Tray Norman Lane's Three Approaches

Lane offers three different ways to interpret a sacred place. The first is the ontological approach which states that a sacred place is radically set apart from everything profane. To me this means the place is completely secluded from everything irrelovant to it. Human activity is often not involved in a sacred place so that people can enjoy and engulf themselves in its naturalness. Visitors can perceive the dynamics of a sacred place from "within." It fails to recognize that relgion and culture are overlapping dimensions of human experience. The second is the cultural approach. Every human attribution of sacrality is always a social construction of reality. This helps religion to not be the sole reason a place provides a transcendent experience. Sometimes social and cultural analysis has the tendancy to discount the significance of "place" itself. It fails to recognize that place itself is a participant in forming the experience. The third is the phenomenological approach. This states that places themselves participate in the perception that is made of them. You must recognize and be involved in touching and being touched by the rocks, trees, and geographical features. Places perceive themselves through people, just as people do.