Sitting at the Kuwait airport and watching people., I am feeling lazy and content. A saw a family with 3 kids, who were boisterous even at 4 am in the morning. The random others like me derived surrogate joy from watching them in their joyful abandon. It was beautiful. And then the prayer started and someone suddenly shushed the kids in a hard way. The kids had no idea what happened, but they became quiet. The atmosphere of natural spontaneous joy suddenly changed.. to a hush.
Given that I am a fan of irony, this made me think of which one was more sacred? The simple sacredness of and in the everyday, profane. Or what we have made to mean as profound and sacred? And often to me the two appears the same.
Yesterday, my friend Quanita, wrote a piece on ironing handkerchiefs, and remembering her papa. Profane and sacred right there. Folded together.
I couldn’t help but wonder, in the intricate tapestry of human life, the contrast between the sacred and the profane creates a rich narrative filled with irony. While they may seem completely opposite at first, a closer look reveals a subtle interplay where the boundaries between them blur, leading to moments of deep irony..and teh joy of discovering teh sameness.
A Simple flower when hit by a ray of sunlight…changes from profane to profound.
Traditionally, the sacred is all about reverence, purity, and transcendence – it’s about the divine, the spiritual, and the holy, inspiring feelings of awe and sanctity. On the other hand, the profane is associated with the mundane, the secular, and the worldly, representing the ordinary parts of life. The not so special. Average.
As David Émile Durkheim the French sociologist and principal architect of modern social science, explains. Society consists of two parts – the Sacred and the Profane.
The Sacred
• Things which are set apart and are forbidden.
• It includes all things which are connected to the supernatural or the divine.
• Relationship of distance and fear is maintained with the respect to these things.
Profane
• Profane are the things apart from the sacred. Regular.
• Includes day-to-day things which people use in their lives that are often imperfect and mundane.
I am curious when did “profane” meaning simple, everyday , not sacred” .. begin to mean “bad” or opposite of Sacred? and what might that have done to us and made one “long” for sacred and abhor the simple everyday ?
“The more I wonder, the more I love.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple
In my experience and in many I know, surprisingly, it’s within the realm of the profane that the sacred often shines through unexpectedly. In the midst of our busy lives, amidst all the chaos and noise, moments of beauty and grace can emerge. A simple act of kindness, a shared laugh with a loved one, or the beauty of a sunray can bring a sense of the sacred, elevating the ordinary and revealing the divine within the everyday.Any yet how many such everyday moment we miss ..in the rush to “see” the sacred??
It’s in this dance between the sacred and the profane that irony thrives. Irony, with its contradictions and unexpected turns, allows us to see the world with both scepticism and wonder. It encourages us to embrace the paradoxes of life. I hope we are able to embrace the place of irony with curiosity and perhaps even a dash of humour.
“A grown child is a dangerous thing.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple
