A while ago I heard Barbara Brown Taylor interviewed on CBC Radio, then I had a chance to pick up her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. In one section she talks about Jacob's encounter with God out in the wilderness when he is running away from his family. He makes a little altar there, a place of remembrance -- hence her book title.
As importance as it is to mark the places where we meet God, I worry about what happens when we build a house for God. I am speaking no longer of the temple in Jerusalem but of the house of worship on the corner, where people of faith meet to say their prayers, because saying them together reminds them of who they are better than saying them alone. This is good, and all good things cast shadows. Do we build God a house in lieu of having God stay at ours? Plus, what happens to the rest of the world when we build four walls -- even four gorgeous walls-- cap them with a steepled roof and designate that the House of God? What happens to the riverbanks, the mountaintops, the deserts, and the trees? What happens to the people who never show up in our houses of God?
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