The concept of sacred places is another subject that fascinates me. Therefore, I have been following stories about the recent earthquake and aftershocks surrounding the East
Malaysian state of Sabah's Mount Kinabalu.
According
to Dr. Benedict Topin, the executive secretary of the Kadazan Dusun Cultural Association, the souls of locals "journey upwards towards our creator in the
sky, Kinohiringan. But we are not perfect," he adds, "so our souls rest on the
peak of Kinabalu and await for emancipation. It is
like our purgatory." According to local lore Kinohiringan created the universe
together with his wife Umusumundu, an earth deity.
That
sacredness was desecrated recently by four tourists who had scaled the
mountain's heights and stripped down to have naked pictures of themselves taken.
They were jailed and fined for
their misbehavior (actually for breaking local customs and
laws).
But
locals felt there was a link between the desecration and the earthquake. So
sacrifices to appease an angry deity were in order. Read all about that at this link.
There
is, one must admit, a fine line between religion and superstition, and often
that line is indistinct.
It
is easy laugh off stories such as this one as just so much primitive thinking.
But I'm reminded of something C. S. Lewis wrote which I've slightly
paraphrased: In
Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Religion we find the
poem itself.
Somewhere therein lies the truth of the matter.