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The Soul of Nature:
The Meaning of Ecological Spirituality
Copyright 1996 by Lynna Landstreet. See contents
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3: The sacred defined
 ut
what precisely is meant by the term sacred? The word itself derives
from the past participle of the Middle English verb sacren, meaning
"to consecrate", which in turn stems from the Latin sancire,
to make sacred.[4] The first definition given reflects
this sense of the sacred as a quality which must be imparted to things,
rather than one which they might intrinsically possess: "dedicated
or set apart for the worship or service of a deity." Dolores
LaChappelle correctly notes, in her Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: The
Rapture of the Deep, that this is a human-centred definition; the
emphasis is on the (human) act of making sacred.[5]
But the dictionary does go on to list other, less anthropocentric definitions
of the sacred, such as "worthy of religious veneration" and
"entitled to reverence and respect". These definitions, while
still implying human involvement, shift the locus of control to the
sacred itself. Sacred things, here, are not merely whatever humans happen
to have defined as sacred, but things which are possessed of an innate
sacredness and demand recognition of that quality by humans. The distinction
may appear subtle, but it is an important one.
LaChappelle makes a different distinction: between what she terms "sacred-as-substance,"
and "sacred-as-relationship," a more fluid definition which
situates sacredness in the interaction between human and nonhuman.
She quotes Derham Giuliani on the idea of "sacred" as similar
to (but deeper than) "meaningful":
A state that, when activated,
gives a special type of meaning to an event. It is a kind of awareness,
not obtained by any act of will or logic, of patterns running through
everything around us. Each 'meaningful' occurrence becomes part of a
person's behavior so that one's life is changed as these accumulate,
one's life enters a pattern guided by that of everything else.[6]
Here, sacredness is not a matter of human definition, but of
human perception or awareness; an act of opening, rather than of controlling.
Giuliani's understanding of the sacred makes clear not only LaChappelle's
notion of sacred-as-relationship, but also its key relevance from an
activist perspective: that a true encounter with the sacred is a transformative
experience.
  
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