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Why Sacred Spaces Look Like Houses

8 min · 23 de jun de 2026
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Portada del episodio Why Sacred Spaces Look Like Houses

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Free to Read [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Pay if you want [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Tips welcome [https://ko-fi.com/oakiemcdoakie]. Wisdom cheap. I’ve noticed that people like to meet the sacred in houses. After all, what is a church but a house of God? It’s not always true across religions, but it seems to be a common trend, even here among the Native cultures of New Mexico. Some weeks ago, I met friends at Sky City Pueblo, an ancient mesa-top village on the Acoma Reservation. Many people consider it the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America, having been established in 1144 C.E. (Taos Pueblo is a contender. The current village isn’t that old, but the settlement may be.) We met there for a tour, which included visiting the 17th-century San Estevan Del Rey Mission Church and the outside of a men’s kiva, a traditional puebloan religious meeting house. Many Acoma people are both Catholics and practitioners of their traditional religion, a synthesis that makes total sense to them. Many citizens of New Mexico’s pueblos do the same. I assume you have a sense of what old New Mexican adobe churches look like. They’ve been photographed and painted a lot. If you don’t, Google will help you out. Kivas, though? They’re a bit different, and the one we saw at Sky City was unusual even among their kind. Your typical kiva is a round, basement-like hole in the ground. I mean completely round—a circle. The nicer ones are lined with stone or adobe. There’s a roof over the whole thing, though at archaeological sites the roof is usually long gone. Traditionally, you enter by climbing down a ladder through a hole in the roof, though some have side entrances that require you to stoop or practically crawl through a short tunnel. The men’s kiva at Sky City, though, is square-ish, just another adobe house butted against other family adobes. But where the family houses these days have street-level doors and windows, the men’s kiva has a huge ladder made of white-painted pine trunks against the wall. That’s to climb onto the roof. And then a second, similar ladder leads down into the kiva through a hole in the roof. That’s how all Pueblo houses were accessed in the old days, but only the kivas keep the tradition. We didn’t get to see the inside. That’s not just a limit of the tour, either. Only the men of Acoma Pueblo are allowed inside. Maybe not all the men, either. I’m a little fuzzy on this point, but it might just have been specific Acoma men initiated into that particular kiva. Reminds me of Masonic lodges—religious or ceremonial societies with their own membership and traditions. Oh, our guide did say Acoma’s women are allowed in once or twice a year. Didn’t say why. “Maybe to clean?” I snickered under my breath. The women on our tour were hilarious. They were desperate to know what went on inside that kiva and peppered the guide with teasing questions for a long while. He demured. I can only imagine the reverse. If someone told us men there was a women-only kiva and we weren’t allowed inside, I suspect most men wouldn’t be curious at all. “Sounds like a damn hen party,” they might say. Anyway, what I got to thinking about later is that kivas, in a sense, are ancient-style Pueblo houses, or at least descendants of them. The round, pit-style kiva is the oldest form. Before New Mexico’s Pueblo peoples started building the squarish, interconnected structures you see at Sky City or the apartment-like stacks of Taos Pueblo, their ancestors lived in round pit houses. Like kivas, they were partly underground and often entered by a ladder through the roof. What fascinates me is why one of those old pit houses survived after people stopped living in them. Why did it still feel like the place where ceremony belonged? A few years ago, I had to appear in court. Now, I’m a super-casual dresser. I wear a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals pretty much every day, year-round. But when I had to appear before a judge, I went out and bought myself a new collared shirt and a pair of long pants. I wasn’t about to buy a suit or even a blazer and slacks—and definitely not a tie—but I was at least going to wear a collared shirt. It had nothing to do with impressing the judge. If one of the court staff had assured me the judge couldn’t care less what people wore, I still would have done it. Why? Because it just felt right—though I’d be hard pressed to justify it. That’s how tradition works. In certain places and at certain times, especially when they feel important or sacred, some things simply feel proper. You can come up with practical reasons or symbolic explanations afterward, but I suspect most people follow traditions for a simpler reason: doing otherwise feels weird. So maybe when the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples began shifting from pit houses to adobe homes and apartment-like pueblos, it simply felt right to keep holding ceremonies and important meetings in a big pit house—only larger, nicer, and more permanent. And our churches and temples? Much the same. Long ago, Greek villagers built little houses for statues of their gods—statues they sometimes regarded as the gods themselves during religious ceremonies. As those societies became wealthier and more technically sophisticated, they kept the tradition, only making the gods’ houses grander and grander. When Christianity came along, it built on that architectural tradition. Christians don’t include a statue of God, which would be blasphemous. (Somehow, a sculpture of Jesus on the cross is okay, though?) But it still feels right to meet Him in a special house set apart from ordinary life—and big enough for communal gatherings, of course. Humans build houses. Some of those houses become associated with important rituals. Centuries pass. The houses get bigger, grander, and more specialized. Eventually nobody lives in them anymore. They’re just for meeting the divine. Anyway, that’s my layman’s theory. It’s probably all more complicated. It usually is. But it seems close enough for government work. Something similar seems to be happening out in the Navajo Nation, at least from what I’ve seen along the road. From the little I know of Navajo religious life, it seems more family- and household-scale than the big communal feel of kiva traditions or Christianity. Instead of gathering in a dedicated community building, many ceremonies are conducted in a hogan to this day. Hogans are traditional Navajo homes. In the old days, they were built from logs packed with earth and shaped either round, octagonal, or conical, depending on the style and era. They were practical dwellings, but also places where families gathered, stories were told, and religious ceremonies were performed. These days, relatively few Navajo families live in traditional hogans year-round. Yet it’s common to see a hogan standing alongside a modern American-style house. The hogan might be built with modern lumber and plywood rather than logs and earth, but many families still want one available for ceremonies. I would guess that performing certain sacred rituals in a single-wide would just feel wrong. And so perhaps a new tradition is being born. Over time, we might see ceremonial hogans become more specialized and stylistically distinct, less like everyday homes and more like houses of worship. Which brings me back to my original observation: a lot of cultures seem to meet the sacred in houses. Why? The only answer I can come up with is that it feels right. That’s how it’s always been done, after all. The ceremony changes, the building materials change, sometimes the scale gets grander, but the building pattern persists. Free to Read [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Pay if you want [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Tips welcome [https://ko-fi.com/oakiemcdoakie]. Wisdom cheap. Get full access to Oakie McDoakie at oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

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episode Why Sacred Spaces Look Like Houses artwork

Why Sacred Spaces Look Like Houses

Free to Read [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Pay if you want [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Tips welcome [https://ko-fi.com/oakiemcdoakie]. Wisdom cheap. I’ve noticed that people like to meet the sacred in houses. After all, what is a church but a house of God? It’s not always true across religions, but it seems to be a common trend, even here among the Native cultures of New Mexico. Some weeks ago, I met friends at Sky City Pueblo, an ancient mesa-top village on the Acoma Reservation. Many people consider it the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America, having been established in 1144 C.E. (Taos Pueblo is a contender. The current village isn’t that old, but the settlement may be.) We met there for a tour, which included visiting the 17th-century San Estevan Del Rey Mission Church and the outside of a men’s kiva, a traditional puebloan religious meeting house. Many Acoma people are both Catholics and practitioners of their traditional religion, a synthesis that makes total sense to them. Many citizens of New Mexico’s pueblos do the same. I assume you have a sense of what old New Mexican adobe churches look like. They’ve been photographed and painted a lot. If you don’t, Google will help you out. Kivas, though? They’re a bit different, and the one we saw at Sky City was unusual even among their kind. Your typical kiva is a round, basement-like hole in the ground. I mean completely round—a circle. The nicer ones are lined with stone or adobe. There’s a roof over the whole thing, though at archaeological sites the roof is usually long gone. Traditionally, you enter by climbing down a ladder through a hole in the roof, though some have side entrances that require you to stoop or practically crawl through a short tunnel. The men’s kiva at Sky City, though, is square-ish, just another adobe house butted against other family adobes. But where the family houses these days have street-level doors and windows, the men’s kiva has a huge ladder made of white-painted pine trunks against the wall. That’s to climb onto the roof. And then a second, similar ladder leads down into the kiva through a hole in the roof. That’s how all Pueblo houses were accessed in the old days, but only the kivas keep the tradition. We didn’t get to see the inside. That’s not just a limit of the tour, either. Only the men of Acoma Pueblo are allowed inside. Maybe not all the men, either. I’m a little fuzzy on this point, but it might just have been specific Acoma men initiated into that particular kiva. Reminds me of Masonic lodges—religious or ceremonial societies with their own membership and traditions. Oh, our guide did say Acoma’s women are allowed in once or twice a year. Didn’t say why. “Maybe to clean?” I snickered under my breath. The women on our tour were hilarious. They were desperate to know what went on inside that kiva and peppered the guide with teasing questions for a long while. He demured. I can only imagine the reverse. If someone told us men there was a women-only kiva and we weren’t allowed inside, I suspect most men wouldn’t be curious at all. “Sounds like a damn hen party,” they might say. Anyway, what I got to thinking about later is that kivas, in a sense, are ancient-style Pueblo houses, or at least descendants of them. The round, pit-style kiva is the oldest form. Before New Mexico’s Pueblo peoples started building the squarish, interconnected structures you see at Sky City or the apartment-like stacks of Taos Pueblo, their ancestors lived in round pit houses. Like kivas, they were partly underground and often entered by a ladder through the roof. What fascinates me is why one of those old pit houses survived after people stopped living in them. Why did it still feel like the place where ceremony belonged? A few years ago, I had to appear in court. Now, I’m a super-casual dresser. I wear a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals pretty much every day, year-round. But when I had to appear before a judge, I went out and bought myself a new collared shirt and a pair of long pants. I wasn’t about to buy a suit or even a blazer and slacks—and definitely not a tie—but I was at least going to wear a collared shirt. It had nothing to do with impressing the judge. If one of the court staff had assured me the judge couldn’t care less what people wore, I still would have done it. Why? Because it just felt right—though I’d be hard pressed to justify it. That’s how tradition works. In certain places and at certain times, especially when they feel important or sacred, some things simply feel proper. You can come up with practical reasons or symbolic explanations afterward, but I suspect most people follow traditions for a simpler reason: doing otherwise feels weird. So maybe when the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples began shifting from pit houses to adobe homes and apartment-like pueblos, it simply felt right to keep holding ceremonies and important meetings in a big pit house—only larger, nicer, and more permanent. And our churches and temples? Much the same. Long ago, Greek villagers built little houses for statues of their gods—statues they sometimes regarded as the gods themselves during religious ceremonies. As those societies became wealthier and more technically sophisticated, they kept the tradition, only making the gods’ houses grander and grander. When Christianity came along, it built on that architectural tradition. Christians don’t include a statue of God, which would be blasphemous. (Somehow, a sculpture of Jesus on the cross is okay, though?) But it still feels right to meet Him in a special house set apart from ordinary life—and big enough for communal gatherings, of course. Humans build houses. Some of those houses become associated with important rituals. Centuries pass. The houses get bigger, grander, and more specialized. Eventually nobody lives in them anymore. They’re just for meeting the divine. Anyway, that’s my layman’s theory. It’s probably all more complicated. It usually is. But it seems close enough for government work. Something similar seems to be happening out in the Navajo Nation, at least from what I’ve seen along the road. From the little I know of Navajo religious life, it seems more family- and household-scale than the big communal feel of kiva traditions or Christianity. Instead of gathering in a dedicated community building, many ceremonies are conducted in a hogan to this day. Hogans are traditional Navajo homes. In the old days, they were built from logs packed with earth and shaped either round, octagonal, or conical, depending on the style and era. They were practical dwellings, but also places where families gathered, stories were told, and religious ceremonies were performed. These days, relatively few Navajo families live in traditional hogans year-round. Yet it’s common to see a hogan standing alongside a modern American-style house. The hogan might be built with modern lumber and plywood rather than logs and earth, but many families still want one available for ceremonies. I would guess that performing certain sacred rituals in a single-wide would just feel wrong. And so perhaps a new tradition is being born. Over time, we might see ceremonial hogans become more specialized and stylistically distinct, less like everyday homes and more like houses of worship. Which brings me back to my original observation: a lot of cultures seem to meet the sacred in houses. Why? The only answer I can come up with is that it feels right. That’s how it’s always been done, after all. The ceremony changes, the building materials change, sometimes the scale gets grander, but the building pattern persists. Free to Read [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Pay if you want [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe]. Tips welcome [https://ko-fi.com/oakiemcdoakie]. Wisdom cheap. Get full access to Oakie McDoakie at oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe [https://oakiemcdoakie.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

23 de jun de 20268 min