What is Sacred?

What is sacred? To modern day man, it may be God, Jesus Christ, a church, some symbol like the cross that represents their particular religion or for some it may be where St. Francis of Assisi built his place of worship. As for the natural world that is all around us, the animals, the plants, the trees, the mountains and the oceans, these things are for us to take from and control. We have this mind-set that the natural world is for the taking and in any way we see fit. We have proved this to be true for hundreds of years. And when we used the term progress, it gave us extra incentive to misuse and abuse the earth in ways that are incomprehensible.

We don’t relate to any animal as sacred. Sacred does not relate to the air we breathe, the water we drink or the land that provides us with nourishment – the key elements on this planet that gives life to all life. Air, we seem to never give a second thought to, unless we inhale some foul odor or find ourselves without it. Without air, all life will die. Water, the life blood of all things, we again give little thought to. It seems polluting this life source is no real problem, and it has become a commodity to be controlled and profited from. Again, without water as with air, we will die without a clean source of water. Land, we see land as property to be owned and controlled and we have proven that even with ownership we do not know how to take care of this valuable resource that all land animals rely on for their homes and sustenance. All of what I have just written is done out of pure greed and the arrogance that everything on this planet is for the human race to plunder with little regard for any other live forms that we share this planet with. We take and take and take, never looking at the consequences of our actions.

I was watching a movie last night called, “Grey Owl.” It was a true story about an Englishman, Archie Belaney (Grey Owl) who at a young age moved to Canada to live in the wilderness and to be close to the First Nations People so he could learn from them how to survive in the wilderness. One of the lines in the movie that Grey Owl spoke hit a cord with me. He said, “You know why I love the forest? I love the forest because it is the last place men are not in charge. It is the last wilderness.” This was said in the 1930’s. Today there is no place safe in the world from man’s destruction. We have pretty much devastated everything we come into contact with and have become better at it.

Fortunately there is one exception to this that may save us from the total destruction of life on this planet as we know it. It is the indigenous peoples of the world who still live with the land to survive. They have a very close relationship with the land and all life. They know if they do not take care of this valuable resource they will not survive. They have this understanding and agreement with Mother Earth. They have this connection, a relationship with all life and they see all life as sacred.

The Australian Aborigines, the Native Hawaiians, the Native Americans, the First Nations of Canada, and many other indigenous peoples who have been forced to live a different life from their own traditional ways are struggling and fighting to hold on to their traditional beliefs and cultures with very little support from those who took their way of life away from them and thus creating devastating impacts on their people. Most of our so-called civilized culture sees these people as backwards, uncivilized and uneducated. They are a burden to progress and they need to get with the program and live like us or suffer the consequences. But they continue to fight to save their cultures because they know the way most of us live in today’s world is harmful to all life – to the very survival of life on our planet. These indigenous cultures, know that all life should be respected, that all life is sacred. Without this relationship to life, we are doomed as a species and we will take many species with us to our death if we do not change our ways.

WE MUST CHANGE OUR PARADIGM AND HOW WE RELATE TO OUR PLANET AND ALL LIFE – WE MUST SEE ALL LIFE AS SACRED.