The two big news stories of the moment-the violence in the Mideast, and the violations within the Catholic Church-might seem unrelated. Until you consider sacred places, and how they are now being treated. “O little town of Bethlehem,” we sing at Christmas time; many of us associate the town only with the birth of Jesus. We were taught that it is a place of reverence, a reminder that miraculous things can happen.
Now the Church of the Nativity, thought to be built on the actual birthplace of Jesus, is surrounded by armed men. Franciscan monks (and Palestinian militants) are inside. On Tuesday, gunfire erupted between troops surrounding the church and the fighters inside. Now, the space has been violated by the presence of guns and ammunition-and by hatred and a thirst for vengeance. A church has now become a war zone.
Back in America, priests who have been entrusted with the soft spots of people’s souls now stand accused of molesting those who trusted them most-children. Priests, who are supposed to represent the sanctity of the church, who are supposed to stand as guardians of all that is sacred, have contaminated that once-holy place as surely as guns and soldiers could.
When we lose our reverence for sacred places, when we violate the spaces that have been set aside for the soul, we destroy something vital within us. That’s the sad link between the two stories that are now consuming us. The Catholic Church may be able to mend the damage; Israel and Palestine may, in time, lower their weapons. But there has been a wound to our collective soul, because when you don’t honor sacred spots-when you crash violently through the walls that are meant to protect what is precious within us-mankind as a whole is hurt.
In “The Power of Myth,” Joseph Campbell talked about the necessity for having a sacred place in one’s own life, as an individual: “You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anyone, you don’t know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation.”
Places of religious and spiritual worship are places of creative incubation. Revering those places is also when we tap into something noble within ourselves. It may be years before we realize how much we lost during this period of violence and hurt. We left our souls nowhere to rest, protected and apart from the flames of the world.
