Profane Experience and Sacred Encounter

Disney World is not the first place I think of as sacred, but, I guess, it can-according to Dr. Redick's journal article Profane Experience and Sacred Encounter: Journeys to Disney and Camino de Santiago.

Dr. Redick explains the difference between pilgrimage and tourism as profane and sacred journeys using Disney World and Camino de Santiago. After a reading a portion of it, I understand how Disney World as a theme park may constitute a sacred place for some people. He states that theme parks operate as a marketplace for tourists to buy products, making it a quasi-sacred place. To explain this, he uses Belden Lane's second axiom: "sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary." The common rituals that happen at Disney (eating food, participating in rides, watching performances, and snapping pictures) lend it to be quasi-sacred as visitors seek refuge and pleasure, not necessarily finding one's spirituality. Dr. Redick elaborates how the Disney theme park supports capitalism since establishing an amusement park requires capital, or money. As tourists pay money to experience the Disney park, they are serving the capitalistic system.

Santiago de Campostela, he says, can be a marketplace for travelers and a liminal place for others. It's how the traveler uses the space that marks it sacredness, following Lane's second axiom. I think that whatever space one occupies it can made into a sacred place by what one does within it.  If the Camino de Santiago is supposed to be sacred, marketplaces should be minimal as it will distract one from connecting with their chosen deity.

My opinion is the difference between profane experience and sacred encounter, paralleling to Dr. Redick's article, is the former carries a more secular tone, while the latter casts a spiritual one.  I consider visiting Water Country to be a profane experience because I'm entering the site for amusement and pleasure, whereas going to church or bible study is a sacred encounter because it appeals to my faith. Going to a bible study offers me time to connect with fellow Christians as we read  his Word in communion with God. This contrasts with visiting an amusement park since I'm there to consume, or indulge, in the commercial products offered.