A Humanist Concept of Sacred

To come to a place of mutual trust and respect is the mother of all sacred places. It is only from this place that we can help one another to reach his or her greatest potential.

A Humanist Concept of Sacred

Sacred is a human construct. The universe, except through us or any other intelligent creatures there may be, does not make distinctions about what can and can’t be violated.

A Humanist Concept of Sacred

We invent words like sacred and violate to share our hopes, fears and desires with one another. And, unfortunately, the violations we were most concerned about when we first identified the concept, are those that we all too readily perpetrate on one another.

A Humanist Concept of Sacred

I can find no reason to believe there is judgment involved in this churning of matter and energy in space over time. The universe is indifferent to what you and I perceive as the consequences of this churning. Stuff happens.

Vivienne Westwood: Six Radical Quotes on Saving the World

What makes this set of “Radical Quotes” so interesting is that they come from the heart of the fashion industry and they make seem ripped directly from the book Sacred Economics, which I recently finished reading and highly recommend.

About Miracles

Not that there is any reason to listen to me about such things.

“We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness,” 1

Loren Eiseley

Something about this sentiment, so common, yet… we are, as best I can figure, the embodiers of miracles. We define what they are and we define them in relation to ourselves. Except to the extent the universe may be pan-sentient, and I don’t completely count that possibility out, we are the beginning and end of what is miraculous.

A miracle is an event that seems inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. 2

My personal attitude is that the miraculous is synonymous with the extremely rare.

Informally, English-speakers often use the word miracle to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a “wonderful” occurrence, regardless of likelihood (e.g. “the miracle of childbirth”). 3

Identifying something as a miracle is a religious posture. A positive view on the universe and humanity’s place in it. It is a reverent attitude that makes room for things to be sacred. I believe in the concept of sacred, but only in a secular sense. I believe that when we view something as sacred, we offer it respect and agree not to violate it. It only has meaning through common agreement.

A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed (for instance) by Thomas Jefferson, and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, may work without, above, or against it as well. 4

I don’t believe anything happens in the universe that isn’t inherently possible, including god, should s/he exist. I do believe in the extremely rare.

Personally, I believe theologians are out on a limb.


  1. https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/06/14/the-beginning-and-the-end-robinson-jeffers/ ↩︎

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle ↩︎

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle ↩︎

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle ↩︎

We may give the tendrils of our creative longing different names — poetry or physics, music or mathematics, astronomy or art — but they all give us one thing: an antidote to forgetting, so that we may live, even for a little while, wonder-smitten by reality.

Maria Popova

Walking, Bald Eagle Sighting

… beautiful, near cloudless day… waning gibbous moon… light human activity… drumming circle starting to form… birds twittering… excitement over the sighting of an eagle… a man asks those closer if there is an eagle in the tree… yes!, the reply… he calls out to “Roger” across the way to tell him about the eagle… the man shuffles by on his way to get a closer look… i comment on “the eagle tree”… he tells me he used to bring his mom every day… i conclude his mother has passed or moved away or is otherwise not able to be brought to the waterfront anymore… i am touched by the humanity of the moment… the sound of drumming… the feeling of a sacred ritual… as i walk away, the sound of an eagle calling…

Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective. David G. Lanoue

… what matters, that we all die, or that we sing along the way?…

The last example is perhaps the most dramatic and poignant. Issa introduces it with the head note, “Flood” (kôzui 洪水). The insect may be floating to his death, yet he keeps singing. Perhaps Issa sees himself in the insect; perhaps he sees in it the fate of all living creatures, for all are equally, eventually doomed. The important thing isn’t the inevitable death to which the currents of the universe sweep us; what matters, Issa implies, is to embrace the present moment . . . and sing.1

… what one of us isn’t concerned with the inevitable subsidence of our “conscious” being?… we are crafted to survive at all costs… it’s inbuilt that we worry about the integrity of the configuration of atoms and processes that constitute our bodies and consciousness, whatever that may mean… the Buddhist way is to work hard, through meditation and mindfulness of the present moment thinking, to let go of the obsession with dying which is, in any case, inevitable… so, the advice is to sing regardless of the situation you find yourself in…

… another way of looking at the poem referenced is that we are what we are, even in the face of disaster and imminent demise…

still singing the insect

is swept away …

floating branch

… and now i learn that animals of all kinds can be observed to dance… interact while moving in that exhibit structure and repetition… early humans learned to mimic these animal dances and would do so in ceremonial ways to encourage abundance and successful hunting, to become one with the animal being hunted… close identification with animals of all kinds allows behavior prediction… it also focuses mind and body on a successful encounter, whether the objective be to kill, capture or avoid…2

… the interesting question arises, does one need to know they are dancing to be dancing?… “I think, therefor I am.”3… i dance, therefor i dance?… to be the best kind of dancer i am sure a dance training master would suggest that one need’s to forget they are dancing and simply be the dance… i am groping towards something here… conscious, so called “rational thought,” is a hinderance to being in direct communication with one’s environment… it is impossible to hold anything sacred that is only “thought” about… one must be in seamless relationship with the world to hold the idea, the instinct, that it is sacred, worthy of respect and honor, of careful and respectful interaction… by writing poems about nature and animals and the world in general, one is setting themselves on intimate terms with all of that, dissolving the boundaries between self and cosmos…


  1. Lanoue, David G.. Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet’s Perspective (p. 145). HaikuGuy.com. Kindle Edition. ↩︎

  2. Ibid, with some embellishment and expansion by me. ↩︎

  3. Descartes ↩︎

02 The Bell Jar, Chapter 02, Sylvia Plath

I don’t believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.1

… those of us who don’t believe the prevailing mythology have to find sacred in other places… a hot bath or, in my case, a hot shower, is one of those places… we, the secular, find religion in what makes us feel good, feel ourselves, feel alive, and perhaps this is why we don’t transcend…

… i suspect this chapter is the beginning of descent, but it is a descent brought on by the external world, filled with girlfriends that are prettier than you and catch the man who gets them drunk to the point of throwing up at your feet…


  1. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar (Modern Classics) (p. 16). Harper. Kindle Edition. ↩︎