Havens in a Hectic World: Finding Sacred Places
by Star Weiss
Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2008, ISBN 1-94898-69-9, 220 pp., $29.95 paper (colour photographs).

"Let peace begin with me" is a phrase that still resonates; personal serenity is bolstered by finding places, havens, where peace seems present. Thus, Star Weiss's Havens in a Hectic World: Finding Sacred Places strikes a chord. This idea of the sacred has intrigued us for years, as has the connection between sacred and place. The subject is as ancient as civilization. In western literature, we think of Homer and the Bible. Acknowledging the genii loci, as D.H. Lawrence called them, involves keeping ancient wisdom alive in a modern war-torn world. Whether we shelve this knowledge in mythology, anthropology, religion, philosophy, First Nations studies, spiritual geography, spiritual ecology, or eco-psychology, the spirit of place and the sacred it implies is still honoured. It is a recurring theme in both our societal quests for understanding and in our personal journeys, looking for proof of "something" beyond the self, beyond ourselves.

The subtitle, Finding Sacred Places, implies a search. Quests usually begin after culture failure, as we crawl battered and stunned from the ruins of other people's certainties. Although often "intellectual" pursuits, quests originate, as one of Weiss's quotations from Matthew Fox reminds us, with experience. "Experience comes first and precedes the purely intellectual" (183,) We seek to understand or explain experienced revelation or epiphany, and our questing may involve a journey. Yet the phrase Finding Sacred Places both appeals and arouses concern. Will it be too religious, or too New Agey? The photos in Havens . . . are reassuring, down to earth, with real people, local BC celebrities--Robert Bateman, Rick Hansen, Patrick Lane--and beautiful landscapes and seascapes. The maps are reassuring. British Columbia maps, so this is more than Canadian. It is regional. Local. Perhaps too local, as every dot on every map seems to be within sight of salt water. How the rest of this province hates the "coast" assumption that nothing important exists inland, up country. The "local-centrism" is concerning. "For years I've believed that the power of place--that is, the spiritual geography--of British Columbia amounts to a religious force that affects how we see the world, what we believe and how we come to terms with faith and spirituality" (2). I am not convinced. I begin my reading feeling both yearning and skepticism.

I am not disappointed. In twenty-two chapters, Weiss describes twenty-two plus sacred sites which are varied, personal, inclusive, from First Nations to Unitarians and all things between. There are private gardens, public spaces, buildings and retreats, and ephemeral places drawn for an occasion and returned to nature. Quotations from spiritual writers and academics help locate the local within a larger human culture. Havens in a Hectic World is a feast offering an a la carte menu of everything nourishing for which the human spirit could wish. If there is one message, the reading I take from this collection seems to be that wherever we choose to live, we bring the longing with us and then we create the spaces we need. Sacred places are places where we commune with self and others, where worlds intersect, where stories reside. The trick seems to be that once we feel we belong to the place, we have made it sacred. Or we have learned to recognize the connection between the divine in us and the divine in place.

If you've never read Eliade or don't know the meaning of "numinous," this is a good place to begin. If you are already a pilgrim, you will enjoy learning of the numerous ways others journey on their personal quests in a post-denominational world.

J.M. Bridgeman writes from BC's Fraser River Valley.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.


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