People typically associate religion and spirituality with specially designated spaces -- churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, etc.
But ordinary, local landscapes -- neighborhoods, yards, parks, restaurants, shops, and more -- are routinely marked by people with elements of religious and spiritual significance, transforming presumably secular spaces to something not exactly "religious" in any conventional sense, but certainly "spiritualized" -- or, as I prefer, religion-ish -- through the creative appropriation of religious images, symbols, objects, words, and other idioms. The images in this collection show the markings of secular spaces in Northern California with religious objects and images that change how these locales engage inhabitants and visitors, reshape what they mean in their local contexts, and make claims on what counts as "religion" in the world today.
In everyday, religion-ish experience, one tradition balances more or less durably upon the next.
The mural to the left fills the side of a building in San Francisco's Mission District, reminding passersby of the city's Catholic heritage and the significance of rituals like praying the rosary for many women in the city.
Above, ovoos, are balanced along the beach in Pacific Grove, California. Ovoos, or cairns, are rocks stacked carefully on top of each other, a practice adapted from Tibetan Buddhism by way of Mongolian shamanism, often interpreted through contemporary yoga teachings on the balance and calm required to make them stand. In everyday, religion-ish experience, one tradition balances more or less durably upon the next.
The waves below the cliffs along the coast of California in Santa Cruz are some of the best in the region. A large community of surfers enjoy long days waiting to catch "the big one" -- a gift from Mother Ocean to those with patience, skill, and a modicum of luck. It's a tight community, to be sure, evidence of which is seen in their tender and well-tended memorials to surfers who have died. Along West Clive Drive, fences are covered with carved memorial markers to friends gone home to Mother Ocean, marking the area as sacred space for surfers and those who admire their grace and courage on the waves in a way that the Catholic Church just across the road seems not able to do in the way needed by the surfing community.
An hour south of Santa Cruz, in Pacific Grove, California, a memorial of a different sort sits along a rocky edge of the Pacific. Here, a formal plaque is set into a large rock, honoring the life of the singer John Denver, who died in 1997 when his plane crashed into the Monterey Bay. After 10 years of lobbying by local friends and fans, the city council granted permission for the memorial to be set on the beach near the site of the crash. Admirers from the region and around the world visit -- or happen upon -- the memorial regularly, leaving offerings on the stone.
Less formally, other locals have carved the singer's name into lengths of driftwood, which remain on the beach for a while before being drawn by the tide back into the ocean.
A small home in an otherwise commonplace neighborhood in San José, California overflows with a bricolage of tchotchkes that confuse, amuse, and sometimes annoy neighbors. Tucked among snowman statues, half-deflated soccer balls, clown figurines. plastic flamingos, babydolls, weather-worn hats, and a barnyard of ceramic farm animals are a bric-a-brac communion of saints, nativity scenes, sundry Greek gods and goddesses, cherubs, and full-grown angels. And a bust of Pope John Paul II, who, the homeowner told me, watches over the array, from his ceramic pot cathedra in a corner.
Parks and homes are sites of spiritual and religious making, their intimate relationships with people often unfolding in times of rest, relaxation, and recreation. But commercial spaces also present material markers of the sacred. In the case of the photos below, the labor of restaurant workers at an upscale café in Carmel Valley, California and of the creators of baked goods in a San José, California bakery are enriched with concrete reminders of the sacred in their workplaces.
About
Elizabeth Drescher, PhD lives in Northern California, where she savors the cultural, religious, and nonreligious diversity all around her. She teaches religion at Santa Clara University, is a consulting scholar at The BTS Center, a think-tank on 21st-century ministry, and writes about how ordinary people make religion and spirituality in their everyday lives.
Credits:
Photos by Elizabeth Drescher. © 2019. All rights reserved.