The Genius Loci
a reflection on sacred spaces and finding home
The air, the smell, the trees, the drawn-out syllables of the locals: all of it was new and unfamiliar. We had just moved to a new city— the paint still fresh in our new house, the walls still bare. My days were spent lonely, desperately trying to make it feel like home: rummaging through boxes, walking the neighborhood, googling local meet-ups.
Then one evening, just as we began our neighborhood walk, my husband, Taylor, and I happened upon a precious elderly couple and their aging dog, which they carried in their arms because he was too old to walk on his own. We had a lovely chat about the community, our pets, and my growing belly. After some time, we said our goodbyes and continued in opposite directions.
Taylor and I made our way around the block, reflecting on the delightful encounter, how badly we had needed it, the connection. We wondered if we’d ever run into our new friends again. As we turned the final corner, however, there they were in the same place we left them, huddled around a small crowd that had begun congregating by our back fence. The elderly woman asked if we’d met our neighbors yet, and I admitted that we hadn’t, not until this moment. The sun set behind us as the group of us exchanged numbers and planned play dates with our pups. The elderly couple watched us all—neighbors becoming friends—with a look of satisfaction. I called out to them as they walked away, “Hey, where do you live?”
“Oh, we’re just down the way,” the old man said smiling. They disappeared over the hill.
Taylor and I got into bed that night feeling content and hopeful. It was the first time our house began to feel like a home.
“Do you think they were angels?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
We laughed.
It’s been over two years since we met that elderly couple. We walked the same route daily, hoping for the chance to reunite, to tell them how much that earlier encounter meant to us, but we never saw them again.
We started to think that maybe they were angels.
Sacred Places
In Genesis 28, Jacob falls asleep on a rock and has a vivid dream about angels where God promises him that his descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth, spreading out in all four directions—blessings that speak to a life of longevity and provision. Jacob wakes up, recognizes the dream was sacred, and utters a phrase that has become my refrain: “The LORD is definitely in this place, but I did not know it” (v. 16).
I love this, how the Bible reflects the nuances and complexities of the human experience.
Even the so-called patriarchs, canonized for a faith so seemingly grandiose, had painfully relatable moments. But isn’t this what draws us to the Bible’s stories? Its characters experienced every emotion, every doubt, every uncertainty that we do— and made many of our same mistakes too. And despite the direct access it seemed most of them had to God, they are even still found oblivious to divine presence.
This is comforting. Maybe also a little frustrating.
I often wonder how many sacred places I’ve encountered but didn’t realize because, well, because I too, am human—because I was distracted, busy, or simply because I didn’t anticipate God’s presence. Perhaps this isn’t entirely my fault. Many of us have been taught that God is present only when God is explicitly named or when something is explicitly “Christian” (in the narrowest sense of that word), as if Jesus were like a spirit you must summon. But the reality is that divinity is all around us and within us. Sacred spaces are simply the meeting places where we notice; where we allow ourselves to enter into conversation with the divine.
After Jacob makes this realization, he thinks to himself, “This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven” (Gen. 28:17). He then grabs the rock he used as a pillow and makes an altar of remembrance. After consecrating it with oil, it becomes a sacred pillar.
It’s a widely held ancient belief that alongside people, places have spirits. As David Whyte describes it, the spirit of a place “is the conversation of elements that makes a place incarnate, fully itself.” Did you know that this is the ancient definition of “genius”?
In our modern world, we’ve often heard “genius” used to describe individual people with high IQs, but in the ancient world it referenced the spirit of a place—its genius loci. This describes more than just physical geography, it includes the intangible quality of a place, it’s particular ambiance. It refers to every single element converging together to create holy ground: the way the sun shines and the breeze hits your skin; the smell of the earth beneath you.
The genius loci of a place is unique because it exists nowhere else on the planet but in that sacred place.
The morning after my encounter with the angel-neighbors, I thought of Jacob—and then I gathered six small stones from the place where we met in remembrance. This sacred place is awesome, I thought, as I built a tiny altar behind my home. An entrance to heaven.
Grief and loneliness would linger in our lives a little longer as we’d lose more loved ones within a matter of months—far from any community that could offer comfort. But every time I stepped outside and saw the tiny altar still nestled by the fence, I remembered that any moment or any place can become holy ground. That flicker of hope would ignite, and the genius loci of that holy place would come alive: the cool of the evening, the warmth of new friendships, the yaps of happy pups—the night it first felt like home.
Our Genius
One of the local meet-ups I found during my Google searches those first few weeks was a prenatal yoga group that met a few blocks from my house. I was desperate to find a community to welcome my child into, so I began attending religiously. Each week, the eight or so of us pregnant people, most of us new to the experience, came together to lay out our fears, whisper our doubts, and proclaim our truths. We talked about losses we were grieving, the traumas some of us experienced through infertility, and the process of healing “mother wounds.” Every time we folded over into child’s pose or laid back for final Savasana, tears would slide warm down my cheeks. I knew I was on holy ground. That small, dimly lit room became a sacred space where more strangers became friends.
If the genius loci is the conversation of every detail that makes a place fully itself, then human genius, too, lies at the intersection where all the elements of our life join together. It includes every moment and every experience that has shaped and formed us: our ancestors, our landscape, our language, our grief, our joys, our stories. Our genius is the totality of our experiences—all of it mingling and converging, existing nowhere else on the planet but within us—the meeting place where we enter into conversation with world.
The night Jacob dreamed about angels wouldn’t be the only time he encountered the sacred. In fact, not too long after this, Jacob would wrestle with the divine and it would change everything for him: from his own name to how he relates to God. But the difference, this time, is that he’d know it. After that life-changing encounter, Jacob would consecrate that place, too, naming it Peniel because he “saw God face-to-face and his life was saved” (Gen. 32:30).
This is the wisdom of sacred spaces: they are places of remembrance that shape us into who we become. When we enter into that divine conversation, we are forever changed.
This is what happened in that small room full of pregnant bellies. The healing we experienced was not just our own but for the lives bubbling inside of us, the lives that now call us mama.
God was there, and this time, like Jacob, I knew it.
*Part of this reflection was taken from Day 25 in Sacred Belonging.