The Wonder of Sacred Places

notes on syncretism and the desecrating way of missionizing

 Takayama, Japan

I once thought the sacred existed only indoors or enclosed, like the Holy of Holies of the Hebrew Bible—an altar within a space only a priest could access. Or the church building we attended on Sundays. 

The sacred was where God dwelled and so we contained God.

But as Wendell Berry says, all places are sacred that haven’t been violently di…