Liz Cathey: Personal Choice 2

Lane presents his readers with three ways of approaching to the understanding of a sacred place, and they include: ontological, cultural, and phenomenological.  In his writings, Lane suggests that in order to fully understand the full complexity and being of a sacred place, one must implement all three approaches into their perception.  The ontological approach says that a space can be deemed sacred if it is a place where the natural and supernatural converge.  The cultural approach, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.  This approach states that it is not the place, but people’s values and beliefs that make a space sacred.  I found the phenomenological to be the most difficult to understand at first, but now that I understand the meaning, I feel that it is the most beautiful and wondrous of all three approaches.  This approach states that the space itself participates in its meaning of being sacred.