Now I gotta go see it!

Wow -- a sculpture garden in downtown Seattle.

Except -- oops -- most Puget Sound people don't live or even visit downtown Seattle that often.

So this is yet another expensive vain project by Mayor Nichols, et al, to minimize space for public housing and prop up overpriced downtown condos.

That last one's not mine. :)
- Keith Tyler

I thought I was prepared.  I was not.

I had seen photos of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.  I looked down on it through sky cams.  I had drooled over architectural artist renderings and diagrams.  I had driven by and through the park.  Yes, you can do that.  I have gazed at its lights in the predawn mornings and nightly from our home across Elliot Bay.  

And yet, I was unprepared.

This place is true sacred space.

I entered the space leaving the busy morning rush out on the streets.  I made my way down a path lined with blooming dogwoods into the valley towards the Richard Serra sculpture - Wake.

Still I was unprepared.  Still I was admiring the architecture, the planning, the design.  But at the bottom of the valley at the foot of this immense piece - Wake, I was dropped in a chair, unable to move.

Not wanting to move ever again.

This is sacred space and this is how it affects you.  All of a sudden, nothing else matters.

Deepening my connection by taking a wide-angle peripheral vision gaze of it all, everything stills.  Traffic noise dissolves, thoughts cease, and the lovely song of the white crowned sparrow in the top of that tree comes through the quiet sweetly.  The dogwoods blossoms on the hillside behind Wake undulate in the wind.

What makes a space sacred?

This cloudy wet morning I say sacred space is where I easily, unmistakably, and reliably feel Presence, the numinous now.  And I, as a separate ego, dissolve and join in the Presence.

How can this man made structure in the heart of a city be sacred?  What makes it so?  A few gothic cathedrals have this quality, but not all, not most.  What makes one sacred and the other mundane?

This park is public space with a capital PUBLIC.  It is free.  Open to all.  Does this help?  How does this capture the spirit?

How do they make it sacred?  Did someone have this vision?  Who did they enroll in their vision?

How would you do it?  Whom would you enroll to help?

Ponder this.  Come to Seattle and feel for yourself.  Go to the sacred sites near you and ask the same questions.  Report back.

Later, as I wander transformed though the other regions of the park, I melt into tears at the aspen grove.  Oh, my.