When in Someone’s Sacred Space…

note: a version of this post was published in The Christian Citizen - this is a longer version

I was backpacking through a canyon in Utah with a group (I was a participant), and we realized that we were in someone else’s space. We were walking along one of the ledges of the canyon, following the curves of the rocks, and not really thinking about where we were going, when we suddenly saw in front of us a collection of ancient, ancestral dwellings. The view of the stacked stone walls nestled in the ledge of the canyon wall worked into our consciousness until we could not help but stop and be aware that we were in the living spaces of a community that lived and flourished hundreds of years ago.

All of us immediately fell into a respectful, sacred silence.

We were forced to realize that we were in someone else’s space. We were walking in a place where there were memories, joys and sorrows, life and death. We were pulled into a reality and reminder that others have walked the land before us. People have lived in the land well before we donned our backpacks and worked our ways through the rocks and the sand.

It was a moment of sacred memory and relationality.

With my trips into the wilderness I offer a “land acknowledgement,” reminding the participants that we are not the first people to walk these lands, that other communities and cultures have lived here and sometimes continue to live here (others have been forcibly removed). I offer the land acknowledgement in part to claim an awareness that we are walking what is a wilderness for us and yet for others may likely have been sacred, holy places where a different understanding of the Divine could fully be encountered.

I have to be honest that part of the reason I offer the land acknowledgement is out of a sense of white guilt, recognizing the ways that the past and current government have harmed so many of those who did dwell in these lands. It is important to name and claim our past collective sins. But recently I realized that these acknowledgements can be more than just a lip-service moment to assuage white, colonial guilt. Acknowledging that others have been here before, that the land has a history is an act of relationality with our history and memory.

Recently I was able to visit the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is an interesting collection of spaces surrounded by a growing suburban sprawl of new homes and developments. You can park your car, walk to Walgreens and then, without moving your car, walk to see carvings in rocks that are ancient and profound. Driving from site to site offered an experience of the urban and new, the demanding expansion of humanity on the landscape of the outer regions of Albuquerque. And at the same time a vision of the old, ancient landscape of a place where the Pueblo would leave signs and symbols that was a part of their life and customs, and where at one time lava flowed, shaping and forming the landscape we now see.

I love the desert landscape, the openness and ancient presence of the low shrubs and expansive rocks and dirt. When I was able to leave my car and enter each section of the park, I was able to fall back into a wilderness experience (albeit impacted by the sounds of cars and planes and the like). If the National Monument was only a series of trails through high desert, around ancient volcanos and near lava escarpments it would have been wonderful and a great experience for me. Yet that is not the major purpose of the Monument (aside from one trail that goes around the ancient volcanos). It is to have an opportunity to view petroglyphs that are 400 to 700 years.

I’m not an anthropologist or an archeologist, so I cannot offer anything explanatory about the carvings. From what I read on the park informational signs, current experts are not sure that all of the carvings are religious, but assume that a significant percentage of them are. This suggested that to at least a degree, the space that I was walking through was at one time seen sacred for the Pueblo people, and that was all that I needed to know. I decided that I would treat all of the carvings as sacred and treat the space as sacred. But how?

I fully recognize that by even going to the monument, walking the trails, and observing the carvings, that I am already transgressing as a tourist/observer. I am participating in a system that has made what was once a part of a culture and a people an oddity and curiosity to view with a voyeuristic sentiment. Perhaps it would be better if I did not participate in the display at all and thus not support the ways in which what was and is sacred is now something for people to view with a tourist’s curiosity. On the other hand, if the National Parks did not create this national monument, the encroaching urban sprawl would have overtaken the spaces and the carvings, would have most likely been bulldozed into rock mines, and would have been used as construction materials. As much as I was somewhat uncomfortable with the tourist experience of seeing these reminders of past cultures, I am glad that at least the minimal space had been set aside and protected.

Still, the question lingered. I was entering into a sacred space and a relationship with people who walked the land centuries before I took my first step by being in their space. I wrestled with how to be respectful in that relationship.

I decided to not take pictures of the petroglyphs.

This probably seems like a small thing and very likely is. This is not an action that calls others to witness, but is without any witness at all. Our current culture is keyed into the practice of showing on social media our experiences with pictures. “Pics or it didn’t happen.” The majority of people I saw at the monument were taking pictures of the carvings, often as a selfie with the carving in the background. This did not feel right or respectful towards the sacred nature of the carvings. Even if I did not ascribe to the same tenets of faith as those who made the ancient carvings, it seemed as if I should still respect the attention and awareness of the Divine however that was understood.

I wondered what it would feel like if I had belonged to a church that I attended for all of my life. The spaces and the symbols of that building would have become important to me regardless of my feelings and views of sacramentality. The cross in front of the church would hold memories of moments of worship and sacred experiences. The baptismal would be a reminder of commitments that I have made and I have seen others make. How would I feel if 500 years from now, I saw individual walking through the tattered remains of the church I grew up in, looking at the symbols, the pews, the wood carvings, and taking pictures, selfies, and maybe even joking about what they saw? I would not be ok with such a treatment of a space that was once important to me. Such actions do not honor the relationship that this is a space where I went to worship, to be in community, to experience the divine. This is what I found with the petroglyphs. The least I could do is not take any pictures.

As a Baptist, I do not believe that some spaces are more sacred than others, but I understand that other people do and it is important to respect the beliefs of others. It is likely that the national monument in Albuquerque was seen as sacred. This is something that I want to respect. Even if the people are long gone (and they aren’t), I think it is important to respect the sacredness that was seen and embraced. That is honoring the relationships and the memories of the people who once lived on that land. That is being a good neighbor.

I didn’t take any pictures. I tried to take my time, looking at the carvings, imagining and wondering what stories, beliefs, and truths they were pointing to. I tried to take in the totality of the landscape and put myself into the space of someone walking multiple miles and then taking the time to meticulously etch into rock a marker of a spiritual truth. I wondered about the sense of awe that one would have in the open and stark landscape, the wind, the silence, the heat. And then I quietly moved on.

Maybe space can be holy. Maybe a building or an object can have a deeper meaning than just what is on the surface. Maybe the awareness of the presence of others, past and present, can give one a sensitivity of the sacred. It does not matter so much what I believe but more what others believe and how I can respect that. What matters is if I can be a good neighbor. What matters is if I can love my neighbor. If I go into someone else’s home, someone else’s place of worship then as a Christian I believe that it is my duty to show Christ through a respect and awareness of what others may see as holy. In memory or in present experience, this is how we all are called to express a love of the neighbor. This is a holy relationality.