What Is "Sacred", Anyway? Holy Reflections from New Orleans...

Questions come to mind:

Is something “Sacred” because somebody claims it to be so? (That seems random…)
Is one lake “Sacred” while others are not? (That seems unlikely…)
Is everything “Sacred”, but not everything is honored by being named so by the people living around it? (Hmmm…)
Is something “Sacred” (the Cuyahoga River, say), even if and when those around it have not treated it as though it is? (That also seems likely…)
Can some phenomenon lose its original, let’s call it loosely “God-Given Sacredness” by what is done with it? Or is it forever essentially sacred, albeit unrecognized as such, but simply transformed, less recognizable as Sacred in the world of form? (Former unlikely, latter likely…)

If everything is “Sacred” (that’s where I tend to lean), it seems, then, like a kind of honorific to name it so, the way a colleague might address me as “Dr. Nolan”, though that is not at all necessary.

I never say “That is a very doggy dog“, or “That is a colored, flowery flower“, because doggyness and floweriness seem to inhere in the dog and the flower. If Sacredness inheres in all that is, then I guess it is just honoring the Sacred out loud by saying it is so. It’s not necessary, but it reminds us…

Sometimes I just wonder about stuff. It’s what I do. Some dude in a bar was explaining to another dude of another culture “No, see, in OUR culture, prayers are sacred“, and I thought, “My man, I believe that’s in the nature of prayer, period.” But he MEANT something by that–he meant “Our prayers will kick your prayers’ ass.” You could feel it…

Whatever, bruh…

Sometimes something seems more Sacred because the people around it build a story around it, and then forget that they made the story up. Like an Origin Story. “And the Universe began when All That Is planted the first two legged spirits in an Irish bar in West Park, Ohio, and so began the wondrous millenia of humanity… ” Of course every people has such stories, and the Origin is almost always conveniently right in their own back yard, or where their political views want for it to be located. Isnt’ that special?

Even the “scientific” stories make no sense to me, and never have. But I don’t really care–Science likes their myths better than anyone else’s, which I guess is natural. It’s OK.

So it’s 6:30 AM, and I’m heading out in the Holy Lands of New Orleans for some numinous brown-waters, with a dash of Stevia, at the Croissant D’Or. Later, I’ll sit in the Sun of the Great Irish Hound on the now maligned, but sub-statually Angelic Jackson Square, find some Consecrated Escargot, listen to the outsounding of the Jazz Angels at Fritzel’s, and maybe walk the Pious River that blesses chakra’d towns from Great Minneapolis to French Island, to Cairo, and on down here to New Orleans, where the Bon Temps of The Gods are decidedly about to rouler like mad, well into any God’s number of very sacred nights…