There Are No Unsacred Places

I don’t like to stay in one place for too long. I get bored, I get depressed, I get restless. Maybe this isn’t normal, but it’s how I am. I’ve especially realized how much I’m like this since being on the road for a solid two weeks.

It’s been rare for us to stay in any one city for an extended period of time, but the one time so far when we have stayed in one spot for more than two days I nearly lost my mind. We stayed in Asheville and Richmond for two nights, but spending four nights in northern Virginia nearly killed me. After the second night or so I caught myself sinking into the same malaise I’d become all too familiar with. By the last day I was practically ready to walk to New York. But something happened that night.

I don’t know exactly what it was, but for some reason on that last night in Northern Virginia I was struck by how inexplicably everything is connected. All places are the same, in some sense, and yet they’re all special regardless. I’m reminded of the words of one of my favorite writers and poets, Wendell Berry: “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” The last time I can really remember being hit by these words was during my freshman year of college, the first time I’d moved to a new place in years, certainly the last time I could really remember moving.

Prior to unofficially moving to Nashville in 2013 and then officially making the move in 2015, I lived in the northern suburbs of Atlanta my whole life. Atlanta is a nice place, but in mostly everywhere I’ve been in the United States suburbs are all the same, and not necessarily in a good way. Perhaps this is what prompted my initial discontent with the suburbs of Northern Virginia, just west of Washington, DC. Perhaps suburbs fall under the category of “desecrated places.”

But on that night in Northern Virginia it really struck me that in all places there are good and bad people, families, business owners, people working minimum wage jobs, religious people, nonreligious people…

People are people no matter where you go. To borrow an observation from the Dalai Lama:

“…the more I see of the world, the clearer it becomes that no matter what our situation, whether we are rich or poor, educated or not, of one race, gender, religion, or another, we all desire to be happy and to avoid suffering.” — Ethics for the New Millennium, page 4

We are all human beings. We are all part of a greater human family. This may seem absurdly obvious, but sometimes it’s the most obvious things in life that we need to be reminded of the most.

There are no unsacred places, and by extension there are no unsacred people. If you are susceptible (as I am) to the temptation of becoming jaded towards an entire group of people and thinking that somewhere in the world there is an entirely perfect-for-you group of people, I have bad news for you– there is not. But there are people you can love and appreciate all around you right now. I’m not an advocate for sticking with toxic people, but I am a firm believer in learning to appreciate the people around you.

All we truly have is one another– that’s true in spite of state lines and national borders. Let’s try to carry that thought with us more often.