELDERLY WOMAN IN A WINDOW
LOOKING OVER PAPERS ON A TABLE
I WALK ON
I ETCH BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOSGRAPHS
ONTO THE WALLS OF MY MIND
ANSELM
AQUINAS
HILDEGARD
AND THEIR EXISTENCE OF GOD
KEEP ME COMPANY
I TURN
AGAIN I PASS THE ELDERLY WOMAN
HER HEAD STILL DOWN
UNAWARE OF THE BEAUTY
OF REVELATION
THAT SHROUDS HER HOME THIS EVENING

Contemporary Place of Place

Space is shrinking, place is disappearing. Most writers on place would say that the current state of place is not just the result of Modern philosophy. The loss of place is, for many, a profound crisis, which is why it has resurfaced in academia across the disciplines. Besides the fragmentation and privatization of culture, many suggest combinations of mass communications, increased mobility, and consumer society as key players in the demise of place. Consumer society has actually helped create “non-places”[1] by the shear replication of places across the country and around the world; often referred to as the McDonaldization or homogenization of culture. Non-places like the Gap, Starbucks, McDonalds, as well as, airports, freeways, and supermarkets are said to be constituted by irrelevant memories and traditions.[2] These places tell us nothing about the larger spatial context of the community and are basically the same from city to city and country to country. What results is a relativity and disposability of place.

Many feel that mobility or tourism and consumption are dangerous to place. Tourism is a fascination with place without identifying with it. Tourists come in, consume, and leave. Other than the economic boost that tourism offers, no real construction of place is made, except for the nostalgia of the tourists.

Many also see that the private and public divide has had crucial effects on our conceptions of place in American society. Sheldrake discusses this modern divide between interiority and exteriority by suggesting that “exposure has the connotation of a threat rather than the enhancement of life.”[3] As a result, city planning focuses on consumer needs (which is really a public venue for the private life) and creating safe distinctions between people groups (gated communities are a great example). “Public space thus becomes bland and neutralized as its main purpose is to facilitate movement across it rather than encounters within it.”[4] He continues by saying that for the city to recover, the outer life needs to be rediscovered. Perhaps that is why city planning is changing tactics to reconstruct the idea of the neighborhood trying to encourage community.[5]


[1] Cresswell, 46. Cresswell picks up on Marc Auge’s term.
[2] Ibid., 43.
[3] Sheldrake 149.
[4] Ibid., 149. So much more could be said about the loss of place due to architectural changes especially within the church architecture. The same blandness and utility seems to the norm for many new churches.
[5] William Leach has written “Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life” where he explores this and other phenomena of the loss of place in America. I did not get to this text this semester but it looks fascinating.

God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

Luke 18.9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

The Gospel reading this week was a challenge to me. We see the Pharisee standing alone, a position of arrogance, praying an arrogant prayer about his supposed righteousness. In one sense we should be thankful that we are not either born into those situations, or been forced into others, or have willingly chosen those routes. But the Pharisees prayer sets himself against the others through a sense of condemnation of the others. And yet the tax collector, standing far off, which suggests his own fear and humility before God, was completely familiar with his own sinfulness. Despite the Pharisee’s supposed righteousness was wiped out by his attitude. While the tax collector, fully acquainted with his sinfulness approaches God in utter fear and lack of self worth. And it is the tax collector, despite his sinfulness, who is seen as the righteous one. While he was a sinful man, at least he knew it.

As I pondered this passage, I wondered about the idealism of many Christians. I am an idealist. I consider myself a semi-well educated person who takes joy in study. But I also find that I am often Pharisee-like in my attitudes toward other brothers and sisters in various denominations (particularly of the conservative sphere) who just don’t seem to “get it.” My prayer would be something like, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: fundamentalists, right wing Christians, Republicans, moralists, Evangelicals who don't get it; I worship in a liturgical tradition.” I am a theological snob. I may not publicly parade my soap boxed opinions before others, nor are they hidden from God. Perhaps there is a stretch to my use this passage, but do we not all have these categories which we support or despise? To what extent is that ok? When does it become a sense of arrogance and pride that I have become righteous via these views? I am not sure but I have obviously crossed over to the dark side at times. I found myself praying the prayer of the tax collector in a very honest way, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”