THE SACRED IS ORDINARY
Word Of The Week
SACRED
adjective
highly valued and important
The summer solstice is marked by the sun moving into the sign of the divine feminine, Cancer. There’s something so sacred about that to me. The sun, this symbol of divine masculine on its longest day of the year, moves into the sign of its counterpart, Cancer, which is associated with the moon. It feels like a moment where the duality of the two cease to exist. For a day they collide, and there is no divine masculine or divine feminine; only the Divine. We are all the Divine and on this day that energy courses through our limbs. The solstices feel like holidays; exciting and renewing and exhausting all at once. Where the masculine and feminine collide, the ultimate destruction of duality and the remembrance of who we truly are. A day for truth, balance, energy and action. There are many symbols of the disappearance of duality on the solstices. The days progressively get longer until the summer solstice, when the days begin to once again shorten until the winter solstice and back again. The summer solstice can be symbolized by the full moon as the winter solstice by the new moon. The celebration of these days is ancient, and found in some form in almost every culture. I believe that when something is so universally recognized for such a long time, it’s automatically sacred.
Sacred? You know when you say a word so much it feels fake? According to The Online Etymology Dictionary, the word originated in late 14c., meaning "hallowed, consecrated, or made holy by association with divinity or divine things.” By this definition, I wonder what makes something sacred over something else? Isn’t everything divine by nature? We are divine simply because we exist. Ok; Divine. Let’s get to the bottom of that one. The Etymology Dictionary says it’s from late 14c., "pertaining to, of the nature of, or proceeding from God or a god; addressed to God." So by this definition, according to many different belief systems, all things are divine. Therefore, all things are sacred. There is something so powerful in understanding this, and I believe the solstice asks us to find it. To take something esteemed as “sacred” for so many years, and make it ordinary is either to strip it of its divinity or to bring everything else up to its level. It’s impossible to strip something of what it inherently is, and so by making the solstice “ordinary” we are finding how the “ordinary” is divine. I believe this is true of anything that is celebrated. It’s not that I think we shouldn’t celebrate things– actually the opposite. I think we should celebrate more. We should dance under the moonlight on a Monday because it’s the beginning of the week, or light candles by water on Sunday for gratitude, or take a walk every time the sun comes out after the rain, or make a big dinner for the people we love on a random night of the week just because. Because the day is sacred, and they are divine, and worth celebrating. It all is. We all are, all the time.
How beautiful it is to recognize this. Everyday we are alive is a celebration of our sacred and divine existence. To share a conversation with another is to celebrate our divinity. To wake up each morning and brush our teeth, or make our cup of coffee, or pet our animal, is to perform the sacred rituals we created to honor our divinity. It’s no different from a feast on Christmas Eve, or at least it doesn’t have to be. The solstice is celebrated and sacred but it feels like it asks us to make it ordinary and to see how amazing the ordinary can become as a result. What if you tried treating each day like a sacred holiday? And yourself like a holy figure worthy of celebration? And each person you talk to the same? I believe that life is pure magic if we are open to seeing it.
Happy Solstice, friends.
LOVE, JENNA
