Now is the time to know that all you do is sacred. – Hafiz
There are lines of poetry that defy everything we think we know about the human experience. There are also poems that attempt to articulate the unknown, these few poetic words do both. Somehow it’s always the simplest line of a poem that suddenly dissolves everything we thought we knew. They are words that seem so straight forward until we start to dig a little deeper and realize they carry the universe and its mysteries within them. Words like these bring us face to face with our lack of understanding and our disbelief, they begin to pry open the places inside that have been locked tight. The typical response to such a startling idea is to think, well this is silly, what does it really mean, or it’s plain nonsense. When we start to butt up against our greatest resistances we know we are onto something big, and if we keep going suddenly we begin to see with more clarity what’s always been there right in front of us. This kind of ah-ha moment brings a kind of deep relief and a calmness that is hard to describe. It is simple after all, if we let it be, our endless thinking and analyzing is what complicates it.
Sacred is not the same as saintly and it had no resemblance at all to perfection. The word sacred is bound up with sacrifice, and we are always sacrificing a part of ourselves in order to grow into what’s next. In Latin sacrifice comes from the word “sacra” and “facere” which means to perform sacred rites. Going through this process with conscious awareness is what makes our actions sacred. And what Hafiz seems to be hinting at is that all of the pieces of our lives are sacred rites, not just special days or hours. We continually get tripped up because it’s hard to see the mess and confusion as something sacred. Somehow we always want what we don’t have, or think our life should be something other than it is, that who we are and what we are doing are not enough.
The word sacred makes us think bliss or effortless perfection, but these are easy cop-outs. Sacred is the hard work of everyday life. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we struggle. But let’s not be too hard on ourselves, it’s difficult to see the colossal blunders as sacred rites. It’s hard to see anger and the rage as sacred. But they are, these are the very things that point us to something more with unrelenting tenacity. The most trying times and the situations that make us cringe are the very things that call our attention inward, that beckon us to have greater recognition and compassion for where we stumble and fall. These difficult things are sacred and also the things we must sacrifice. We light a candle for the confusion, say a prayer for the massive muck ups. We are the offering to the mystery every moment of our life, we are the sacrifice, and we are the sacred mystery itself.
When we begin to embrace every moment for what it is and not what we wish it was we are beginning to see the sacred in each moment. Brian Greene talks about this idea in physics called slicing the spacetime loaf, that every moment in time exists as it is for eternity, it’s own individual slice of bread. That means every second of life is its own eternal sacred rite. This moment exists as it is for all time as an offering, an offering of our self and all that we are to the mystery we may never fully know but participate in and are a part of. One moment isn’t better than the other, or carry more weight than another. I’m sure we’re all thinking the same thing, that’s not true at all, snorkeling in Hawaii was definitely better than going to traffic court. We miss the point by doing this, the truth is each moment has its own kind of sacredness. Now is all we have, that’s why it’s sacred. Our lives our built on a string of sacred nows. The question is what are we doing with it?
Opening to greater awareness is how the sacred comes alive and we become the offering. We are the offering to the universe, the offering to the world, just as we are in this moment. We offer our joy, our enthusiasm, and our kindness. How we feel bout ourselves and how we make others feel can be our offering. Do we spread joy, do we embrace change, or do we grumble and go back to bed? These small acts effect the way we live and have an impact on the people we come into contact with. When we become the sacred offering we change the way we see ourselves and the way we live our lives.
It’s not just what we fill our days with, but the degree of awareness we have for what is in our days. Then we are the offering, and the sacrifice we make for the sacred act of becoming.
kb
