Life is sacred. I have known this for most of the years I have spent walking this earth. I know now that life is more sacred, more precarious than I once believed. I suspect that life is even more so than I can comprehend.

Years ago, I wandered through Ursula Le Guin's "Earth Sea" trilogy. I found some wonderful images and stories there. It is a wonderful tale about coming of age and finding one's spiritual framework in the world. At one moment in the tale, a young wizard is anxious to learn 'real' magic. Tired of the lessons in illusions where he repeats incantations to make objects appear to be something other than themselves, he inquires as to when he will be taught how to really change something into something else. The answer he receives is basically this:

To make something, a stone for example, appear to be something else, a piece of bread, perhaps, is of no great consequence other than the momentary deception to presents. However, to permanently transform a stone into a piece of bread changes the balance, for there is now not only one more piece of bread in the world, but one less stone.

Life is interconnected and if we are lucky we get glimpses of this connectedness. The apparent divisions that divide one thing from another are only perception and I believe, in fact an illusion of sorts in and of themselves. At their best, the sacraments of religious systems can move our experience and perspective to a new and more complete state. We are changed. I cannot attest to a manner of existence that might be centered in such a shift, but only to moments when I have glimpsed the reality of the full sacredness of life. Has it been said, "there is no you and them, this or that, only us, only one?" Such an awareness can send us into overload, or perhaps even disbelief.

Too many words here.

Labels: spirituality