making it sacred
/I’m trying to make everything sacred.
I have a friend who, after travelling to China and seeing first-hand the working conditions in clothing factories, has declared that this year she will buy no new clothes, only swap and second-hand if any. This makes her wardrobe sacred.
My vegetarian friend told me recently that she plans to eat venison her partner is going to hunt and have butchered for them. The act of eating what was once sentient: sacred.
My wife and I are watching this old show whose primary plot line is about polygamy and entwinement with a corrupt leader. But what echoes in me is how the lead character pauses in the most fraught moments to pray. Dear Heavenly Father, he says, and it’s Bill Paxton who did sincerity better than almost anyone so you can hear the earnest plea in the simple phrase. Dear Heavenly Father, give us your guidance.
I didn’t pray for a long time, less out of rejection of the church than out of disconnection. But I’ve come to understand that in calling on God we are calling on ourselves, on the sacred in us, and that can sound like prayer or spells or chanting or poetry.
Yesterday I was struggling hard with questions about how to launch a major project with a nonprofit client. I was tangled up in timelines and spreadsheets and contract language, caffeinating mightily in pursuit of coming up with the right answer. Praises be for my business partner who said Enough for today, enough. We’ll come back to it. We’ll figure it out.
This morning I understand that I took the sacred away from it. I still don’t know what the answer is and that’s OK. What I know is that this afternoon I will look at it and ask, What is my role here? What makes this a sacred task? How do we begin?
Dear Heavenly Father. Oh brilliant universe. I’m trying to stay knowing that everything is sacred, and to live from the center of that knowing. Often I am off course, but always this knowing is there, waiting for the return and the beginning, the beginning and beginning again.
Blessed be.