In 1999 my friend Ed visited Bilbao to see the Museo Bilbao Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry. Museum mastermind Thomas Kerns humbly declared the museum to be “the greatest building of the 20th century,” but Ed referred to his first visit to the museum as a “Pilgrimage” with a capital “P." I had visited significant sacred spaces before, and many since, but Ed’s reframing of this “secular” space as sacred really changed something for me. The spiritual in human culture was much broader than what religion said or did. The spiritual was incarnate in the mere acts and creations of humans reflecting our intrinsic divinity. In our spaces and food, our collections and creations, even what we value and where we shop, was the sacred. The things that make our mark, maybe even survive us, these are our Temples of Culture.
bilbao, 2011