All of a Piece

A reminder that the sacred and secular are not separate.

Many years ago, I had the good fortune to visit a Zen garden in Japan. As I stood contemplating the beautiful patterns of boulders, plants, and sand, trying to enter a meditative state, a troop of Japanese school children entered the garden talking and laughing boisterously. At first I felt a flush of frustration and anger--how could they mar my deep silence and contemplation. Then I realized my own perspective was flawed. Most earth-based and indigenous cultures make no great separation between the sacred and the secular; it's all of a piece. The world is holy and everything is part of its sacred reality.

The experience in the Japanese garden reminded me of a lecture by an anthropologist who had studied the !Kung. He was describing one of their two-day trance dances and remarked that as one of the men danced, several members of the tribe made obscene jokes about his private parts. The anthropologist was startled at first, but then observed that their fellow tribesmen neither considered the remarks in bad taste nor viewed them as a disruption of the sacred ceremony.

The Earth-based traditions--those religions that are based not in scripture but in seasonal celebrations and customs of peoples, have never understood our odd Western dichotomies: how we split play and seriousness, mind and body, light and dark, earth and sky, black and white, spirit and matter. These religions have always understood that matter and spirit both partake of the sacredness and vitality of life. One of the great lessons of the Earth traditions is that the world is something to embrace, not to escape from. This land, this earth, this place of joys and sadness where we live out our days is where the sacred lives.

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