Monday, September 28, 2009

Exodus (and Ken Burns)

The book of Exodus has three distinct parts: 1) Escape from Egypt(the Exodus); Giving of the Law (the national covenant); and 3) the Tabernacle. Two concepts that surface in Exodus are the notions of sacred time (sabbath, passover) and sacred space (tabernacle).

This lead me to Ken Burns. I hope you got to see his opening episode on PBS of The National Parks: America's Best Idea. That opening episode was called The Scripture of Nature. It looks at how the idea of national park was in many ways a religious quest. John Muir, founder and first president of the Sierra Club, wrote of Yosemite Valley (circa 1870) that it was "by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature that I was ever permitted to enter . . .the sanctum sanctorum of the Sierra"

So are there holy places in this world. Christians have affirmed that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but beyond that do believe that there is sacred space in this world? And have you experience sacred space?

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