What does it mean to be sacred? What does it mean… really?

A lot of us tend to think of “sacred things” in terms of religion or some higher definition of the value of something. Sacrosanct. Holy. Religious. We have a lot of unconscious associations with the concept of the sacred, but we often don’t have a very specific or detailed concept around what makes something sacred.

I suspect that’s due at least in part to our collective move away from organized religion that’s been going on for the past 40+ years or so. Once upon a time, everyone could agree on what was sacred and what wasn’t, because there were institutions in place to tell us what was what. The Church defined acceptable (and unacceptable) forms of behavior, it told us what we had to do, to get to heaven. The Law told us what was allowed and what wasn’t, and people used to follow along. Our old institutions of schools and family and just about every different sort of social organization had standards to follow and rules to abide by. That’s just how it was — for aeons, people have looked to authorities or outside institutions to define for them what matters, what doesn’t, what’s good, what’s bad, what’s problematic, what’s the right thing to do.

But now old patterns are dissolving, old ways of thinking and relating are disappearing. And a lot of us don’t look to authority figures to define our spiritual practices, anymore. Either that, or the figures to whom we look are either far less authoritarian, or they encourage us to look within for our own definition of what feeds our souls. We have to define for ourselves what’s good, what’s bad, what’s problematic, what’s the right thing to do. We have to identify for ourselves what is and is not sacred.

Priests and ministers aren’t always in the business, anymore, of telling us what we should and should not do. (Some are, of course, but I’ve noticed a steady movement among religious leaders away from playing the role of “ultimate authority”, to being “spiritual guides”.) And even if priests and ministers are willing to tell us what matters in our world, a lot of us miss their messages because we’re just not in church as much as we — or our parents and grandparents — used to be.

We don’t just look outside ourselves to one place, one person, one institution, to define for us what matters and what’s important. We look within, and we tap into myriad different sources for meaning and fulfillment in life. We look in lots of different places to tap into the sacred.

And in the process of developing greater spiritual autonomy, while we may gain greater individual influence over our spiritual experiences, we can also lose our focus and lose sight of the guiding principles of what makes our spiritual lives meaningful and fulfilling. We can get scattered — so scattered — searching high and low for meaning and purpose. And in all our activity, we can lose our center. We can lose our connection to the sacred.

We lose our concept of it. “Is nothing sacred, anymore?” we ask. And we think it’s gone… perhaps for good.

Now, when I get into a cognitive conundrum, I tend to return to one of the most fundamental sources of meaning about my experience(s) — language.

Over at my favorite online dictionary, I found this definition of “sacred”:

Sacred

1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane): sacred music; sacred books.
4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study.
5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.
6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights.
7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office.

Synonyms: venerable, divine, consecrated, revered, sacrosanct, inviolate, inviolable

Antonyms: blasphemous.

[Middle English, past participle of sacren, to consecrate, from Old French sacrer, from Latin sacrare, from sacer, sacr-, sacred; see sak- in Indo-European roots.]

From the Online Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, from pp. of obs. verb sacren “to make holy” (c.1225), from O.Fr. sacrer (12c.), from L. sacrare “to make sacred, consecrate,” from sacer (gen. sacri) “sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed,” from O.L. saceres, which Tucker connects to base *saq- “bind, restrict, enclose, protect,” explaining that “words for both ‘oath’ & ‘curse’ are regularly words of ‘binding.’ ” But Buck merely groups it with Oscan sakrim, Umbrian sacra and calls it “a distinctive Italic group, without any clear outside connections.” Nasalized form is sancire “make sacred, confirm, ratify, ordain.” Sacred cow “object of Hindu veneration,” is from 1891; fig. sense is first recorded 1910, from Western views of Hinduism.

sacred ['seikrid] adjective
of God or a god; (that must be respected because) connected with religion or with God or a god
Example: Temples, mosques, churches and synagogues are all sacred buildings.

sacred ['seikrid] adjective
(of a duty etc) which must be done etc e.g. because of respect for someone
Example: He considered it a sacred duty to fulfill his dead father’s wishes.

sacred (jargon)
Reserved for exclusive use by something. The term might mean only writable by whatever it is sacred to.
For example, “Register 7 is sacred to the interrupt handler” would mean that if any other code changed the contents of register 7, dire consequences would ensue.

Taking a close look at these different ideas, I see that there’s plenty to think about.

That being said, I think this is a great stopping place. Jot down some notes, step away, and ponder these ideas from a distance, over the course of my day. Just let it sink in… over time.