Of Vortex-trekking and the withering of cynicism...

the highlight to our day trip to sedona was visiting a church, built directly into the rock and, according to the solemn reporting of a proprietor of a dog accessories shop in town, "on a vortex". for those of you who have not endured one of my pertinent monologues, i was a religious studies major in school with an area of concentration on new religious movements. you may have gathered from my attention to religious art in sweden that i am at the very least an appreciator of religious iconography. and i am. but there is a vast space between objects and places rarefied through centuries of sacred designation and those more recently evolved. both are fascinating, and my experience in sweden was my first of the religiously-marinating-for-almost-a-millenia. what was amazing about this trip to sedona was immersion in america's new religious mecca.

i wish i had taken more pictures while we strolled through town, past shop after shop offering aura photography, crystal healing, vortex tours, and psychic consultations. it didn't feel appropriate. this marketplace of new religious services and paraphernalia was not hidden, some isolated wayside curiosity. this was sedona's main street, the dominant culture, and obviously a major engine of the local economy. there was something striking about seeing what, to many americans, is slightly deviant or suspect, being proffered without any self-consciousness or irony in the plain language of advertisements and prices. 

while walking sedona's streets, starbucks chai in hand, i could have passed through any one of dozens of storefronts and entered a space specializing in immediate salvation: spiritual cleansing, energetic healing, aura readings. we went in a couple crystal shops. i felt tawdry and voyeuristic as, unrelenting chronicler that i am, i eavesdropped on an elated customer telling a shopkeeper that "waking up to rainbows just makes me smile!" during my thesis writing days, a crucial part of my efficacy as researcher was remaining objective, neutral, and present during my visits to new religious groups. analysis was for later, and while impossible to totally separate my own subjectivity from my experiences, i did my best to write through a scholarly, sensitive lens. in sedona, gawking at the literal profitability of this geographically specific spiritual marketplace, i felt a little superior, cynical, and --somewhere underneath all of this-- like an asshole.

anyways, once we'd gotten our fill of strolling, we decided to check out this church. mike told me had seen it before-- bike rides had sometimes passed right by it. as we walked up to it, it loomed, smooth and alien somehow: all slick lines and glossy stone, atop the rough textured red rock sedona is famous for. it was a steep approach, and golf carts with wizened-looking drivers were at the ready on the sidelines for the less durable pilgrims.

 and, as we rounded the corner, up the determined incline of the sidewalk, it came into head-on view. and it was beautiful. the sun was poised directly behind the church, ringing it without nuance in a halo, its light streaming through the paned glass windows in geometric interruptions. i took one picture. and then, waiting for the tourist to kindly get out of view, another. and another. and another. it was so beautiful. retaining my documentarian distance, i told mike the pictures were good. i lowered my camera and we went inside.

 it is profound, the spaces us humans identify as sacred. the places we designate as our moorings, our safe harbors. where we go to unburden ourselves, divest our souls of our earthly weight. with light bearing through in each cross-created quadrant, i was relieved of my own distance. i felt, i experienced, i was. i took in the silence, breathed the air, watched people who spoke many different languages come in and experience singular awe. we create channels, places we can put down the awful weight of our "i"-ness. 

 it was a catholic church, built on a vortex. but that was not important. what was important was the quiet, the shuffle of consciously muffled steps, the widening of eyes.