"A sacred place is not chosen, it chooses."
When reading Wendell Berry’s, “The Unsettling of America,” the very first paragraph of the entire book immediately grabbed my attention. He states, “One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be.” He continues to explain how this continent was found by an Italian explorer looking for India. Furthermore the earliest explorers were searching for gold, luckily found some in Mexico and explored further on in what is now America. The continent that was once “accidentally” found is now one of the most successful countries today. This called my attention to Lane’s first axiom of a sacred place. “A sacred place is not chosen, it chooses.” While in Mississippi he searched for an axis mundi throughout many slopes, and it wasn’t until he reached a clearing in the woods to rest that he unexpectedly found what he was searching for. Whether it is the finding of what is now America, or Lane finding an uplifting experience in Mississippi, is it amazing what you can stumble across in the world when you’re not looking for it.
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