spiritual<\/em>\u2014spaces.<\/p>\nIt turns out that SFO does, in fact, have a chapel, though it is tucked away in the International Terminal, and is known as \u201cThe Berman Reflection Room,\u201d which, as an entry on IFly.com cites, \u201cprovides a center for quite self-reflection and meditation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assorted photographs from Flickr, if they can be trusted, depict the space as not much different than an airport gate, with carpet, lines of chairs and window-walls of glass, plus what appears to be a vestigial Chuppah-type structure, and some potted plants. (The website for a group called the Interfaith Center at the Presidio, incidentally, laments that it was asked to raise funds for the Berman Reflection Room, but not allowed to conduct any \u201cprogramming\u201d there.)<\/p>\n
If the clich\u00e9 that all trends move eastward from California stands, then the idea of airport chapels and other incidental religious spaces would appear to be in eclipse.<\/p>\n
Which would be too bad, for I\u2019ve always loved sighting the airport-chapel logo out of the corner of my eye, skidding my beat-up suitcase across the concourse, and entering a hushed space of\u2014well, exactly what?<\/p>\n
Carpet, tidy rows of vinyl-upholstered chairs, indistinct Modernist artwork over table with a heavy old unread Bible that could have come from a funeral parlor, and the telltale compass pointing the way to Mecca.<\/p>\n
Certainly, airport chapels never, and I mean never, cater to my own faith as an Orthodox Christian, with icons or incense. But the general airport chapel gestalt didn\u2019t even resonate much with my beliefs before I converted, back when I was an evangelical Christian.<\/p>\n
In the 80s and 90s, well before our national battles over pluralism became prominent, airport chapels already smacked of an earnest, non-specific Liberal Protestantism\u2014the Protestantism of our esteemed former \u201cliberal\u201d Supreme Court judges, of which there are now exactly none.<\/p>\n
And yet I loved that very non-specificity, for what it implied to me was not cheery, interfaith agreement, but passionate, personal, and often lonely fear and longing.<\/p>\n
Inside those small spaces, with the humming of the fluorescent lights and muffled footsteps outside the door, it felt as though I were flinging my prayers out to do battle in the universe\u2019s great silence, and that I was mystically joined with so many others, Christian or not.<\/p>\n
In fact, praying in the ersatz chapel seemed to be a most pure form of practicing Christian faith. I dare you, whatever faith you are, to glance at the guestbook the next time you are in an airport that has a chapel, and in those pages you will find the most naked expressions of sorrow and need.<\/p>\n
People who would crow about not darkening the door of a confessional since 1970 will scrawl an urgent, \u201cI am so sorry. Forgive me,\u201d in felt-tip pen across smooth white pages.<\/p>\n
Unlike most things having to do with Washington, D.C., and thwarting the trend, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority does a bang-up job in its facilities at Dulles International and Reagan National, with an onsite Catholic priest and regular clergy of other faiths.<\/p>\n
The Reagan National Airport chapel, in particular, is the one instance of a truly \u201copen\u201d religious space that is also truly beautiful, with glowing blond wood floors and high banquette seating around the walls that promote an atmosphere of security and calm.<\/p>\n
Yet pluralism, the rise of the spiritual but not religious \u201cNones,\u201d and the drive toward more premium retail in airports, all portend a dark future for airport chapels.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a conservative Internet thread that balks to find chapels mostly serving Muslims, evidence of \u201ccreeping Sharia,\u201d these claimants say. (But who deserted the chapels first? I want to ask. Who actually went in and took the time to pray?)<\/p>\n
The Cleveland International Airport once housed the lavishly detailed, and explicitly Catholic Regina Caeli Chapel, with stained-glass windows and statues of Our Lady and Christ. It received constant criticism for its credal specificity, though the courts had declared its existence constitutional.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, this unique and charming chapel was destroyed in August 2008 to make way for another mindless chain store,\u201d noted a Flickr respondent in a caption accompanying a picture of an Easter display from years past, complete with a statue described as a smiling \u201cJesus Action Figure.\u201d (Do any of you Cleveland folks know whether the contents were relocated?)<\/p>\n
Yet I\u2019d wager it was September 11 that spelled the general eclipse of these spaces. I recall an editorial cartoon that came out not long after the disaster, which depicted a giant (and nonspecific) Hand of God reaching down to the burning World Trade Center towers, pulling up a stairway of souls from the wreckage.<\/p>\n
In the wake of such violence, all places became landmarks for religious practice, and religious display, and the once low-status practice of adorning car-wreck locations and murder scenes with teddy bears and bouquets of flowers became general to all of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo an unknown God,\u201d so many of them seem to say, with an intimacy that most of us find unsettling.<\/p>\n
I remember well the faces in the thousands of photos of the lost in New York, plastered in subway stations and on telephone poles: Looking for\u2026. Last seen Tuesday morning, 7:30 a.m. at the corner of\u2026. Have you seen?<\/p>\n
Icons if ever there were icons. Images of God, various and imprinted and multiple: the One in the Many, the Seed in the Ground.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The San Francisco International Airport has a yoga room, but no chapel. At least that\u2019s what it looked like, when I was there a couple of weeks ago at six o\u2019clock in the morning: The Yoga Room was obviously a point of pride, with extensive signage along the concourse, but there was no indication that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1047,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,48],"tags":[44,71,198],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caroline-langston","category-faith-topical-categories","tag-faith","tag-prayer","tag-worship"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>The San Francisco International Airport has a yoga room, but no chapel. At least that\u2019s what it looked like, when I was there a couple of weeks ago at six o\u2019clock in the morning: The Yoga Room was obviously a point of pride, with extensive signage along the concourse, but there was no indication that there might be other kinds of religious\u2014excuse me, spiritual<\/em>\u2014spaces.<\/p>\n