Homopoeticus and the Holy

(This is actually something I wrote for myself on a summer day a couple years ago.)

I'm sitting in Clement Park thinking about sacred and profane geography and the thin space between them. I'm thinking about the words "consecrate" and "desecrate" and "homopoeticus" - humans that make meaning. We make the land sacred with our actions and we also remove the sacred from a place with our actions. And one person's consecrated space is another person's desecrated space. So, no space between them, one and the same.

Two young people just stepped out of a car and there was a lightness in their step, a joy in their pace as they walked toward a hill and then ran over it. I suspect they are going to recall this park as a sacred place for them. For now.

Several children are playing on the swings and slides, giggling and shouting with each other. Years from now, they might be off at college or starting a new job and some moment, maybe other children laughing or swinging, will spark their memory and they will recall this sacred space where their mother brought them to laugh and play or their dad pushed them on a swing.

If you’ve never been to Clement Park, it is a deceptive gem. When you drive from busy Wadsworth Boulevard (with its shopping malls, strip malls, car dealerships and all the traffic and traffic lights that come with it for the next 22 miles going north) up to the parking lot with the playground and the picnic pavilions, you have unwittingly driven up a hill. From that hill, you have a stunning and unfettered view of the front range of mountains that border the western edge of the Denver metro area. You can also see the clogged artery of Wadsworth Boulevard oozing along from one traffic light to the next. But before that, there is the amphitheater with the Johnson Reservoir as a backdrop. To the east, there is a cloverleaf of baseball parks in the foreground with the downtown Denver skyscrapers off to a comfortable distance so as not to disturb the pastoral serenity of this sacred space. And if you walk to the rise of a hill to the southeast, you can see the high school.

The teenagers in that high school were the children who, ten years or so ago, laughed and shouted at each other while they played on swings. And 21 years ago, th e teenagers gathering in this park were the children who had consecrated this park with their laughter when it first opened up in 1987. But 12 years after that opening, I am told that this sacred space became something else for those children. It is my understanding that, when shots were fired at Columbine High School, many of the students and staff headed for this park to seek refuge.

One and the same, the park became a place where their childhood memories now clashed with a tragic experience which probably varies for each person. For some, I suspect that the park was desecrated that day in the way that its childhood connections were replaced by a horrific experience. And for others, the refuge that the park provided further consecrated the place as one of the most sacred geographical locations in their young lives. Years later, the park was consecrated once again with the establishment of a memorial. And I suspect that, for some, what had been desecrated and made profane was made sacred again. And for others, that work is yet to be done, maybe imperfectly done, or may never be complete. That is the movement of homopoeticus, striving to make sense of the senseless, to find meaning in the chaos. I don’t think it’s an accident that Genesis 1 begins with chaos. Homosapiens sapiens was destined to become homopoeticus as they strove to find meaning in the chaos.

Of course, I have probably just identified the most striking contrast of the sacred and the profane existing in one geographic space because I can’t think of any greater clash than the naïve bliss of childhood with an experience that no human, adult or child, should have to endure.

But the sacred and the profane are also more subtle neighbors in space. I went for a walk and the young couple I saw earlier are indeed making this space sacred. They have found a comfortable place on a picnic blanket just far enough from the activity of the picnic pavilions and playgrounds not to raise eyebrows but close enough to feel connected to the park and, perhaps, the geographic center of their childhood memories. Discreetly, I keep my distance from them as they bask in the sun and each other.

As I said, I suspect they are going to recall this park as a sacred place for them. For now. I add the “For now” because the sacred is both eternal and transient. Given their age, the odds are good that a few years from now (a year from now, a few months from now?), one of them will return to this sacred place to cry for a love that has been lost. The sacred space may now feel desecrated by a memory that felt eternal in the moment but was as fleeting as life itself. Or, as he or she says goodbye to that dream from their youth, the place may become even more sacred. One and the same or one and evermore. Sacred and profane or sacred and evermore sacred.

In this geographic space, I have no doubt that the sacred and the profane have greeted each other many, many times. One of these picnic pavilions has probably been the scene of one person proposing marriage to another, possibly even the scene of a ritual to consecrate their relationship by making commitments to each other. (In 30 years, I suspect all of them have.) And one of these picnic pavilions may also have been the scene of someone breaking those commitments. So, one person comes to this sacred place to recall that consecrating moment while another one avoids this same profane place which only offers them the memory of the time when the sacred was removed.

I suspect that this geographic location has been consecrated by tears of joy at weddings, birthday parties, child dedications, baptisms, bar and baht mitzvah receptions, and graduations. And I suspect that this sacred space has been consecrated by tears of grief at memorial service receptions or smaller gatherings to ritualize grief after the death of a loved one. For some, those tears have set this place apart as sacred, evermore to return and tend to that sacred. While for others, those tears have set this place apart as a sacred place never to be visited again, a protection against a new wash of grief.

I look around and I see the sacred and the profane all around me. Blended together, they make this place whole. They make this place holy. This is a place where life happens. From the finite perspective, there is EITHER sacred OR profane. From the perspective of the Infinite, the sacred AND the profane exist in the One. They dance together so the chaperones can’t put a page between them let alone a whole book. They trade places with each other, mix together in an indistinguishable whole. Everything is whole and everything is holy.

As I sit here in Clement Park, contemplating the sacred and the profane, the consecrating and the desecrating, I choose the whole. I choose the holy. It is not easy. Still, I am a part of homopoeticus, struggling to find meaning with my finite mind and receiving an assist from the Infinite Heart.