It took me awhile to get the symbolism: a safety pin for a safe place. Some of my friends have embraced the idea: “…people across America are attaching safety pins to their lapels, shirts and dresses to signify that they are linked, willing to stand up for the vulnerable. It’s a matter of showing people who get it that I will always be a resource and an ally to anyone and everyone who wants to reach out,” said Kaye Kagaoan, 24, a graphic designer from the Philippines who lives in Brooklyn. “When I saw it on Facebook, it was so simple. It resonated with me.”
But safe places are just a first step
toward sacred spaces, which are more biblically defined. They surface in the
Old Testament where God has been deemed present. In Genesis we’re told that at
Bethel “Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place
where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he
also poured oil on it.” (Genesis 35:14) And when Joshua crossed the Jordan at
the border of Jericho, he “set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken
out of the Jordan. He
said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents,
‘What do these stones mean?’ 22 tell
them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’” (Joshua 4:20-22)
New Testament thinking is a bit
different. The spaces aren’t geographically defined like in the Old Testament
(even tho’ Israel today is rife with memorials, monuments, plaques and
inscriptions: “Jesus walked here!”). Instead it is more the sense that a sacred
space is one where Jesus resides; where God has been, or is, present.
I don't always have this awareness. Not, more often than not. I'm learning, however, that the rewards of having a disciplined awareness are great, and possessing it lays the groundwork for the moral actions required of a Christian. "Such a space is essential for moral action because it is within it that 'questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what is not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary.'" (Volf, M. quoting Charles Taylor in Captive to the Word of God, p. 48)
Thus a sacred space is a safe place, but
extended: one where those who are different are accepted and even loved,
certainly, but also where enemies are forgiven, nonviolence is practiced, and
God is proclaimed through the ministry of Jesus. Sacred spaces are where
Christians are agents of Christian practices. We are hospitable, but we are
also agents of love, restoration, and justice.
