The sacred is not a discipline.
It is a dimension beyond the ordinary and beyond the mechanics of analysis.
For those who come to sacred ground, it is a kind of mystical experience.
A deep and singular encounter.
~N. Scott Momaday
The chanting, soothing us weary travelers, wound around the pillars before washing over us, cleansing our souls. The slow-burning temple incense added to the ambiance stimulating our olfactory memories in the many thousand-year-old temple sprouting tall in the heart of Madurai honoring goddess Meenakshi, consort of Lord Shiva. Instinctively, we knew we were sitting on holy ground. On 25 December 2019, I stepped foot in a Catholic Church for something other than a wedding or a funeral. It was Christmas Day in Mexico City and we attended Mass with the local faithful at the grandiloquent Catedral Metropolitana, the largest cathedral in Latin America. We bathed in the spirituality on the most celebrated day in the Catholic Canon leaving with souls invigorated. The Catedral, situated atop the Aztec sacred precinct near the Templo Mayor, was built, mostly, with building materials stolen from the Aztecan Templo Mayor ruin. Whether the deeply mystical aura wafted from the Catedral or the sacred Aztecan ground below, I cannot say.
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