THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE ARE THEY SEPARATE?

I have the blessing of participating in a year long program called Seminary of the Wild. Victoria Loorz, the thought leader of the program was talking about the sacred as a way of relationship and that the sacred wasn’t something set apart from us.

I have mixed feelings about this perspective.  So did our ancestors. 

On the one hand “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1)  This perspective summarizes the panentheism of the Hebrew Bible, the nature connected Hasidism of the 17nt and 18th Century and the Neo Hasidism of Arthur Green and the Jewish Renewal movement founded by Reb Zalman Shachter Shalomi. It’s a powerful message—the divine permeates everything.

This perspective is radically opposed to the Aristotelian and Maimonidean idea that the divine is far above and removed from the world.  None of the idea that the divine created the world, set it in motion and has since been totally hands off.  It’s also against the idea that the world is this fallen place and there’s a better life and world in heaven, a Christian conception that is an unfortunate part of our inheritance in Western Civilization.  This view of the divine’s engagement is also a solid basis for ethics and social justice.  Since all beings are created in the divine image, so all deserve to be treated ethically. We would live in a radically different world if we acted like that.

On the other hand, the word for holy in Hebrew “Kadosh” literally means set apart. How many texts are there talking about Shabbat being set apart from the mundane other six days?  How many texts are there that talk about holidays as sacred convocations different from everyday life? 

If we think about the sacred and the profane experientially, there are definitely times and places that feel more sacred and times and places that feel profane.  Further, there is a felt, experiential difference between the two.  

If you are like me, the chance that you are going to experience the sacred in a city is just about nil. There are places that literally radiate sacredness such as Jerusalem, Machu Picchu, Mt. Fuji in Japan, the sacred hills of North Dakota etc.  On the other hand, Bernie Glassman Sensei of blessed memory had his enlightenment experience in the back of a car in the suburbs of New York and plenty of people have gone to Jerusalem etc and not felt the sacrality of the land.  

I believe that you can experience the sacred anywhere, even if certain situations make it more or less likely. I also believe that there are people who can experience connectedness in situations that I simply wouldn’t.

It seems to me that the sacred is both set apart and also constantly available and present. How to embrace that, how to live in both connection and separation—that is the task. I am leery of discourse that minimizes the separation because it isn’t true of my experience.  I am also leery of discourse that ignores our connectedness in the web of life.  That is the discourse of our secular world and it both feels completely untrue and has terrible consequences.

What do you think?  Does this formulation of the sacred being both set apart and constantly available help? How can you embrace the experience of set apartness and connectedness?