Dreaming the Future Closer

[Just to get the rough outline of this out of my head] 

In her essay on human rights, Weil makes this astounding statement about what defines a person.  She says in clear terms that she cannot imagine an account of ethics that would make a person’s body merely incidental to their person.  She speaks clearly about how gauging out someone’s eyes does not merely change their body, but assaults their very person.

Yet, how much ethical thought is charged with making our body incidental to our self?  Carried further, how much religious thought is charged with making the physical manifestations of an object incidental?  How often does someone reply that this holy object was *just* an object when they are confronted with its destruction?

When we look at ritual, at the work that goes into investing holy objects, I can’t help but think we wander far astray if we see those rituals, those objects, as merely symbolic.  While I do not want to underestimate the importance of meditation, of inward work, nor do I want to underestimate the inherent value in sacred objects, value that resides outside of our ideas of them. 

Through sacred things, the world of spirit and the world of things enter into communion.  The destruction of them, while it may never ‘kill’ the world of spirit, does real damage to the divine, to its mingling with the world.  We do not simply honor what is ever present, but through our actions secure a place for it in the world, secure a channel through which it may flow.

This is not a one-sided argument for never destroying sacred things ever.  In fact, the whole question of being sacred gets bound up with the question of sacrifice, with its potential destruction.  But what it does point toward is a mindfulness to the sacred that sees its real presence in particular things and takes actions in regard to that sacred thing with that real presence in mind.

The tibetan sand mandala may be one of the most well-known exemplars to draw upon.  The mandala is sacred, made sacred through the ritual process of its creation.  At the same time, its creation is bound up with the sacrifice of it at the conclusion of the process, but that destruction is itself part and parcel of its sacred character. 

In a similar way, we might consider a soldier who, mindful of the incredibly precious body that they are, still offers up that body to damage and destruction for the sake of another, hopefully more profound, sort of sacredness. 

It’s not always about preserving the sacred at all costs, but acknowledging its presence wherever we find it, and attending to it.  So that, to the best of our very limited abilities, we come to secure a greater place for the sacred throughout life, destroying according to deeper rhythms than purely selfish hungers.