We all want a place where our community gathers and we can do things that we long for in our everyday lives. A temple is simply a place where people with shared values enact their community’s rituals. Members know that it’s where they’ll find their community. Members who are far away may long to visit. In some ways, the temple represents the community’s strength and legitimacy. It’s a “sacred space,” a place set aside for a particular use. A designated permanent temple is nice, but not necessary: any space can be made a temple simply by members gathering there and enacting rituals. In fact, a clear field is certainly a temple for some sporting communities.
No matter where I travel, no matter in what city, there’s always a place set aside for a faith tradition nearby. This tells me how much we want to gather in a special way no matter where we find ourselves in the world. One of the most moving sacred sites I have ever visited is the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. Sacred texts are read aloud, people pray in a manner consistent with the Sikh tradition, and every person who visits is welcome to a fresh hot meal at any hour of every day. There’s no restriction for religion, class, or background. Over thirty thousand visitors every day are fed as much as they like for free. Afterward, all are invited to hot chai tea outside. All is prepared, served, and cleaned by volunteers in a giant “Langar” (free kitchen) on the temple grounds. I’ve learned from friends that this hospitality is continued around the world where strangers are fed at local Sikh Gurdwaras, although on a much smaller scale.
I’ve also visited a fairly secret sacred Native American site on the California coast. The space there is designated by little more than wood huts and a cleared space. The managing medicine man doesn’t share with outsiders what rituals go on there. I do know that every day Native Americans from far away seek out this place.
The rituals performed inside a temple might be considered weird if performed outside and seen by outsiders with no explanation. Within the temple, they’re meaningful and comfortable. Insider knowledge allows the rituals to be experienced as satisfying and even fun. Here are a few examples of rituals that would look weird if they were done outside the understood time and place set aside for them:
Hoisting a shirt with a big number on the back high into the air (at a jersey retirement ceremony).
Soldiers with guns standing completely motionless in perfectly clean uniforms next to a parking lot (greeting a hearse in Arlington Cemetery).
Middle-aged people walking in a line wearing black robes and then reciting in Latin (at a university graduation).
Some people feel free to sing, dance, and express themselves emotionally only within rituals. These could include weddings, sports events, or holiday festivities.
A sacred space is simply a space set aside for special purposes. When you think about spaces that are special for you, you’ll probably think about something that happens in that space that doesn’t happen elsewhere. Also, some activities are more special if you do them in a particular place. Weddings are a good example. You can get married pretty much anywhere, but most people want to get married in a place they consider special.
The space has profound impact on any ritual experience. For example, imagine a wedding in a bathroom at Penn Station. No matter what the happy couple wears or who officiates, the ritual will feel grimy. Now imagine the same ceremony inside the National Cathedral or in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow in New York City. If you’re like me, the same ritual will feel meaningfully different and more important.
The environment in which an event occurs affects the tenor of the ritual and the emotions of the participants. Similarly, even a pat on the back and a hug from a parent at the Pantheon in Rome may feel profound because the space helps make it so. When you consider rituals for your community, it’ll make a difference in the impact of the ritual if you choose a space that’s meaningful to your community.
You can make a place a sacred space momentarily. Any space can be temporarily set aside (made sacred). All you need is to designate it as sacred when you use it for something special. For example, a backyard may be used for lots of activities, including grilling, sports, and sprinkler dancing. It can be made sacred anytime by a preparation that’s meaningful to you. This may mean gathering particular people in it, inviting particular words to be shared, or decorating it in a special way. There are several features you can use to easily create a sacred space. Anything that works for you is appropriate, and you don’t need to use all of them all the time. Below is a list to help you think of ways to create temporary sacred spaces.
Boundary. Something indicates the space boundary. Just as membership boundaries help make a community, spatial boundaries help make a place sacred. The edge of a clearing, a line of flowers, a room’s walls, or anything else can serve to mark the special inside of the sacred space. Even laying a rope around a space can help.
Invitation. People important to the ritual are specifically invited into the space. Their very presence makes the space sacred.
Clothing. Participants wear special clothes to the space when it’s sacred. This can mean dressing up or wearing something deemed appropriate for the occasion (robes, uniforms, special hats, etc.).
Lighting. The lighting is shaped for the ritual. It’s best if light is thrown where attention is wanted and minimized elsewhere. Placing candles is one way to pool light where you want it.
Sound. The sound is different when the space is sacred. If a space is usually loud, silence is special. If it’s usually cacophonous, then melodiousness is special. Sound, as much as visuals, will change the feeling in the space.
Height. Objects important for the ceremony are raised up, including people. This can include someone during a ceremony moving from floor level to a raised level. Or simply standing up. If it’s a dinner ritual, for example, the leader can stand up to make a toast or welcome. It makes that space more sacred.
Any leader can create a temple for members to gather. We choose what and when to designate a place as a temple. Chances are, an informal temple will naturally emerge if one isn’t formally designated. You can identify temples because members make a pilgrimage (travel) there because it’s meaningful to them and the place represents their values and community. The more secret and inaccessible the temple is to outsiders, the more satisfying it feels to enter, though concealment limits growth and access for visitors and explorers.
In the CrossFit community, the World CrossFit Games competition in California is a type of temple. CrossFitters gather there to compete, celebrate, and share their own stories with one another. Many CrossFit athletes aspire to both attend and compete in the world games. To traditional competitive athletes who carry a ball or speed over long distances, the CrossFit games are definitely weird. CrossFitters strip nearly naked, do Olympic weightlifting, and then walk on their hands, flip tires, and more. They even often cheer loudest for the athlete who’s last to finish! To insiders, this is simply a reflection of their values.
A large community will almost certainly create minor temples. A community can have many temples of varying importance. In other words, a single temple is not the be-all and end-all. A minor temple is simply a place where members gather and enact rituals that either is smaller than the primary temple or is used by a subcommunity. These minor temples allow smaller groups to know one another more intimately, have their own style of rituals, and even differentiate themselves from the bigger, maybe global, community.
For example, CrossFitters have world games each year that serve as a kind of temporary global temple. In addition, for each member, the local gym is a minor temple. Members gather there regularly and perform a heavily ritualized workout. In a typical CrossFit gym, workouts last one hour and include dynamic warmup, skills training, strength training, and metabolic conditioning.
I’ve visited CrossFit gyms from Connecticut to Texas and California, and I can recognize the ritual in each place, even though it’s interpreted differently. Some training is repeated more often in different locations, and, goodness knows, the music changes. Outsiders may find some parts of the ritual weird, such as the frequent fist bumping, weight dropping, and collapsing to the floor. Visiting CrossFitters, on the other hand, feel welcome when they find all this no matter how far they are from home. They get to visit the intimate special place (minor temple) of distant members in the same greater community.
I share this distinction because you may have a community that’s too big or too spread apart to have one sacred place. Think about what small spaces you could make special and how similar (or different) you’d like them to be from one another. Just as the urban dweller CrossFitters in Mexico City train differently from the beach CrossFitters on Oahu, you may prefer to make each minor temple different, and just right, for its own intimate group.
I learned that Twitch’s members enjoyed meeting one another at live video game events so much that they have created meet-up groups in many cities so they could continue to connect offline. In other words, members have created their own minor temples so they could find their community even when Twitch wasn’t inviting them to a large live event.
Using the definition in this book, an online destination can absolutely become a type of community temple, though obviously with meaningful differences from the places we gather offline. The temple is created as soon as members know that they’ll find their community there and they can enact some rituals meaningful for them. You probably already know that there are many online destinations where members find people who share their values. Later, in Part 3, “Advanced Ideas,” I discuss some ways online communities apply the principles in specific ways.
A well-built and well-managed online community can be great, but even at its best, it still doesn’t provide the same high level of connection and feeling of belonging as meeting offline can. I discussed this with Stu McLaren, who founded WishList, which powers over 42,000 online membership sites. He also coaches many companies on building online communities. Even he believes that the most powerful thing an online community can do is create offline friendships. He encourages every community to create at least one annual offline event that members can join. He also understands the power of inviting individuals to a temple where they can meet their community and share stories, learn from one another, and celebrate successes.