Sacred or Profane? (Geography of Grace)

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Where do we look for the sacred?

As I look out my apartment window in Romania, I can view the ongoing construction of a church amid the grey apartment complexes that line the narrow alley. Above the flat-roofed concrete buildings stands a beautiful ornate steeple with four minor steeples surrounding it. Last year before Easter, workers hung from the very top of the structure, laying down sheets of shiny copper to adorn the steeple. This year before Easter, a gigantic bell has been added which rings reminding us of the beginning of each new hour. The strange part of the whole affair is that below the steeples is a shell of a church under construction. There are no windows or doors. Scaffolding of weathered wood boards is tacked to the building here and there. Most of the time no workers can be seen, and certainly no worshippers.

From my vantage point, I see only the finished steeple. As I lower my gaze, I see a row of trash bins that serve my apartment complex. Trash is strewn about, as if people tossed it out but missed the bins. A grubby-looking boy of about eight or nine digs through the refuse. He looks like he just crawled out of one of the bins, and he probably did. These bins are of constant interest to me because of the cast of characters I see there, with their dark skin, filthy clothes and wind-burned, drawn faces. The children are barefoot and grimy, with stringy hair. They are called Roma or Gypsies in this part of Eastern Europe. They exist on what the apartment dwellers throw away.

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An old woman with few teeth sits in the dirt behind the bins gnawing on a watermelon rind. A shrunken lady of indefinite age brings her toddler and they both search through the trash for a morsel to eat or perhaps enough to take home. They look like the lowest of the low on earth.

In the shadow of a sacred bell tower meant to call people to God is the profane. Or is it the other way around?

Karleen Dewey
Mother and grandmother to many
Lives in Romania ministering to orphan teens
Author, The Place of the Mourning Doves: Reaching Out to Romanian Orphans
www.mercymins.org