Where is the Sacred?

Last Wednesday at Enterbeing VerDarLuz, the young artist displaying his photographs at Ebeing, shared his story. Young, intense, searching, serious, he told of his travels to Cambodia, to Miramar, Laos, India, Cashmere and Nepal to escape depression and superficiality of middle class America and to find the sacred.

On one side of the Enterbeing space were portraits of people he had encountered on his journey. On the other side were mandalas he had shaped from photos of places he had visited. Like faces looking inside their souls the eyes of one wall were scouring the complexity and mystery of the other. I could not help but think that the juxtaposition spoke also of the dual dimension of his pilgrimage. Was he a mere hitchhiker in the universe? A progressive pilgrim searching for peace? Was he on a Dream Quest? Was he driven to the desert like Moses and Elijah and Jesus? Was his journey as much inner as outer? Would he join the desert abbas and immas who centuries ago saw the city as a ship wreck, and their calling was to flee the city, to be silent and to pray unceasingly?

I felt his intensity as he shared his photos of the killing fields of Cambodia, the landmines left behind--millions so that people have to stay on the main roads or risk dismemberment or death. Then contrasting pictures of buddhist monks at prayer. Silent temples rising to the clouds. Pilgrims seeking peace in the Land Mine Museum. Smiling children with stumps for limbs. Old women bent to the ground with heavy burdens. Surely he was no tourist to the suffering of humanity.

Yet in coming home he realized he was a tourist of sorts. That his presence and the presence of others altered the terrain and contributed to the destruction of a way of life. Did he have to travel half the globe to discover the nasty tentacles of runaway capitalism and materialism? Did he go away only to see the reflection of the beast in a glass darkly? Did his spiritual quest take him to a place he'd rather not be--to the belly of the beast?

Does this one man's journey reconfirm ancient stories of eating forbidden fruit, of asking "Am I my brother's keeper?", of living East of Eden in Noah's killing field? Is there no sacred place apart from the contamination of consumer greed or human sin? What do the Siks, the Imams, the Buddhas, the Prophets, the Priests have to say to this mountain climber? Do the sacred scriptures offer no enlightenment to the darkness he encountered? Do the portraits on the wall stare across space to mandalas bearing no power? Does his Catholic upbringing offer no resource to his quest or questions?

Who will walk with this young traveller? Who has walked similar paths? Who dares to risk high mountains and down deep valleys of the shadow of death? Who will join VerDarLuz, Seeing-Giving-Light? Will you?

P Moe
July 18, 2005