Humans seem to love categories. We evaluate, assess and assign people and things to different, appropriate categories. We especially do this when it comes to all things that fall into the sacred/secular camps:
- This for my spirit; that for my body
- This for God; that for humankind
- This for the Church; that for the world
- This for the Eternal; that for the temporal
We even capitalize the really important categories.
This tendency of humans to divvy up the sacred and secular made my experience at a dear friend’s wedding this weekend particularly meaningful. At first glance, the traditional categories were in play. They had a religious ceremony, held in a church, complete with a Reverend. Yes, the religious ceremony included no proselytizing. Yes, the church is liberal, LGBT-friendly and active in social justice issues. Yes, the Reverend is a woman. But I stopped slicing and dicing along all of those particular lines so long ago that, by my account, the ceremony fell into the traditional, sacred category.
(The rehearsal; (c) Scott Gleeson Blue)
Which begs the question: what, then, blurred the sacred and the secular?
It was the reception that did it.
Instead of moving the party to another location – or another part of the church building even – the chairs used for the ceremony were moved to tables to the immediate left and right, leaving a dance floor in the middle. Together, we ate and drank and danced and laughed where moments before there had been prayer and communion and marriage vows.
(Dancing at the wedding; (c) Emre Edev)
Most people I know are longing for a richer experience of life. Are seeking out people and experiences that bring them a taste of their own powerful, creative existence (and that of the eternal). In this way, categorization along sacred and secular lines seems to get in the way. It cuts us off from the holy experience of daily living or the spiritually nurturing nature of watching someone do the robot in the middle of a circle of tipsy wedding guests.
To be fully alive, I have discovered that I need to allow that what is for my body is also for my spirit; what is for my fellow humans is also for God; what is for the world, is also for the Church; and what is for the temporal is also for the Eternal. The line between the sacred and the secular must get muddy and blur such that dancing to James Brown’s Try Me and eating roast pork also became holy acts.
Tags: celebration, inspiration
