What is Sacred to You?

by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal being which are called Gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred" (Durkheim 1915)

This begs the question What is does sacred mean to you and what do you hold as sacred?

Sacred for me is the creative process that humans, as part of nature, engage in along with the creative processes that are inherant in nature and the universe. For me ordinary acts can become sacred if imbued with meaning, that is, if they are done with intention. I see the sacred in the ordinary because of it's being, it's pressence within the universe. So I suppose I could rephrase the question to what has really significant meaning to you?

For me it is a time continum...a slipstream when I am able to experience the ordinary as sacred; like a walk on the beach can become sacred, if I am in the state of mind that has connected me to universal energy of the universe....when I am meditating. If I am digging around in the sand with my family, splashing in the waves the beach and the water are no less sacred but at that moment I am not in a state of honouring the sacred within that. So in one respect for me the sacred is a state of mind but it is also physical and emotional reality. It is just that I have not connectd to the sacred at that moment.

For me the sacred resides in nature, in the wind, the cycles of the seasons, the bush track that I walk and the particular trees that are along that track. It is the headland at a particular beach and it is seeing the ocean as hair, the moon as a Goddess and the earth containing it's own energetic rhythms. It is life. Life is sacred.

I see sacredness as connection. If you have a strong connection to something, somone or a place, if it has special significance or meaning then it is sacred to you. Places, people and things only become sacred when there is a special significane or connection to them. Something becomes sacred because it becomes imbued with your energy. The honouring becomes an act of rememberance. It reminds you of the feeling and connectedness that you had with that person, place or time. Sometimes, groups of people share their sense of the sacred and then this beomes a shared spiriituality, even a religion. Ah but I am getting ahead of myself.