500 Words a Week - The Importance of Place
When we look to the past, a time long before the modern religions of the world. We see the importance of place in spirituality and worship, it was not confined within four walls and dictated to us. Rather it was a more personal experience, a relationship with one’s surroundings and the nature a person may find themselves in.
Places are important as they hold within them many answers to our important questions. They make all the fickle problems we chase and worry over seem like but a blip in the comparison to plains that expand into the horizon, or towering mountains or rolling hills in which not another person, road or building can be seen.
In the solitude of these places, our mind lets go of all it grasps so tightly. We are able to think and contemplate our lives clearly. For these places hold within them the power to soothe the soul.
As with attempting to cultivate our relationships with the people in our lives, we should aim to cultivate a relationship with places of significance. Places we can return to frequently, that with each visit we can seek to understand ourselves further. Or reminisce about the state of our mind in previous visits.
Pilgrimage is a topic that translates across many religions and cultures, both the old and the new. Can we create our own form of pilgrimage? A journey we undertake with ourselves or those close to us, in which we are encouraged to pay attention and take stock about all that is happening in our lives. In which we reflect upon the difficult questions of are we living the life we want?
We should find places that when we head to, we lose our sense of self and begin to feel more connected with all that surrounds us. We become aware of the paradox of being, that on one hand we are entirely alone in this life, and on the other we are intensely connected with everything and everyone.
Can we seek a period of time in which we remove ourselves from the urban jungles we are surrounded by. To seek quiet, peace and solitude. To allow the land to restore our sense of tranquility that we lose in the rush of daily life.
These places don’t judge us, they simply are, as are we when we travel through them. Just a person, walking along a path that many before us have also walked along. We are reminded of those souls from the past and how, one day, we too will be among the long forgotten souls who paused to admire the view as we journeyed through this life we’ve found ourselves in.
