* Uluru, Australia: Uluru is a massive redrock monolith that rises surreally out of endless flatlands in the heart of Australia's outback. On my first visit I arrived before dawn and positioned myself as close as visitors are allowed, less than a kilometer from the rock.
For the ensuing hour, as the Earth slowly tilted toward the sun at my back, the rock gradually grew more orange, brighter, and I began to see fissures and pocks in its side, shadowy sluices where rainfall must have run down, deep gouges scooped out by wind, water and time. Slowly the sky lightened from dark blue to a pastel peach-pink; bushes and trees in the foreground took silver-green shape, the rock turned a brighter orange, and dark pocks like caves began to appear in its side.
Suddenly, in one miraculous moment, bird songs burst from the bushes and trees and the sun fired up the face of Uluru. It was as if the rock were glowing from within, pulsing, breathing with a fiery orange flame. For a second it seemed like one huge burning ember and then it seemed like something I simply didn't have words for. It was alive with some kind of Earth energy of its own; it was the heart of the soil and the rocks and the roots beneath the soil coming to life. It pulsed. It gathered everything into itself. It beat with a luminous orange energy that coursed through the world around it.
Then the moment ended, and I dropped to my knees, picked up a handful of soil and let it sift through my hands. Now I do this again in memory - the red soil sifting slowly, softly - and feel the same electrical epiphany: Those particles passing through my fingers are the same as the particles that molded to form Uluru, and are really not so different from the particles that have been molded into the big blue-and-green rock on which we all kneel.
* Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris: Notre-Dame's architectural treasures are transporting, but on my last visit, the most moving treasure turned out to be a humble sign over a tiny stone basin of water, on a column near the doors. The sign read ''In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit'' in seven languages, with pictures that showed a hand dipping into the water, then touching a forehead. I touched my hand to the cool, still water, then brought it to my head, and as I did so, chills ran through my body and tears streamed into my eyes.
Somehow, that simple act forged a palpable contact with centuries past, and put everything into startling focus: The ceaseless flow of pilgrims to this special place, the ceaseless procession of hands to water and fingers to forehead, all sharing this basin, this gesture. I felt a new sense of the history that flows with us and around us and beyond us all - of the plodding, tireless path of humankind and the sluggish, often violent spread of Christianity through Europe and the rest of the world - and of the flow of my own history too: my Protestant upbringing, a pastor whose notions of Christian love have had a deep and abiding influence on my life, the old and still-inconceivable idea of God.
* Ryoanji Temple rock garden, Kyoto: The rock garden at Ryoanji consists of 15 irregularly shaped rocks of varying sizes, some surrounded by moss, arranged in a bed of white sand that is raked every day. A low earthen wall surrounds the garden on three sides, overhung by a narrow-beamed wooden roof; on the fourth side, wooden steps lead to a wide wooden platform and the main building of the temple itself. Beyond the wall are cedar, pine and cherry trees.
The first time I visited this deceptively simple-seeming space, something held me there. Morning passed to afternoon. Clouds came and went, and the branches beyond the garden bent, straightened, bent again. I saw how the pebbly sand had been meticulously raked in circles around the rocks, and in straight lines in the open areas; I saw how pockets of moss had filled the pocks in the stones, and how the sand echoed the sky, the moss echoed the trees, the wall and roof balanced the platform and the rocks seemed to emanate a web of intricate, tranquil tension within the whole.
After half a day of staring and studying, Ryoanji's exquisite enigma revealed itself: It is arranged so that no matter where you sit or stand, you can see only 14 of the 15 rocks. What a brilliant lesson! To really see Ryoanji, to perceive it in its entirety, you have to transcend the boundary between inner and outer - you have to travel inward as well as outward, to find and finish it in your mind.
