Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Sacred sites in Australia?
I am (absolutely loving) teaching a class called Sociology for Ministry. An essential part is providing students with a whole range of tools by which they might read culture, in order to make them better Incarnational missionaries. To date I’ve used tools including family photos, demographics, contemporary fiction, poetry, film and music.
This week the tool is sacred places. Theologian Philip Sheldrake defines place as a “space that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke what is most precious” …. [It] “is always tangible, physical, specific and relational.” If so, Sheldrake argues, then Christianity must consider place, for the Incarnation impels us to consider the layers of identity, relationships and memory. (Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity
When I was teaching a similar type of course in New Zealand (Being Kiwi, Being Christian), I had a crazy idea, of teaching not in a classroom, but through a road trip.
The course would start in Bay of Islands – to contemplate Samuel Marsden and early mission; travel to Waitangi – to consider the Treaty of Waitangi; then to Rotorua- to look at stained glass windows of the Maori Jesus; then to Parikaha – a site of Maori non-violent resistance; on to Christchurch – to the sculpture outside the Art Gallery and the journeys that bring all people; then to Waimate – to stand in front of an Anzac Day War Memorial.
At each of these places we would discuss what shapes us as New Zealanders (identity, relationships, memory) and ponder where we see the traces, and absences, of God.
But this in Australia. So all week I’ve been wondering what are Australia’s sacred sites? If you were putting together an Aussie bus trip, what places would you visit and why?
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