Samson Girma- Four Axioms

In his book “Landscapes of the Sacred” Lane discusses what he calls the four axioms. These are that sacred place is not chosen, but instead it chooses, sacred place is an ordinary place that is ritually made extraordinary through ritual, that being a sacred place doesn’t mean you have entered one, and that sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal. I did some reading about sacred place that claimed that you can be at home and have the same spiritual connection as being at a sacred place, because the feeling comes from within. This contradicts these axioms and after some thought I didn’t understand how one could possibly produce the feelings from being at a different place in their home. I think the connection with place that we form is different at different places and therefore the feeling won’t be the same in your living room. I then thought of churches, temples, and shrines that we see as sacred. Do many of them have the same type of sacred connection to us? I believe this is possible, but although those feelings may mirror each other, I don’t think one you would try to get from replicating this in your own home would.