Why Sacred Spaces?

Readers of this blog will note my fascination with Sacred Spaces, which so far have been churches, mosques, Monets. To answer the question of why I quote Sam Harris here...in talking about spirituality, a thing that we experience in sacred spaces.

". . . Christopher Hitchens . . . believed that “spiritual” was a term we could not do without, and he repeatedly plucked it from the mire of supernaturalism in which it has languished for nearly a thousand years.

"It is true that Hitch didn’t think about spirituality in precisely the way I do. He spoke instead of the spiritual pleasures afforded by certain works of poetry, music, and art. The symmetry and beauty of the Parthenon embodied this happy extreme for him—without any requirement that we admit the existence of the goddess Athena, much less devote ourselves to her worship. Hitch also used the terms “numinous” and “transcendent” to mark occasions of great beauty or significance—and for him the Hubble Deep Field was an example of both. I’m sure he was aware that pedantic excursions into the OED would produce etymological embarrassments regarding these words as well."

Alhambra at Night, Granada, Spain, Nancy Charak photograph, April 2011

Granada Spain, the last Moorish kingdom to fall to the Reconquista. The story is told that the last Muslim king, Muhammed XII, called by the Spaniards Boabdil, on his way to exile in North Africa, turned his horse to look back and wept. His mother said to him, "weep like a woman for that which you could not defend like a man."