Day 13 – Sacred

I was never led to believe that I could or would be sacred. I was too much–too loud, too chubby, too opinionated. Too feminine. Elders were men. Pastors were men. God was masculine, a creator of and believer in male headship. We were Adventist and strongly discouraged from recognizing Mary as more than the quiet, submissive, ethereally beautiful (and somehow white?) mother figure who would eventually be schooled by the son she’d raised. Sacred was for men.This kind of sacred always seemed exclusionary, cold and distant, even authoritarian at times.

Sacredness has a reputation for being set apart–it is, by definition, that which is not profane, not common, not secular. Often we associate sacredness with purity and perfection. Sacred is better than. Sacred places mean staying quiet, “walk[ing] softly in the sanctuary,” observing formal behaviors and language. Sacred is even somewhat stern at times, the reason my undergrad English professor discouraged the use of humor in wedding ceremonies–”this is a time meant for solemnity, not frivolity.”

But I knew about another kind of sacredness. The kind of sacred that lifts the ordinary into the extraordinary, that envelops us like a warm towel after a bath. The kind of sacred that existed because of the women in my family, often demeaned as “women’s work.” This was the sacredness of soft laps and rocking chairs. The sacredness of four generations of women putting up peaches every fall, dripping sweet sticky juice from our elbows as we pared blanched fruit. The sacred of pretty china things, of dishes with chocolate chips we could nibble on, of freshly starched white doilies, and soup from scratch. The sacredness of quiet early mornings sitting next to my grandmother in her bed as she read the newspaper, and how she would solemnly hand over the comics section for me, each of us content to exist in the shared stillness, reading.

The sacredness of fresh picked flowers on the table. The sacredness of Irish rolled oatmeal cooked with raisins and brown sugar and cream. The bulbs we buried in the fall that poked hopefully out of the ground months later, just when winter seemed like it might not ever end. Tiny sky blue forget-me-not blossoms growing into the spring grass in the orchard, where the women disallowed mowing until everything was finished blooming.

I knew the sacredness of the women at church who babysat us, changed our diapers in the Mothers’ Room, played piano in our Cradle Roll classes, grew the flowers for the arrangements we decorated the sanctuary with every Sabbath. The sacredness of the handknit sweaters and tiny quilts for the new babies in our congregation, lovingly created by the little grey-haired, bespectacled women from our Dorcas society. The sacredness of women in pantyhose and heels heating up tinfoil-covered casserole dishes in preparation for potluck. The sacredness of throwing a huge baby shower for the unwed teen mother who’d grown up in our church. This was sacredness: intentionally accepting, nourishing, creating beauty and delight.

There are so many examples of women creating and participating in the sacred in the story of Jesus’ birth. God made sacred the lowest common denominators, choosing to venerate women like Elizabeth who’d long been overlooked by society because she wasn’t producing children. God in the growing roundness of Mary’s belly, after thousands of years of patriarchal blame and shame on women and their bodies. God in the acid reflux and morning sickness of pregnancy, in swollen feet and ankles on the long dusty trek to Bethlehem. God in her desperate homelessness, in the blood and water and sweat and tears of birth. God in a stable, sleeping in a feed trough. God lighting up a pasture of sheep and dirty shepherds, singing peace over them. Sacredness as God escaped with the immigrants. Sacredness in recognizing the decades of grief of Anna’s widowhood, and then hallowing the waiting and watching and preaching she did as a prophet.

Later, sacredness would be in Jesus taking on traditionally feminine roles, providing wine for a wedding, making lunch for thousands of people, nursing and healing the sick. The very ministry of Emmanuel was, in so many ways, to venerate the unpaid, overlooked work of women, to value “the least of these,” offering equity, love and respect to those seen as less than or even entirely unworthy. Sacredness was in washing other men’s dirty feet and touching the leper. God’s ministry, intention, and purpose was (and is!) to be in conversation and immediate proximity to those who have been “othered,” those who have been barred from contact with the Divine. To make “them” a part of us, and to exist there.

Despite the glory and ornateness of things we often associate with sacredness, over and over the pomp and circumstance and long-held societal and cultural rankings are rejected in favor of God taking all that is somehow simultaneously common and messy and beautiful and painful and exquisite and extraordinary and mundane, choosing to infuse us with the sacred simply by being here with us.

May you see sacredness in your daily life– in the taste of your favorite foods, in the green growing things around you, in the crowded parking lot or the line in your supermarket, in the laughter from a friend’s inside joke, in the tears you shed when you are hurting, and especially in the beautiful sacred souls all around you.