Gecko Tales

The Tearing Down of the Sacred Places

Two years ago my brother and I were forced to sell my parent’s house in Connecticut because they were getting to the age where doing stairs was extremely difficult. We took ten grand off the going price and it sold in a week- and that was that. But ‘that wasn’t that.’ Far from it. Every night for a full year both of us had various dreams about the house we grew up in. In my dreams I was always returning home only to find the woman who bought the house in my kitchen. I always had to profusely apologize for barging into her kitchen without knocking. Another scenario that plays out is my parents were still living there, waiting for the new owner to move in. Last month, I dreamt that I was traveling from a long distance and ended up at 10 Chestnut with all my bags and I wanted to check on my tree climbing equipment in the garage because I planned to do a few jobs to support myself when I realized the house was no longer my parent’s. There were strangers in it, and the garage didn’t have my equipment. I was thinking to myself, “I have no where to go, what will I do? I’m tired of traveling and need to rest right now.” How will I support myself without my equipment?

While mulling over these dreams, it dawned on me that I had been grieving the loss of a sacred place that was overflowing with historic memories of my life and the life of my family. I was intimately familiar with every inch of that house and yard. My parent’s house and I had an intimate and enduring relationship that abruptly ended, only to live on in my mind. It reminded me of being on the wrong end of an intense break up. I feel that I am still mourning the loss of that sacred place and I can relate to Neil Young’s “Helpless” where he sings of similar mourning;

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

My musing is not about the nostalgic mourning of ‘the good ole days, but of the passing of a sacred place that gave me a feeling of well being, comfort, and security, and which also served as a marker to my existence. But now the chains are locked and tied across the door and I mourn that.

When I was just 18, our summer cabin on Lake Zoar was torched by an arsonist. This place, in middle of the forest with no other houses within half mile was an extremely sacred place. This is where I first met God, not in a church building, not through his word, but through his world. I remember as a very small boy standing on the top of set of very steep stairs made of cinder- blocks, cement and rocks. Red Cedar pole railings hemmed in the long steep descending steps that led out onto a retaining wall that my father built from which we often fished. On early mornings I stood at the top of the steps, holding on to a pipe railing painted forest green waiting for the sun to come up over the ridge across the lake, and when it did, the lake would dance brightly with thousands of sparkling sunlit wave caps which like a moon beam on the water danced right to the bottom of the steps. Standing in my sacred spot next to our cabin which was ensconced in towering green hemlocks, drops of dew trapped in many intricate spider webs stretched out between ferns glistened as the first few rays of the sun broke over the ridge. A gentle zephyr blew in off the lake, and with it pleasant smells of fresh water, earthy smells of decaying forest floor, and strong coffee being brewed up in the kitchen. The distant sound of a fisher man’s far away outboard reverberated up and down the lake, joining the cacophony of early morning songs of sparrows, chickadees, cedar waxwings, bluejays and squawking of ravens. The exhilarating sensation of depth perception (looking down the long steps to the sparkling water through the hemlocks) completed an experience of a full sensory stimulation. I felt so fully alive and in complete awe of life itself. It was truly a spiritual experience. I was able to recapture those exceptional moments over the next few years but they began to wane in intensity as I grew older.

I did not know how to, or even see the need to mourn the loss of that sacred place at the time, as I was a senior in high school with so many parties to go to, and track meets to run, etc. Occasionally my brother and I would hike up to the site of our former cabin where you can still make out the foundation. We don’t stay long but we paid our respects. The chains are locked and tied across the door.

In 1968, I was introduced to another sacred place. It was a Boy Scout camp called Camp Toquam in northern Connecticut. It had a steep trail down to the water front that meandered down through a Northern Hardwood forest, and just smacked of mystique. The adventures, the exploring, and the camaraderie with other scouts made it a magical and mystical place. I spent many a weekend campout there, went to summer camp for five summers, and even worked on staff during the summer of 1973. Toquam was not only a sensory experience, it was a social experiment as well as I met scouts from a neighboring city who were Jewish, African-American, Asian and Latin American (my scout troop was from an all white town). That in itself made it in an extra sacred place. In 1975, the same year my first sacred place was burned out, our council sold my beloved camp in a merger. It is now a declining and unkempt piece of property belonging to the State of Connecticut, used for occasional outdoor training for juvenile offenders. I was so angry I vowed never to have anything to do with scouting again. I was more alive in my sacred places than I ever was in church buildings, and I wondered why God was dismantling my sacred places and locking and tying chains across their doors.

I had back up sacred places though, and they were particular routes, or campsites on the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut and southern Massachusetts that I found from back 1968 when I first started backpacking. Bit by bit, the trails became over crowded, empty campsites were difficult to find, and the high density impact on the environment took its toll. The sensory experiences of being in nature, the mystique and magic of the Appalachian Trail began to all but disappear.

Thousands of miles across many oceans, I often daydream about my sacred places. In the beginning, Cambodia had a few semi-sacred places but with the forest all cut, and the rapid development of anything natural for tourism, there isn’t much hope left for finding a sacred place. And, as Neil sings;

in my mind I still need a place to go

When I ponder my dilemma of being bereft of sacred places, especially with the selling of the house I grew up in, I feel, in a sense that I am truly homeless in this world - that I am just a wanderer, a pilgrim, or alien, and I am reminded of these verses in Hebrews 11:13-16:

All these people died having faith. They didn't receive the things that God had promised them, but they saw these things coming in the distant future and rejoiced. They acknowledged that they were living as strangers with no permanent home on earth. Those who say such things make it clear that they are looking for their own country. If they had been thinking about the country that they had left, they could have found a way to go back. Instead, these men were longing for a better country-a heavenly country. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God. He has prepared a city for them.

I mourn the dismantling of my sacred places as places where I met God and experienced a taste of a heavenly country. But like Jacob who wrestled with God and tried not to let him go, it might be time to let my sacred places go, and see them not as places that are like long lost shrines, but as God given glimpses into his promises that will unfold in the distant future. The feeling of being a global nomad with no permanent place is not an easy or comfortable feeling but my God afforded glimpses through past sacred places gives me a better feeling for the coming Kingdom and helps me to see perseverance as worthwhile.

Labels: Sacred Places