Going Barefoot

"There are no unsacred places: there are only sacred places and desecrated places."  from How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry

Until reading this line from this poem, I had never thought about the word "desecrate" to mean "de-sacred."  In some ways there's no difference between "desecrate" and "de-sacred", but it just struck me as different.  To desecrate is to violate or defile a sacred place. It's something that can be restored. To commit an act that results in a place becoming"de-sacred" means that this once holy place is no longer sacred at all.

You cannot find "de-sacred" in the dictionary.  But if you Google it you can find quite a discussion.  One person even makes the point that just because a word is not in the dictionary (yet) doesn't mean that it's not a real word. Another person who entered the discussion said he was only Googling his username that he had made up only to find the conversation about his name in full progress.

Have you ever Googled "google"?  I never had either. Until now. I was afraid my computer might explode. But when I hit "Enter" the search simply resulted in links to google.com.

Berry says that "there are no unsacred places", no non-sacred places. Then he removes the double negative with "there are only sacred places."  In Genesis chapters one and two, after God creates each part of His, well, creation, He says that it's good.  It's all good. Some might say that God also created evil or evil wouldn't exist.  I think that God didn't create evil, He only created the possibility of evil.  From the very beginning He gave the humans who He created a choice between only good and the knowledge of good and evil.  That fruit tree wasn't evil; it contained the possibility of evil. For that matter, the fruit that Eve and eventually Adam consumed wasn't evil, it was just forbidden.  If you tell a child not to go in the street,  it's not because the street is evil; the street is forbidden for reasons the child doesn't need to understand.

"There are only sacred places and desecrated places."  Some people believe that the Garden of Eden still exists. The reasoning is  that just because God banned Adam and Eve from the garden doesn't mean that He destroyed it. These people believe that those angels with the flaming swords are still standing there protecting the entrance to the garden.  I, too, believe that the Garden of Good and Evil still exists. You're looking at it. Your computer is not evil. And the internet is not evil, but right at your fingertips are the possibilities of much good and of much evil. Lives have been saved  through the internet and lives have been destroyed. The internet couldn't care less.

God told Moses to take off his shoes because he was standing on  holy ground.  Was the bush burning and not consumed because it was holy ground?  Or did it become holy ground because of the burning bush?  Berry says it doesn't matter,  that there are no unsacred places. Every place is a sacred place. Or used to be.

Growing up I normally wore shoes. But when I visited my cousins on their family farm in Auburn, Alabama every summer, we always went barefoot.  At first the sticks and stones were very painful, but by week's end callouses had formed and I was very comfortable. Thinking back to that farm that has long since belonged to someone else, it was indeed holy ground. How I would love to have one of those days to do again. If I went back there and lit a tree on fire, I would not be surprised at all if it never burned to the ground.

Can't find much sacred about your present circumstances? You can't see anything that's very special? Thank your cornea, pupil, lens, iris, retina, optic nerve and occipital lobe that you're reading this. And take off your shoes.