| Father Brian Massie Speaks: In Praise of the Profane by MA Nangini The quotidian territory of the profane the everyday the streets the songs the music the work time from time out for the sacred when all sacred wants is to be embedded when all the profane seeks is to be embodied where the reality of different worlds would unite the solemn the joyful the playful the dilemmas of the dichotomy the sacred and the profane chasm. The illusion of the reality is separateness The reality of the illusion is inviolably oneness Intertwined holiness The sacred and the profane The indelible inborn experience we know is there Do we trust it? Do we work with it? We look for the holy in their designated sacred spaces opening spiritual receptors alive and alert then shut down pull away at all other places. We underestimate the power of the profane compartmentalized, desacralized and sanitized we miss, dismiss the cues that lead to God. "God is not to be contained by our categories" Grace assistance guidance is plentiful to those whose receptors are open to the holy to the sacred to the wonder of all that is given manifestation of creation finding the sacred in all that is profane. But we ask as if blind: Where do I look for the sacred? Where do I look for the divine? The vulgar the hateful the smelly don't belong to the over-churched and privileged who monopolize and bound God out of the marketplace delineating restrictive theological categories our strictures our limits projected onto the boundless and limitless. The profane is dissonance! The profane is disorder! The profane is chaos! In the pursuit of perfection, the determinately neat factor out of life the uncontrollable and incomplete. The messiness of life is cauterized making the holy and the sacred clinically sterile. The best of the best is the only must for the holy! But that is not how it unfolded in the life of Christ; Nor does it pan out for the addict, the weak, the lost , the outcast. In the pursuit of perfection, the determinately neat factor out of life the uncontrollable and incomplete. The messiness of life is cauterized making the holy and the sacred clinically sterile. The best of the best is the only must for the holy! But that is not how it unfolded in the life of Christ; Nor does it pan out for the addict, the weak, the lost , the outcast. How paradoxical this incongruence: The acceptance of my incompleteness, messiness, untidily grossness is my means of grace Victory is achieved admitting defeat! The incarnational statement of the boundedness of God with my humanness. The divine bound to the profane saves when I would be destroyed fills where I would be empty is at work among the disregarded and unimportant. It is God there who transforms In the Divine Milieu Where nothing is profane For those who know how to see For those who are open to hear For those who are alert to the many grace-filled moments of the now and here. The dichotomy is unreal It is the illusion of the real The divine-profane enmeshed oneness Renders truth to reality I look to it I embrace it To be made whole by it. All that is given Lends to leading to the ultimate end The united mortal-immortal bond The divine with the profane At the places where to least expect The working God I look to the earth charged with the energy of God And won't turn away The contemplative in action Harmonizes the two planes The discord Becomes the song of praise. (from the Lecture Series Naming the Holy: Encountering God In All Things, Newman Centre Chapel, November 29th, 2000) |