the ways we worship our dead

does man find god in monuments to his dead?

i have to admit to my attraction to holy spaces: churches, cathedrals, monasteries, or temples. cemeteries hold a similar fascination, as do ancient burial grounds.

at the base of the glasgow necropolis - a city for the dead built on a hill overlooking the industrious and gothic glasgow. the merchants of glasgow built elaborate monuments and mausoleums to rise above others even in death.

"I think more and more of the tiers of the Glasgow Necropolis, the industry stained monuments and the burial shrines of some of the most successful of Glasgow merchants. The cemetery in our Connecticut town is built as a mound, a strange hill that peaks out of a marsh and has the buried bones of aged revolutionaries and the living bodies of snakes. We used to take walks around the mound. Arian and Leah would play in the cattails during the summer months when the marsh dried up. The sheep in the neighboring farm would remind me of the lowlands, where I spent most of my later youth, but the cemetery itself, especially in the rain, would remind me of the Necropolis; a greater mound; a more elaborate burial ground than that of Connecticut settlers. And still, both hold a type of religion that is only available from the dead." - Islay, "House of Water"

the necropolis

connecticut cemetery

solitude is more seductive on sacred ground: the need to be alone with my thoughts is sometimes overwhelming. there are very few people fit to be alone with.

iona abbey (1200s) - on the isle of iona: "birthplace" of christianity in scotland (year 563)

the wind here was so incredibly intense that i found myself caught in trap among myself and the other world. i found a solitary little chapel on the grounds of iona abbey and closed the heavy wooden door behind me. inside was a miniature shrine and a slight bit of light from an old little window. i sketched the light, and the shrine, as a means of prayer. i do not know how to pray in shrines like this. i only know how to hear and tell stories. is that also a kind of prayer?

kilmartin cemetery - dates to middle ages - near kilmartin standing stones
& temple wood cairn (an ancient burial mound)

family cemetery near abandoned village, scotland

two trees at long meg stone circle, Lake District, England
a different type of religion, where the sacredness runs deeper, full of mystery, into the dirt & rain of the earth
stone carvings, burial mounds, Scotland

- cathedrals -
alexandra once said, in our travels between burial grounds and cathedrals all over Europe, that she believed in sacred space, and perhaps, the human ability to create that sacred space. i saw them as spaced where man made a house for his god. not the G dash D that seemed to be evident (definitions aside) in the wind of the northern Scottish highlands or the mountains of Crete, but the god that man knows.
cathedral in Paraty, Brazil - "watching god" series
mary candles in Notre Dame, Paris

glasgow cathedral - "watching god" series

Granada, Spain

of course, as i've said, these places, although full of sacredness and mystery, are not always as pure as the little chapels in the countrysides of my travels, found everywhere in Brazil, Greece, Scotland/England, and Spain. and nothing compares to a pure sense of solitude on sacred ground - places unconnected with the dead or religion in any way - places where you stop and listen, just for a moment, before moving on, unknowingly transformed.

Crete, looking back at a chapel after hiking the gorge:
in Crete there is a deep sense of another world, carried through the winds that came down through the gorge each morning from the top of this mountain (where the chapel stands). alexandra said it was the gods going to work, and it woke us each early morning before the light, with a cooling ferocity before the 90 degree heat of the day.

i make no claims. tell no personal truths. i am only sharing a process of thinking via images i have collected of sacred sites. the definition of sacred is endless.