It was the corner booth at the diner on Highway 9, with the ripped vinyl seat and the wobbling table unless you folded a napkin precisely beneath a leg. Still, it had spiritual importance for her. Sacred since ten years' worth of every Saturday morning she took her grandmother there. Pancakes, bad coffee, and talks about everything and nothing. Sacred because her grandmother passed away and she continued, she kept ordering for two out of habit, she kept sitting at that booth as though the habit itself might bring back something.
Sacred places become holy by virtue of what happens inside them; they are not created. By repeating of something. By meaning layered on meaning till mundane space becomes portal. Where you originally felt safe, the bedroom. The park bench you chose to stay alive on.
Sacred, according to people, is untouched, pure, preserved beyond velvet ropes. But genuine religious sites are worn out by usage. loved to god. The sacred is in the scuff marks, the memory stains, the way your body remembers how to breathe differently when you're there.