{"id":18815,"date":"2004-02-08T00:31:00","date_gmt":"2004-02-08T00:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cathleenfalsani.wordpress.com\/2004\/02\/08\/15"},"modified":"2004-02-08T00:31:00","modified_gmt":"2004-02-08T00:31:00","slug":"15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedudeabides\/2004\/02\/08\/15\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This \u2018sacred space\u2019 nourishes body and soul<\/strong><\/p>\n

For two days now, since I read about a new Chicago travel book set to hit the market later this year, I\u2019ve had a Grateful Dead song stuck in my head.<\/p>\n

No, not \u201cTruckin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cScarlet Begonias.\u201d Specifically, the line where Jerry sings, \u201cOnce in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.\u201d <\/p>\n

The book that inspired my consciousness to play the darn song on a loop is called The Spiritual Traveler: Chicago and Illinois. It\u2019s for travelers searching for God as well as local color.<\/p>\n

Written by Marilyn Chiat, a religious art and architecture specialist from Minnesota, the guide promises to introduce readers to \u201chundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, meetinghouses, Buddhist meditation<\/a> centers and Hindu temples\u201d in Chicago and vicinity, as well as \u201cretreat centers of various traditions \u2026 gardens, parks, cemeteries and other peaceful places.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book, according to the publisher\u2019s promotional blurb, sums up the locations listed above as \u201cextraordinary sites and places of spiritual power.\u201d<\/p>\n

An easier way to describe them is \u201csacred space.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have a lot of that here in Chicago. But not all of it is found in the kind of locations Chiat explored.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about sacred space in a Joseph Campbell (the American mythologist) kind of way. He said, \u201cYour sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using that definition, I can think of many spaces that are sacred to me, places where I have been inspired and awed, where I\u2019ve wrestled with what I believe are life\u2019s most important questions.<\/p>\n

Some of those places are houses of worship, like St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral in New York City and Sacre Coeur in Paris. Some are natural wonders, like the cliffs at Malin Head at the northern tip of County Donegal, the White Place near Abiquiu, N.M., and a certain large rock on the northeast banks of the Fox River in downtown Geneva.<\/p>\n

But in Chicago, one of my sacred spaces, the place where I find myself time and again, is a ramshackle joint at the corner of Glenwood and Lunt in Rogers Park with the best corn bread in Chicago.<\/p>\n

The Heartland Cafe is part restaurant, part headquarters of the revolution. Its denizens are an eclectic mix of artists and engineers, blue-collar workers and college students, socialists and soccer moms. The food ranges from vegan fare to buffalo chili. And the decor is decidedly hippy-trippy-meets-Che Guevara, with the head of a bison named Omar mounted over the bar.<\/p>\n

For the last 15 years or so, ever since I made that first 74-mile round-trip trek from my college out in the suburbs, it\u2019s been a dependable source of sustenance \u2014 physical and spiritual \u2014 for this particular pilgrim.<\/p>\n

Over the years, between the gray-and-mint tiled floor and the dark green (or is it black?) tin ceiling, I\u2019ve laughed a lot, cried a few times, prayed frequently, danced, sung, read scripture, argued about it, talked politics, argued about it, fallen in love and out of it.<\/p>\n

The Heartland\u2019s got a vibe that seems to draw out my spirit. And I\u2019m not the only one.<\/p>\n

For a while, the cafe was a regular apres-church stop for a group of us. Kind of like a coffee social, but with more soy products.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d slide right into one of the old church pews from St. Gertrude\u2019s parish and the United Church of Rogers Park that the Heartland uses as seating in the dining room, before digging into our lunch and heady discussions about faith, love and the meaning of life.<\/p>\n

Our group retired some time ago. But that sense of the sacred remains for me in the Heartland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always been a church-like quality here,\u201d Michael James, one of the Heartland\u2019s co-owners and founders, was telling me the other day as I drizzled more honey over the block of corn bread still steaming from the oven.<\/p>\n

When he was a young teenager back in Connecticut, James thought about becoming a minister, and his business partner, Katie Hogan, he says, \u201cwanted to become a nun, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, they became \u201960s radicals and in 1976 opened the Heartland as a place where people could get \u201cwholesome food for mind and body.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rev. Wendy Hardin, pastor of the United Church of Rogers Park, is a Heartland regular. She first visited the cafe as a seminary student in Evanston 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell Michael it\u2019s my second office,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cPeople feel safer there than coming and hanging out in the pastor\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

When James, who abandoned his clerical aspirations before he headed off to Lake Forest College, explains why he and Hogan started the Heartland a generation ago, he could just as well be describing a more traditional ministry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI set it up because I wanted to give people what they should get,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are a lot of people who show up here who are just really grateful that we\u2019re here. It\u2019s a place where a lot of people can come to be nourished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in a while, you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 The Sun-Times Company
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This \u2018sacred space\u2019 nourishes body and soul For two days now, since I read about a new Chicago travel book set to hit the market later this year, I\u2019ve had a Grateful Dead song stuck in my head. No, not \u201cTruckin\u2019.\u201d It\u2019s \u201cScarlet Begonias.\u201d Specifically, the line where Jerry sings, \u201cOnce in a while you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2711],"class_list":["post-18815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Dude Abides<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This 'sacred space' nourishes body and soul For two days now, since I read about a new Chicago travel book set to hit the market later this year, I've had\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedudeabides\/2004\/02\/08\/15\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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