Knowing and naming a place seems to be an elemental part of identifying where we are on the journey through life.\u00a0 Think of sentences such as \u201cI am home,\u201d \u201che feels so lost,\u201d \u201cshe has finally arrived in Santiago di Compostela,\u201d or \u201che is at death\u2019s door\u201d \u2013 these place-markers all signify so much more than geographic coordinates.\u00a0 In line with that, here are some ruminations on how we acknowledge the place in which we gather for worship (in whichever context that happens to be).\u00a0 A number of divergent elements, rooted in recent work and travel, make me I ponder this question.<\/p>\n
First is the weakening of the importance of place in this digital age. \u00a0I am struck by the meteoric rise in importance of simultaneity<\/strong> — that is, time-sharing across vast distances — over spatial proximity. \u00a0Moreover, digital technologies now increasingly blend the physical world with digital content into hybrid environments.\u00a0 Intel, for example, introduced technology that allows the blending of \u201cthe physical and digital worlds in real time\u201d (according to its own website).\u00a0 And the rise of geo-location features on smartphones, to name just one other technological advance, has created additional notions of space beyond (or maybe better: between) the binary of \u201cpresence\u201d versus \u201cabsence.\u201d\u00a0 The prominent Catholic cyber-theorist Antonio Spadaro, SJ, for example, imagined a \u201cfluid<\/em> version of proximity\u201d in his book Cybertheology.<\/em><\/p>\n A second element that has become part of my ruminations about place are the many reconfigurations of the specifics of our place in the universe that we have witnessed in recent decades.\u00a0 For example, with the acknowledgement that we live in an expanding universe that is13.8 billion years old, our sense of place on planet earth has shifted.\u00a0 Closer to the local home, we are learning to know and name the land on which we live, the waterways on which we depend, and the indigenous peoples of our regions who are the traditional custodians of both.\u00a0 A concrete example, from my own bioregion: \u201cAs we gather for worship today, we acknowledge our place in God\u2019s world: the Quinnipiac River watershed where we live and worship, and the traditional custodians of this land, the indigenous Quinnipiac peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n A third, very different experience of place interrupted these two elements in my thinking about naming place recently.\u00a0 This experience came in the form of a quite particular, very unsettling church building I encountered.\u00a0 I am speaking of brutalist (for lack of a better word) architecture of the Basilica of the Holy Cross at the Valle de los Ca\u00eddos near Madrid, Spain.\u00a0 The monumental memorial of the Valley of the Fallen was Francisco Franco\u2019s idea, to honor his comrades who had died in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).\u00a0 The memorial was, in part, built by forced labor, and although later made to seem inclusive of all the war dead, is highly controversial in contemporary Spain.\u00a0 The massive basilica, which is hewn into a granite ridge, is as unsettling as its history: somber (since without any natural light), monumental, and yes, totalitarian — these are the words that come to mind as one enters the building.\u00a0 A Benedictine monastic community, begun by monks from Solesmes, has settled in this place.\u00a0 The monks pray for all<\/strong> the victims of the Spanish Civil War; and the community has a chant school at the Valle de Los Ca\u00eddos (none of which, sadly, can erase the fact that the tombs of the creator of the extremist Falange and of Franco are in the center of the sanctuary).<\/p>\n