The Sacred

I often listen to Sunday with Roger Bolton on Radio Four, a religious affaird program with an unsurprisingly liberal bias. Today there was a bank holiday special on 'the sacred.'

In some cultures homes are sacred because they contain house spirits. In Hinduism, homes are sometimes considered sacred because of the religious images that are venerated within.

In western culture, we do not consider homes to be sacred in a religious sense, but we do treat them as special. We behave at home in a different way to how we behave in a public place. If you go for a meal at a restaurant, you assert strong preferences about what food you are given and you complain if you are not satisfied; you would never do this if you were invited for a meal in somebody's home.

A common practice across the globe is to demonstrate the 'specialness' of homes is to remove shoes at the door. It demostrates that you have gone from the common outside world to a place worthy of respect.