The Pure and the Profane

Here's a picture that I snapped really quickly the other night. I've been accused, quite correctly, of identifying way too many things as being a microcosm of something far larger. Pictured is a small enclosed prayer space (obviously shot in between prayers) that appears to be threatened, although not retreating, in the face of the crass, materialistic world. You have a small space reserved for the transcendent that is surrounded by automobiles and a bank (including a 24 hour ATM) that has crept way too close. That said, it does nicely express how the sacred and the secular co-exist peacefully, if sometimes clumsily, together here in the Middle East. Doubtless the space would have already been bulldozed in the US to make room for a Wal-Mart.