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PALEO-INDIANS – THE FIRST AMERICANS

    Approximately 20,000 years ago, people from Asia, whom we now call Paleo-Indians, crossed over the Beringia land bridge between the Asian and North American continents. It is generally accepted that this is the beginning of human history in the Americas. These early Americans adapted to new and changing landscapes. Populations branched out across the continents, creating a mosaic of cultures and languages. The Paleo-Indians arrived in what was to become Maryland approximately 10,000 years ago. Around that time, the glaciers that stretched across most of North America began to melt, beginning what archaeologists call the Archaic Period. The people at this time were semi-nomadic but began to establish more permanent settlements when the ice melted. Around 1000 BCE, when the Woodland Period began, Native Americans in this region hunted much smaller game than the mammoths their ancestors had hunted. Many tribes still moved around seasonally. However, although they still relied heavily on hunting and gathering, they developed agriculture. Their three most important crops were corn, beans, and squash, known as the Three Sisters.

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PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH HEX SIGNS

    The landscape of the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside stretches out with rolling hills of fields and forests and is dotted with quaint small towns. Farm buildings stand out among the immense fields with a varying array of sizes and modernity, ranging from “Old Order” Amish and Mennonite farm communities to stand alone traditional, family farms to large, modern agricultural centers. This area of America is known for its horse and buggies, a country way of life, and a strong German heritage. It is a place where children are raised rough and tumble in the creeks (or, “cricks” in local accent) and they walk to the corner store in the spring sunshine, as the scent of manure wafts through the breeze, an old smelly friend not bothering many of the locals. Pennsylvanians have long been proud of their agricultural heritage.  Some farmers still carry on the old tradition of painting bright, colorful, circular designs on the signs of their barns. These charming designs have a simple elegance to them and boldly draw one’s eye. Barn painting began roughly around the 1830s, but it wasn’t until the 1920s then these designs were typically referred to as “hex signs”. Here is where truth, fancy, and two different Pennsylvania Dutch traditions merged together to create a mythology of their origin and use. Many people believe they are magical charms, meant to thwart evil, witches, and natural disasters. However, there many who claim this to be a bunch of hogwash and they are merely a (relatively late) representation of Dutch artwork that goes back hundreds of years.

KAISERSLAUTERN, RAMSTEIN, & LANDSTUHUL

    In 1945, the U.S. Army guarded German prisoners in the square in Kaiserslautern, about 7 miles from from where Ramstein and Landstuhl Air Bases were later constructed. Over the coming years, numerous military installations in the area later formed the Kaiserslautern Military Community, which today is the largest American military community outside of the United States.

    Near the end of World War II, the autobahn (highway) between Ramstein and Landstuhl was used as an airstrip by both the Luftwaffe (the German aerial-warfare branch) and the United States' military. After the war, this area became part of the French occupation zone. As the tensions of the Cold War with the Soviet Union continued to fester, the United States began to increase its presence in the region. In 1951, the French occupational forces began construction on two air bases near the makeshift autobahn airstrip. These bases are often described as being "designed by French engineers, built by Germans, and operated by Americans". These bases opened to the north and south of a dividing road (later called Kisling Memorial Drive) in Ramstein and Landstuhl, respectively.

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SACRED SPACE

    Another religious term to be acknowledged is sacred emptiness. It is a deliberately empty space - void of anything mundane claiming to be a representation of God – in which the divine is given room to manifest. Here it is not the building, alter, statue, or natural feature that emanates the divine, but the lack thereof. This idea also turns up more esoterically in certain mystic and religious practices where one empties their mind, allowing the Ultimate Reality to be revealed internally. Similarly, one can also explore the nature of God through apophatic theology, which is defining God through negation, what God is not: “God is not X. God is not Y.” The most famous and dazzling example of sacred emptiness was in the Holy of Holies, the inner most chamber of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The God of Abraham would become the one God of the world’s three great monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And in His highly adorned temple of gold and copper, bull and cherubim iconography, and sacrificial smoke, his throne room laid nearly empty. Two magnificent cherubim with outstretched wings guarded the Holy of Holies, the meeting place of the Lord, who was symbolized as nothing. No image, no symbol, no statue. The God of Abraham was too great.

    From the grandest structures ever created to simple private shrines in a home, cultures the world over have set aside spaces to be special, sacred, and where the Wholly Other can be experienced. Of course, no one can miss how churches fall into this category, but the sacred isn’t always so obvious. Let’s take a brief saunter around the world to see the diversity of sites where human spirituality has been expressed.

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