Sacred Spaces Can Come in Odd Places

by Peggy Haymes, Pinnacle Associate

Sacred spaces can come in odd places.

Like the gleaming wood of an ordinary basketball court, for example.

Benches line one side with space beneath to store your shoes while you’re out skating across the floor. On the other side of the benches is a snack bar with candy bars and a soda fountain and orange push up bars.

It was a sacred space to me. When I was a small child we gathered there in our church gym on Friday nights for family night. I was barely more than a toddler with my little skates inside of my dad’s big skates, my father’s hands steadying me as we circled the gym. It’s how I learned to skate, circling the gym with my dad.

It was a sacred space because here I learned that God’s family was a family where I belonged. My church family welcomed me and loved me. I had fun, and God was somehow a part of it all.

That place lives only in my memories now. That part of the church was a significant financial drain, needed extensive work and was seldom used. The culture and community had moved on, and families had lots of other Friday night options.The church made the decision to tear down that part of the building.

When I heard the news I felt a tug of grief. I grieved the saints who’d filled that space, now mostly gone. While I hadn't been in that gym in years, I was saddened to think of never again being in that place that brought together time with my family and with my church family and God being there, too.

Sacred spaces come in odd places. We can find them in a Sunday School classroom where kids had apple juice and butter cookies for snack as they learned their Bible story.

A pew is a sacred space, especially when it’s not just any pew but the section of the church where you always sit. You know exactly how the sun hits it at 11:00 in the morning, and how Daylight Savings time changes it all.

It’s a place worn smooth and holy by funerals and weddings and the odd Sunday morning when the words of a sermon or of a hymn seem highlighted for just exactly what you were struggling with that very day.

Sacred spaces sometimes come in the very places you’d expect to find them, like a sanctuary. Sometimes they come in a choir room, where God spoke to you so powerfully through the anthem the choir was rehearsing that you couldn't find your voice for a minute.

Or the hallway where, after your mom died, a friend gave you a hug that helped your shattered soul start to gather itself back together.

Churches are having to reckon with some of these spaces, too large now and too expensive and sometimes just too broken down. There are honest and hard conversations about how the mission of the church isn’t the preservation of a building, and how the church’s life goes on far beyond a building. There are sermons and services reminding everyone of how God once traveled as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, about how God’s people had to pitch tents over and over again as they followed God’s leading.

But in the midst of it, there is grief.

Grief for all of the sacred spaces tucked away in nooks and crannies and big in plain sight. Grief for a neighborhood – or a world – that has changed. Guilt-tinged grief wondering if somewhere, someway, somehow they could have done something different that would have put them in a different position. Grief for the saints who supported building campaigns and celebrated opening Sundays. Grief for all the saints who from their labors rest.

If you're in a church facing decisions about what to do with buildings, you have a lot on your plate. Just don’t forget to leave space for people to name their grief and to honor it. There’s no loss so small as to be silly, at least not if it finds a home in our hearts.

A church isn’t a building, but sometimes those buildings have been the containers for holy moments.

As you work with your church to make the best of whatever it is you need to do, leave a space for grief. For pastor and people, name the losses no matter how small that come with letting go of physical space. Keeping silent about the losses doesn’t make the grief go away. It just makes it go underground.

Sacred spaces can come in odd places, and if we allow space for it, our grief can also dance with our gratitude, which makes a space for the new steps yet to come.