Lens-Artists Challenge #254 Spiritual Places

Posted on Categories Architecture, Culture, History, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Northern California, Photography, Reflections

This week Tina from Travels and Trifles creates a Lens-Artists challenge focused on Spiritual Places. While many associate spirituality with religion, the Oxford Dictionary defines it as “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things”, a much wider interpretation.

While photographing buildings, I inevitably find myself in front of a religious site. It may be a church, temple, or synagogue. There is a quietness to these places. Some may call this respectfulness.

One place that gives me a sense of peacefulness is located in Grass Valley. Ananda Village and Crystal Hermitage Garden exude calm.

Many visitors enjoy the tulips in the spring.

Looking over the Sierras.

Churches

Rio Linda, Ca
Sacramento, Ca
Jackson, Ca.

Churches that started as a different building, and churches that have been repurposed.

Saw this in Lincoln, Ca.
On the main street in Zionsville, Indiana this Methodist Church transformed into an art gallery. It sits vacant and is looking for a new purpose.
Congregation Beth Shalom in Marysville, California. This building was once a boarding house. It is now making another change.

Abandoned Religious Building

Bodie, California

Stain Glass and Beauty

Petaluma, Ca.
St. Peteter’s Chapel in Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo California.

Sikh Temple

Yuba City Gurdwara, California

Buddhist Temple

Offerings
Bok Kai Temple in Marysville, Ca

Memorial Sites

Donner Party
Ground Zero 911
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter
Memorial sites let us remember

Cemetery

Walking through a cemetery, looking at the gravestones, imagining the history, and taking in the flowers provides me with some quiet reflective spiritualness.

I end at the gravesite of my parents. They both are Holocaust Survivors.

My brother pays respect to my parents. There are no markers for my family from Poland for at least 3 generations due to World War II.

Many ask why stones and not flowers are left at Jewish graves. Upon researching this I found that there are many plausible explanations for this tradition. I would like to think of the remembrance of those who come before me.

10 thoughts on “Lens-Artists Challenge #254 Spiritual Places”

  2. A beautiful and in the end so personal post Marlene. Thank you for sharing your spirit through these beautifully serene places. Interesting to see those that are repurposed, that was a creative idea. Your final image could stand alone as a simple but eloquent image of spirituality.

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