Temenos

Many years ago I was able to spend time in Kona, Hawaii.  While I was there, the Volcano erupted and I witnessed something I have never forgotten.  I walked out on a fresh lava flow.   It was difficult to breath.  Once I got used to the odor, it was still difficult. My heart continued to race.   I felt disoriented.  The lava was so fresh that the bottom of my shoes melted from the heat.  So fresh that I could look through the dark, crusted cracks and see the flowing bright red and gold lava 18 inches below.  When that same lava was able to make a path to the ocean there were enormous steam clouds towering overhead.  I wondered, what was I standing on?  What held me?    I walked and watched the flow for many hours.  When the sun set, the ground was outlined in the glow from beneath.

Each of our Blueprint for Discipleship groups eventually comes upon this question:  “Have you ever mistaken the beginning of something for the end?  Have you ever arrived at the end of a journey, only to look back in hindsight and realize it was just the beginning?” (pg. 36)  Every time we sit and talk through this question I think about the volcanic eruption.  I remember the lava flow.  I recall my disorientation and I wonder:  Was this a good thing or a bad thing to have happen?  On the surface it seemed awful.  Homes would be lost, land destroyed, lives turned upside down.  The grief from this destruction would be unmeasurable.  Underneath the surface, growth was happening.  In some spots the landscape was covered and changed by the lava.  Where land and ocean met, the Big Island was receiving more real estate.  It was growing and changing.    Breathlessly sacred.  Confusing and frightening.  Still, I longed to stay with the flow.  Ending?  Beginning?  Yes.

We close our series on Temenos this week.  The word Temenos comes to us from a Greek verb which means “to cut.”  Temenos is a piece of ground surrounding or adjacent to a temple; a sacred enclosure or precinct” (from Oxford Classical Online Dictionary).  Tradition tells us that the Temenos was marked in various ways so that persons entering a sacred space or precinct would be aware that they were entering “Holy Ground.”

What places are sacred for you?  What place is so holy that it “leaves you breathless” ?

In what ways have those places signaled beginning and ending for you?

~Linda DH

(all photos of Kalapana Lava Flow were taken by jeff.g.moore from Flckr and shared w/ permission)