Introduction
A sacred place can be defined as a place or a site where human beings go to seek the truth, meaning with divine inspiration that is mingled with beliefs and practices in an attempt to find the truth. Cathedrals, mosques, temples, and so on represent the human need for deeper insights into life questions. Humans approach these sacred places to answer questions of identity. A spiritual place is where one’s contemplates divine mystery in spiritual openness. Sacred places have an aesthetic value to those who regard them as sacred.
Choice of a Sacred Place
A sacred place as one person’s preference is different in many ways from another. A person can make a place sacred by choosing a place where one feels that he can get in touch with one’s inner self or a higher self (Craword, 2010, 3). Comfort and relaxation is a top priority for the area set aside (Craword, 2010, 3). The place has to be tranquil to enable one to perform any spiritual need, such as prayer or meditation.
This has to be a place where one feels relaxed and comfortable within the surroundings to enable one to maintain a practice. The place chosen has a quiet and a place where feels some sense of privacy (Craword, 2010, 7).
Sadako Peace Garden
The Sadako Peace Garden is at a retreat center in Santa Barbara. The garden is a natural garden for reflection and spiritual fulfillment with divine intervention. The garden is named in memory of Sadako Sisako, who was a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb accident. Sadako later developed leukemia, and many doctors believed that this was a result of nuclear poisoning from the nuclear bombs. In Japan, there is a tradition of paper planes if one folded 1,000 paper cranes for a wish. With this in mind, Sadako began folding paper cranes hoping she would get better as well attain world peace. Unfortunately, she died after the 646-paper crane. Her classmates folded the rest of them. In her memory, there’s a statue in the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima where people from all over the world visiting Japan come to fold paper cranes for world peace.
The 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima attack was commemorated at the center. The garden was dedicated to people who have worked hard all over the world to ensure world peace.
This small garden is dedicated to all those persons who strive to achieve world peace and also as well renew community interest to nurture peace in their communities and the whole world over.
Conclusion
Religion mythology and other systems of what would be considered as a human belief system are characterized as a culture of particular people. Scholars argue that religion is a structure that gives orientation to its believers. In traditional societies, myths represent the absolute truth, unlike in modern societies where the truth is subjective. Sacred places in these societies differ, but what is common amongst them is that each religion has its own sacred places ( Leonard et al., 2004, 7). Sacred places can be for an individual as per their choice or a communal one to be shared by many.
References
Leonard, S, & McClure, M. (2004). Myth & Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology. New York. McGraw-Hill
Craword, B. (2010). Creating Your Own Sacred Place. Web.