Lane's Axioms

           In Belden Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred he describes the four axioms or rules to understanding a sacred place. The first axiom is sacred place is not chosen, it chooses. Lane reasons that, "Sacred place is a construction of the imagination that affirms the independence of the holy. God chooses to reveal himself only where he wills." (Lane 19) The second axiom is that sacred place is ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary. Through rituals and services previously normal places become spiritual and mysteriously powerful places. Churches and cathedrals are examples of places that were previously ordinary, but through time and practice of faiths became extraordinary. The third axiom is that sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. A person's state of consciousness is the deciding factor of them either ignoring the sacred place, or entering into it. Lane's fourth and final axiom is the impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal. Lane explains the fourth axiom as follows, "One is recurrently driven to a quest for centeredness- a focus on the particular place of divine encounter- and then at other times driven out from the center with an awareness that God is never confined to a single locale." (Lane 19) And those are the meanings and definitions of Lane's rules or axioms on a spiritual and sacred place.