Why The Sacred Matters

And how our urge for the Sacred can save us

"Awareness of the sacred in life is what holds our world together, and the lack of awareness of the sacred is what is tearing it apart." ~ Sister Joan D. Chittister

Photo by I.am_nah on Unsplash

Ada Palmer’s Hugo award-winning, philosophical/sci-fi series, Terra Ignota, tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world that, for some, would seem ideal. In this futuristic, peaceful utopia, there are no nation-states, no genders, no nuclear families, no prisons, a global governance based on Universal Laws, a 20-hour work week, and religion is banned for its role in the past as instigating the Church War, which destroyed the world. Everybody is happy, food is plentiful, and there is global peace and prosperity.

Sounds like the world many of us would like to live in.

But there is trouble in paradise. It seems that some of these idealized structures are chafing people the wrong way. One of the biggest problems is that even though the public practice of religion has been banned, people still have a spiritual urge – or questions about where we come from, who we are, who we are supposed to be, and the desire to connect with the Sacred.

As explained in the series:

“What terrible silence McKay foresaw: a man afraid to ask his lover whether he too feared the hereafter, parents afraid to answer when their children asked Who made the world. With what terrible desperation McKay screamed in the ears of those with the power to stop it, ‘Humanity cannot live without talking about religion! Let us create a new creature! Not a preacher, but a teacher, who hears a parishioner’s questions and presents the answers of all the different faiths and sects of history, Christians and pagans, Muslims and atheists, all equal. Let this new creature show our lonely modern soul that he is not the first to ask why death must be, or how a good God could create Evil.’”

In come the Sensayers, spiritual counselors who support people one-on-one in their quest for meaning and understanding. Sensayers are knowledgeable about metaphysics and all major religions across history and can provide a variety of perspectives to help with a person's spiritual exploration. One of the main characters in the series, Mycroft Canner, is a Sensayer, and ultimately, she is partly responsible for the fall of this manufactured utopia and the ushering in of a new society in which meaning, purpose and a sense of the Sacred are central.

My son, who introduced me to this series, calls me a Sensayer (which is far better than what he used to call me: “Cult Leader!”). Personally, it’s preferable to some other official titles and it does seem like an accurate description of what I aspire to do: help people discover meaning, purpose and the Sacred for themselves and work to build a better world.

But that’s not the point. What interests me most about this series is that Palmer suggests that it is a fallacy to think that we can create a perfect world sans the Sacred. In fact, it’s not just a fallacy, it’s dangerous. Without the Sacred, it’s all too easy to desecrate the world around us, each other, and ourselves. Just look around.

As far as recorded human history goes, we have had the urge for the Sacred. Even prehistoric archeological discoveries tell us that early hominids had a sense of something greater than themselves. There was always something more to Life than just satisfying our physical needs and desires. This something led us to try to be better people – more compassionate, generous and caring – in a world that was supportive of all.

This pull towards the Sacred is wired into us. Even as small children, we are curious about where we came from and what is going on here. We find magic and delight in the world around us and create meaning from even the smallest detail. We are awed daily.

Our myriad sacred texts and teachings also describe this desire for the Sacred. The Biblical Psalmist cries, “My soul longs for you, O God!” (Psalm 42:1). Christian mystic Meister Eckhart believed that the inherent desire to know God was the ordering principle of the universe itself. Rumi’s love poems overflow with passionate desire for the Beloved, and his poem, “Love Dogs,” tells the story of a man calling for Allah all night long until his lips bled, disappointed not to receive a response, only to discover that the longing itself was the response. Even Buddhists, Daoists and Hindus reach for the Sacred in some formless form.

To live a spiritual life is to be drawn to the Sacred, to search for meaning and purpose in something greater than ourselves. And, we are inherently spiritual beings. Ultimately, as Rabbi David Cooper says, “Human consciousness seeks to know the truth of its own existence, it’s source and its reason for being.”

To subjugate that urge to a technological universe where everything can be explained by hard, cold “fact,” or replace it with intellectual ideologies that define and restrict who we can be or how we can be, takes away the true joy we find in living. And, as far as I am concerned, joy is the ultimate purpose. Joy is what gives us warmth, connection, depth and meaning. Without it, we live lives of what American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau called, “quiet desperation.”

Religion, like science, seeks to order the world. Spirituality, like art, mystifies it. And we need mystery.

Religion, like science, seeks to order the world. Spirituality, like art, mystifies it. And we need mystery. We need to have things we can’t fully explain or understand. It keeps us humble. We need wonder and awe. We need a sense of purpose and meaning beyond our own animal needs. We need to be fully ourselves and find connection, shared values, community, and a sense of belonging to the fabric of Existence. These are the things that a relationship to the Sacred provides.

I would venture to say that we need these things as much as we need food and water. We certainly need them more than we need a new iphone or thousands of “likes” on our TikTok. We even need them more than the idealized ideologies and social theories we concoct to manufacture a perfect society, as the characters in Palmer’s world discovered.

I’m not saying we need institutionalized, repressive “Religion,” and I am not talking about Deism or “God” per se, but I am saying that we need to rediscover a sense of the Sacred Mystery in our every day lives. We need to remember that we are not alone here, that we have one another and are part of something bigger and more mysterious than we can imagine, and that we matter in some way in relationship to the whole.

Ultimately, I think that’s what drives the characters in Terra Ignota to overturn their utopia. Not only do they not want to live tightly controlled or ordered lives according to dogma (even non-religious, social experiment dogma), but they want to matter and they want life to matter. Without the Sacred, nothing matters. With the Sacred, EVERYTHING matters.

And if everything matters, then everything is sacred and we have the opportunity to build a real utopia – perfectly imperfect, but connected, meaningful and joyful.

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For more about how we can become better people in a better world, be sure to look for my forthcoming book,

TEN WORDS: AN INTERSPIRITUAL GUIDE TO BECOMING BETTER PEOPLE IN A BETTER WORLD.

E-book available for pre-order now. On sale October 1 from all your favorite booksellers.

"Our heart knows what our mind has forgotten - it knows the sacred that is within all that exists, and through a depth of feeling we can once again experience this connection, this belonging." ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee