{"id":1836,"date":"2023-03-16T20:15:18","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T00:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/spiritualnaturalist\/?p=1836"},"modified":"2023-03-16T20:15:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T00:15:18","slug":"the-sacred-and-the-profane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/spiritualnaturalist\/2023\/03\/the-sacred-and-the-profane\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sacred and the Profane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by\u00a0
Thomas Schenk<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/head>
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In his book,\u00a0The Elementary Forms of Religious Life<\/i>, sociologist Emile Durkheim begins his study of religion by noting that central to all religions is a distinction between the sacred and the profane and that religion has to do with sacred things.<\/p>\n
Mircea Eliade in his book,\u00a0The Sacred and Profane,<\/i>\u00a0provides details on the range of objects and subjects that various peoples throughout the world have considered sacred. He divides the topic by sacred places and objects, sacred times, and sacred people.<\/p>\n
That early people should find places such as Devils Tower, Wyoming; Shiprock, New Mexico; or the Grand Canyon (to name a few that I\u2019ve visited) is not surprising. Such places still have a strong effect on us. Modern aesthetics includes the label of the sublime for such places, places that stand out so strikingly against the ordinary landscapes that we can\u2019t help but be fascinated by them.<\/p>\n
Yet many objects and places considered sacred are rather ordinary. Sacred trees, sacred stones, sacred springs are common in traditional religions around the world.\u00a0The range of objects across the globe that are considered sacred are bewilderingly varied. (In an article I published here on Dec. 7, 1917, titled \u201cThe Spirit Tree,\u201d I discuss one such object, a tree considered sacred by the Chippewas of Northern Minnesota). That such objects are found throughout the globe and to the beginning of recorded history and earlier, tells us that the idea of the sacred reveals a deep tendency in human nature, irrational as we moderns might find the idea.<\/p>\n
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In his\u00a0Religion in Essence and Manifestation<\/i>, Gerardus van der Leeuw writes: \u201cthe first affirmation we can make about the Object of Religion is that it is a highly exceptional and extremely impressive \u2018other\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 He adds that this \u201cObject\u201d is \u201ca departure from all that is usual and familiar.\u201d In other words, a departure from the ordinary \u201cprofane\u201d world. Van der Leeuw goes on to say that what makes these objects of religion exceptional is the perception that they contain some kind of power, they draw our attention.<\/p>\n
From a naturalistic perspective, this \u201cpower to draw our attention\u201d cannot be an objective aspect of the world the way a magnet\u2019s power to draw objects is. What\u2019s sacred to one group is meaningless to another. There is nothing that has universally been held sacred(1).\u00a0*\u00a0<\/b>And if not an objective aspect, then it must be either inter-subjective or subjective.<\/p>\n***
From all of this, the obvious conclusion seems to be: nothing is really sacred. But should we jump to that conclusion? We might consider the less obvious conclusion: \u201ceverything is sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van der Leeuw says that sacred objects draw our attention. If this is correct then, from a naturalistic perspective, it means that the difference between the sacred and profane must be a matter of our attention, of our caring.<\/p>\n
Everything is sacred when we see it through the mind of sacred attentiveness. Everything is profane when seen through a mind of profane attention. There is a saying\u00a0in Buddhism<\/a> that \u201cnirvana and samsara are one and the same\u201d which suggest this idea. The Naturalistic equivalent of this might be \u201cthe sacred and profane are one and the same.\u201d The difference between nirvana and samsara, like the difference between the sacred and the profane, belongs not to the world, but to the mind in its perceiving of the world.<\/p>\n
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