As I read the scholarship about the concept of sacred, I find my ability to understand the term in a way that could be accepted by different cultures or even the multiple groups within a culture more and more difficult. It does not take long to realize the complexity of the subject. I grew up as a Catholic, educated in Catholic schools by nuns who had no doubts, at least on the surface, of what sacred meant. Sacred was used to describe those things that the Church deemed divine; that is, the people, rituals, and objects chosen by the Church through the divine intervention of God to define Catholicism. And so until now, Sacred is one of those terms I took for granted: Of course I know what sacred means.
I have never pondered or questioned the definition; although, I have used it to describe what some scholars would define as profane—ordinary earthly events common to our human experiences. I would sometimes think of certain family events as sacred. For example, at first sight of my newborn children I felt true awe. For a few moments, everything else was suspended—people, place, and time—didn’t exist. Only the baby and I existed in a shared experience of life that no one else could feel or comprehend. (In a very small way, it is like the experience of storytelling in that each experience can only happen once.) The thing that made childbirth different for me was that feeling of awe. Awe is what made the experience sacred, and though I wouldn’t use the word divine, I might say that I venerated the phenomenon of marriage, family and parenthood. In a grossly over-simplified generalization of Evans’ discussion (The Sacred: Differentiating, Clarifying, and Extending Concepts) this is how I understand the meaning of sacred outside the context of religion.
My understanding of Childbirth was a thing set apart, something no other individual will understand exactly the way I do. Others—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.—will have their own experiences with childbirth. Some may even call those experiences sacred; but, they will never have my experience. Given the subjectivity inherent in the meaning of sacred, I can only, going forward, consider any formal definition limited and any personal definition worthy of respectful consideration.
Leave a Reply