The second stanza of Wendell Berry’s poem, “How to be a Poet,” says,
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly.
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Here, Berry notes there are only sacred places and desecrated places, but there are no unsacred places.
If there are no unsacred places, then we must recognize that since all places have been created by God, they are all, therefore, sacred in this sense. The Christian, in this case, will recognize the profundity of Abraham Kuyper’s famous declaration that “…there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!
Following the OED, a sacred place is one that is venerated, consecrated, hallowed, or recognized as holy because of its association with God; and, a desecrated place is one that has been deprived of its sacred character and treated as unhallowed or it has been profaned.
That is, there are places whose glory and sacred character have been obscured or profaned by some misuse of the place or some lack of veneration for its inherent glory. In Berry’s estimation, there are some things that obscure the place that they are in.
In his book, Adorning the Dark, Andrew Peterson speaks of an intersection near his house that used to make him happy by some unexplained mystery of its existence. Perhaps, it was because it forced him to pause and consider his surroundings, but he wasn’t sure. Because it has long since been developed beyond recognition, it no longer holds the magic it once did. Although it is efficient and functional today, there is some sense in which it has been desecrated.
For Berry, it is the conditioned air, the electric wire, and the screens of the modern technological world that has desecrated many of our sacred places. It is worth contemplating then in what way efficiency and functionality are robbing us of the magic of sacred places.
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