At the entrance to a place of worship, we often leave our footwear behind. It is a small gesture with a large meaning: We are entering somewhere that asks us to behave differently. Perhaps the harder question is what else we should leave at the door.Our impatience? Our appetite for attention? Our habit of turning every experience into something to display?AdvertisementIn India, the sacred is woven into everyday life. A roadside shrine interrupts a pavement; a lamp burns in a household corner; a temple bell, church choir, or call to prayer marks the passing day. Faith inhabits our streets as well as our sanctuaries. Yet familiarity can make us careless about what these places are for.Consider an ordinary scene: Someone stands absorbed in prayer while a visitor nearby arranges a photograph. Neither need be acting maliciously. One seeks an encounter; the other wants a memory. But when the photograph repeatedly takes precedence, the person praying becomes part of somebody else’s background.The issue reaches beyond mobile phones. When a pilgrimage becomes chiefly an itinerary, worship a spectacle, or a festival a competition in amplification, something deserves examination. We may be preserving the outward signs of devotion while weakening the attention that gives them meaning.AdvertisementAlso Read | The places we go with the books we hearThis is no argument for joyless religion. Indian devotional life would be impoverished without music, colour, dance and celebration. Bhajans, qawwali, church singing and the sharing of food remind us that reverence can be exuberant. Silence has no monopoly on holiness. A song may open a heart that a sermon cannot reach.The distinction lies in whether our celebration makes room for others. Does it welcome the stranger? Can an elderly person participate without being overwhelmed? Can someone grieving sit undisturbed? Does our devotion leave the neighbour any peace?These questions bring the sacred down from abstraction into ordinary conduct.After decades in psychiatry, I have come to value settings in which people need neither explain themselves nor perform. There are moments when a bereaved person has no words, when a carer is exhausted, when uncertainty defeats the familiar formulas. A place of worship can offer shelter for such moments, including to those whose belief is hesitant.That shelter should not depend on purchasing power, social standing or the ability to push through a crowd. A grand entrance means little if the frail person at the gate feels unwelcome. The dignity of a sacred place is tested by the dignity it allows its least powerful visitor.We might also ask whether the person who cleans the courtyard receives the courtesy we extend to the person conducting the worship. Reverence becomes credible when it reaches beyond the altar.Traditions must also remain capable of change. Better access for disabled people, clearer arrangements for visitors, and opportunities for younger generations to participate can express fidelity to a place’s purpose. Age alone does not make a custom wise; novelty alone does not make a practice shallow. We should ask what each enables us to become.you may likeFor those of us who value spirituality, whether or not we are religious, there is a modest beginning available: Lower the phone, wait patiently, notice who needs a seat, allow another person their unrecorded moment.We cannot keep the world outside from changing. We can decide how we enter a space entrusted to us, and how gently we share it.Perhaps we should leave our sense of entitlement beside our shoes.The writer is a retired psychiatrist