Reflection: Everyday Transcendence - Where is Sacred Space?

As a studies in Religion Student, I academically understand 'Sacred' to mean something that is set aside, and in essence, part of religious experience, practice or experience. As someone who has developed my own unique type of spirituality and does not subscribe to a definable religion or religious group, my lived experience on 'sacred' is something quite different.

I can't really explain to other people what my spirituality is, what I believe in specifically or how I express that. To me, my sacred experiences are innate, and it is the things that allow me to live peacefully and mindfully that make up sacred.

When religionists talk about 'sacred space', they often are referring to a temple or place of worship, a meeting place or a site of historical. For me, sacred space can me much more profane . Even mundane.

Today I had an appointment in the CBD. Given the parking and traffic situation in Brisbane these days I opted to catch the bus into the city from my home. In all honesty, this was a secondary consideration. This primary reason was that I consider the bus a sacred space. In certain conditions at least. Firstly, providing I'm travelling by myself and secondly, providing I've remembered my headphones to listen to music on my ipod.

For me, those 45 minutes on the bus, headphones plugged in and listening to some of my favourite music, consititute some of the deepest meditations I ever have in a very busy life. And while I realise to many that listening to music is abhorrent to true meditation, to me it isn't.

On the bus, for 45 minutes, listening to anything from The Tempations to Jason Mraz, I will have deep conversations with "the universe" (I use this term because I don't really know what else to call "it"). I will renegotiate issues I've only ever taken up with the universe.

To me, this is sacred space. It is not space in a geographical sense, it is space in a spacial-temporal sense. It is space in the sense of a busy 21st century life that offers little true privacy and solitude.