I sometimes find myself thinking about what is sacred and what is profane.
Whether it is someone’s tears that might be considered as sacred or something else that might be considered in some way as profane…I like to think about sacred spaces between people and small, sacred acts.
Christmas is the celebration of the sacred.
The word sacred typically means something along these lines, to many people:
“Sacred is a word that pertains to things godly to differentiate them from things mundane or worldly. While it is also an antonym of profane, sacred refers to anything that is connected with a religion and, therefore, needs to be venerated. “ (Source)
While I don’t want to diminish the word in its purest or typical understanding, I think that there are also ways to view mundane and the everyday things as sacred, too.
Jesus said, “He who is faithful in that which is least, the same is faithful in much. And he who is unfaithful in the least is unfaithful also in much.”(Luke 16:10 NMB)
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During the season of Advent – like no other time of the year – my business and personal life seem to collide with a mayhem significantly deeper than any other mayhem generally seen (!) in my world during any other liturgical seasons of “ordinary” times!
Fa la la la la…la la la la...as it goes!
I view much of what I do as an artist as sacred. And probably my best executed love language is gift-giving.
This time of year I will push myself to an extreme degree to not only make sure that I fulfill commitments to clients, to produce things that are sacred to them and their loved ones as gift recipients, but also it is the time of year when often toward the last hour, so-to-speak, any artistic idea that has crossed my mind as a gift idea during the seasons of ordinary times seems to get added in, with urgency, to all else!
This is the time I decide I will definitely make these things happen for those I love – for those who are sacred to me in some way.
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Today was pretty stressful and I was high-stepping it and marching as fast as inhumanly possible, and even while I was completing the printing, framing, matting, packing and shipping of pieces to take to UPS by 6:00 p.m., additional orders were coming into my Etsy account.
One of these pieces I saw around 3 pm was a 16 x 20 sized order of a print with watercolor mountain background and a quotation by Yeats:
Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I; being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.William Butler Yeats
I looked at this order and though I had until January 4th, technically, to ship it, I had a hunch that the man in Iowa that ordered this piece in the largest size possible must surely want to gift it to someone very special during the holidays. And the understanding of this sacredness prompted me to immediately open the Photoshop file, print that one, too, walk briskly into my shop and matte and pack it up to go out today as well.
It felt like a game of Whack-a-Mole, and during this seeming mayhem, I thought about writing these contemplations.
Because writing is also sacred.
In the past week I have received orders for quotations about “Cancer is So Limited,” people leaving footprints on our hearts (Flavia), numerous requests for “The Dash” poem artwork (a writing about life happening in the in-between…in the metaphorical dashes…), comforting Scripture verses such as “Peace I Leave With You” and today, also, two separate orders for a sympathy card with the poem “Death is Nothing At All.”
Surely there are untold sacred stories behind all of these requests. Tonight I dropped off a record-whopping-for-one-single-day number of packages to the UPS warehouse – twelve to be exact. These included two paintings on wedding invitations recently finished and a portrait of a little baby on a Christmas ball.
There is a kind of excitable chaos that I think we all share around the holiday season.
I also know firsthand, and remember that for many people, the holidays can be both at the same time the best part of the year and the most difficult. In so many ways they are like a fireworks grand finale of our year where we seek the deepest possible meanings in everything.
But for many, for this very reason, this is also a time of pain and reminders of people and things that are difficult. Some people experience a profound sense of aloneness during the holidays, regardless of whether they live alone or with others. Many have strained family relationships and other past or recent losses and griefs which tarnish holiday joys.
I know that this past year held several significant losses and difficulties for me that I have not fully processed. But the year continues to hold significant joy as well and for that I am grateful. I recently wrote another piece for Advent based on It’s a Wonderful Life (and I’m going there again, here!) called KEEPING YOUR “DOORS OPEN” FOR CHRISTMAS.
I wrote it the day I put up my Christmas tree and hung many ornaments made during childhood by one son I will probably not see nor here from during this holiday, again, and not knowing precisely at that point what kinds of other plans I would even have by that day with my other son, but believing that maintaining various sacred acts of keeping my metaphorical doors open, was vital during this continued difficult season of my life and post-divorce, post-relocation recovery.
Surprisingly my older son messaged me yesterday that he actually has no plans on Christmas Day and confirmed he will spend the night of the 24th (which that day was our original plan made last week). While I don’t yet know if this means I have two full days with him or not I am grateful for any time with my son.
When we think about the popular idea of there being five basic love languages (words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch) we might also think about how God expresses each of these to us at Christmas time and other times, and what speaks the most to our hearts.
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When I think about the film It’s a Wonderful Life, I think about sacred scenes in this film.
Sacred interactions such as the one between George and his brother Harry when he fell through the ice. The one between George and the pharmacist. The ones between George and his wife, Mary – before, during and after they were married. The scenes between George and his children and tucking Zuzu into bed and putting loose flower petals in his pocket.
“He pauses for a moment to reach into his coat pocket, where he had kept some flower petals his daughter, Zuzu, had given him, and which had disappeared in Pottersville. They have returned, and he cries out “Zuzu’s petals!” And that’s when the floodgates drop.” (from “An obsession with ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’”)
There’s a sacredness between George and his bank’s customers on the bank run day and especially witnessed between him and the one woman who cheerfully came to the window when it was her turn, only asking for the bare minimum of what she needed to withdraw and he gratefully thanked her. There is a sacredness to recognizing our inter-dependencies.
There’s also a sacredness in the loving acts of Bert the smalltown policeman and Ernie the cab driver who fix up the makeshift bridal suite for George and Mary on their wedding night, after the disruptions of their sacred day.
Anything which is done in love is sacred.
“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa
And that which is done in our very human failings, weaknesses and brokenness is also sacred, in some sense – most especially when it is out of character for us and calls our vulnerable brokenness to the attention of others.
Such is the scene where George was so beside himself with fear and failure that he yelled at his daughter who was playing the piano, and then a teacher, by phone. When he fled his house shortly afterwards, there was a sacredness when Mary instinctively knew her husband was in trouble and went to the phone to seek help. The children ask if Daddy is OK and should they pray for him, and she replies to “pray…pray hard.”
There was a sacredness when George stood on that bridge and jumped into the water and “Clarence” was sent down by God.
I think the reason this is one of many people’s favorite classic films is because it is so loaded with that which people value most deeply and consider most sacred: their loved ones (family, friends, community), their faith and their life’s work and callings.
George Bailey is an example of what it means to live faithfully within our own small worlds and lives, especially when life takes us ways we hadn’t initially chartered…
I love the scene at the end when he “comes to” and is seemingly insane with gratitude – realizing his lip is bleeding, has has Zuzu’s petals in his pocket and he has returned from alternate universe “Pottersville” to Bedford Falls. He runs down the street like a maniac shouting Merry Christmas to everyone – grateful for the small, familiar scenes and people that are most sacred to him.
These last nine minutes of the film contain some of the most beautiful images in this holiday classic when George returns to his home and family, and is then met with a steady stream of various sacred interactions, culminating with his younger brother Harry’s surprise arrival, the joining of voices in Hark the Herald Angels Sing, a toast, the sacred sign of a jingling bell and booknote letting George know that Clarence had finally received his angel wings…and the singing of Auld Lang Syne…
“We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne”
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