Jessica Blanton: Landscapes of the Sacred 2 (January 28, 2010)

On page 19, Lane describes ‘phenomenological’ categories. We broke that term apart in class, showing that it refers to how someone perceives phenomena, how phenomena appear to us. Before, in the book, Lane puts in a quotation about poets being the only ones who are capable of describing the sacred. What makes a poet, though? In this sense, is it just someone who uses artistic language that puts analogies to sacred places so that readers are able to imagine what the sacred experience was like? If that is so, then I think that anyone who has experienced a sacred site has the ability to do that, has the ability to ‘be a poet,’ in a sense. So even though sacred sites and places aren’t able to be scientifically measured, they can be creatively described, and that description acts as their “proof.” That way, everyone who experiences a sacred site is part of the evidence that supports the sacrality of that site, assuming they are able to describe the experience.