A Hopeful Heretic

Considering the Sacred...

Of the many things I enjoy about my new urban environment is the idea that I can walk to places I want to go to. Like tonight, a solitary Friday night when I’m tired and tempted to just vegetate in front of one of many different electronic display screens: somehow I managed the will to walk two blocks to a marvelous sidewalk café that serves a flight of three great wines for $15 not to mention a great salad and mini pizza that is, as the cliché goes, to die for. I’m glad that I don’t have to make a living from my writing because a sentence like that can earn you a smack in the chops from any sane editor in the world.

I also love the idea that I can blend into the environment, become a fly on the wall (or the next table) and listen to the fascinating yet mundane conversation of the large extended family that was musing about new babies and imminent babies and babies that have grown up to be drunken stockbrokers or lawyers or some damn thing. I love that a drunk or high or senile beggar woman has the nerve to lean over the fancy planter and ask for spare change and I love that God has provided me with both the resources and heart to give her that and a little more, even though I’m sure that she’ll probably just use it to dull whatever pain she has. If I can give a little comfort in the form of a dollar then let me do so.

And I also love the idea that I can sit by myself in a sidewalk café and drink a glass or three of wine and read a book about spirituality and relationality and not be thought of as weird. Or at least not be identified as such by anyone out loud.

But said book got me to thinking deep thoughts, a dangerous thing for me, though it seems to happen far too seldom these days. I am wondering about what the word sacred means. The authors of the book identify it as the object of spirituality from the human perspective. They are Christian in their worldview but take some pains to make their musings and analysis encompass larger thoughts so it should not surprise anyone when they define the word sacred as something or someone transcendent or holy or extraordinary (all words that demand their own musings and definitions) but, perhaps most important, that which we cannot abide to have desecrated.

So this got me to thinking about what I hold to be sacred. Not to be all postmodern and relative but it seems to me that that which one holds sacred is a very personal and individual thing. Sure, in a community we can agree on sacred things in common but we have to acquiesce to those agreements as individuals or they have no power for us.

And, I’m sure, that there are varying degrees of sacred or perhaps varying types. I know that there are objects, physical objects, that I hold sacred but I would not give my life to prevent their desecration. At the other end of the spectrum, there are ideals that I hold sacred for which I would give my life (thankfully that has never been tested). It just seems to me worth considering in this post what some of those sacred thing might be:

Of course there is the Trinitarian God. I acknowledge my Creator, my Sustainer and my Savior as holy and transcendent and certainly extraordinary.

I hold the practice of the Eucharist sacred. It never fails to touch me as an experience with infinitely more meaning than the apparent.

But there are more earthly things that I hold sacred as well. I hold my country’s ideals as sacred: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” and “We the people…” and “I have a dream…” and “Ask not what your country can do for you…” I believe these things and they hold a place of special, extraordinary honor in my heart.

And there are physical things that I hold sacred too. If there was a fire in my home and all living things were safe and I could grab only one possession it would be the glass jar in which I keep a few special treasures: a lock of Pam’s hair, a dried rose from my mother’s funeral, the rock I picked up off the peak of Holy Cross mountain in Colorado and the silver dollar my parents gave each of us when they finally paid off their mortgage.

What occurs to me is that each of these things, these objects of sacredness, is some part of what defines me. Apart from these objects of sacredness I am something less if I am anything at all. Anyway, those are the thoughts of an amateur philosopher on a cool summer night in the city. May you be touched by someone or something you hold sacred this night as well.

Tuesday night in the big city...

"Random thoughts" is a blogger's way of saying that I feel like writing something but I don't know what.

1. I could feel guilty about not posting anything for such a long time but guilt is one of the most useless of human feelings that I'm trying really hard to avoid it.  Besides, I think that there are probably only three people who read this anyway and Jeff won't care.
2. I'm really not in Kansas anymore.  I don't mean in a literal sense, of course, but I mean that I have landed in a strange, sometimes dangerous, sometimes wonderous new world by moving into the city.  Wonderous when it's a cool summer morning and I join the hundreds of people running, skating, riding, swimming and just chilling out on the lakefront.  I can't help but feel blessed.  Dangerous when I see that the police have cordoned off an entire block not far from my building because somebody got mad at somebody else and fired off five shots.  I don't know if anyone got hurt but it does give one pause.
3. I probably shouldn't be drinking a glass of wine on a school night.  After all, I've committed to training for a century bike ride this fall and there's a hard workout I'm supposed to do before work tomorrow.  But it's a cool summer evening and I'm having a hard time feeling guilty about that too.
4. I think I'm really falling in love with the Episcopal church in general and a couple nearby parishes in particular.  It's so unpolished, so unrehearsed and so unprofessional.  And it's so REAL.  Of course there is controversy and there are doctrinal divides.  Of course there are mean people and weird people and biased people and bigoted people there, just like in any other church I've ever known.  They just seem to more honest about it and less proud of it.
5. I think that my Christian practice has often been too long on thinking and talking and often too short on sweating.  That's why it feels so gratifying to simply be a grunt serving in the kitchen tonight.
6. I had an interesting conversation with a nerdy but beautifully humble guy at the Tuesday night dinner for the poor and homeless people in the community tonight.  He was dicing tomatoes and I was dicing peaches and we were talking about the new Batman movie and he said that he had the theme from Star Wars going through his head and I said, "Well don't share it, then it will be going through my head too!"  Then he got around to saying, "I heard that the definition of capitalism is man exploiting man and the definition of communism is the other way around."  Then I got all pastoral on him and asked, "Ok, but how would you characterize Christianity, then?"  He got all thoughtful and said, "I guess it would be man serving man."  To which I replied, "you have learned well, Obi-Wan" and he said, "Hey, I swing for the fences."

Indeed.