Childhood innocence is really a wonderful thing. When one is a child, one sees the world for what it really and truly is. The Earth is a wonderful place filled with breathtaking mountains, oceans, lakes, rivers, trees, flowers, animals, clouds, and skies. Seeing the beauty of the sacred is something that lives within each of us naturally from the day we are born and we revel in it, unable to contain our excitement for the next awe-inspiring adventure. The problem with this is that childhood innocence usually doesn‘t last and it saddens me that most of us at some point are actually taught to stop seeing.
As a child, I was always the one running off into the woods, climbing trees, picking berries, climbing a mountain, swimming and canoeing in lakes and streams, blazing the trails, and just generally observing nature. If I found a wild animal or bug I would watch it in fascination for as long as it would let me, and I had been known to help the ones who were hurt along the way and water the wildflowers along the path. My first contact with what I would call a discouragement from the sacred came when I was about twelve years old in one of my religion classes for the Catholic faith. Our family owned a wonderful dachshund named Dolly, she was the light of my life at the time and I would often bring her along on my adventures. During this particular class, we had been talking about death and heaven, and someone asked about pets and whether they went to heaven. I was absolutely shocked to learn that according to the Catholic faith, only humans went to heaven and our much loved pets just simply died and disappeared, they were not included in the heaven plan because they did not have a soul. I remember being very upset and I decided that I didn’t want to go to heaven if my dog would not be there. It may have been an immature childhood thought, but to this day, my decision stands, and I still would not want to be a part of any religion where all living things did not have a spirit, or a soul. I didn’t understand at the time, but in retrospect, I believe this isolated incident in my religious upbringing was the start of my spiralling away from Christianity and landing on Druidism in what would be many years in the future. Even now with all that I have been through both in my life and in what I have learned of religion and spirituality in general, I do not see Christianity as a negative thing. Simply put, it may be right for someone else but it just isn’t me anymore and I don’t think it ever was.
I am really not sure why we are discouraged from seeing the sacred when we get older. Perhaps it is just that we get so caught up in our busy lives that we simply forget to stop and smell the flowers, or maybe it is a responsibility thing where other things like jobs, technology, and raising kids begin to take priority, and with that comes the invention of new and better technologies so that we can be more productive members of society which then in turn gives us the confidence to assume that we are the dominant species which could then be mistaken for thinking we must be the most important. I believe in seeing the sacred in everything I come into contact with throughout the day, whether it is something simple like looking out of my window and getting a warm feeling at seeing the blue sky, the sun, and the beautiful British Columbia mountains in the distance, or something more involved like wandering into the wilderness for some meditation time. I think all it takes in seeing the sacred is to simply shift our focus a little bit. If we looked at each individual resident of the Earth as being alive, whether it be a human or a rock, I think more people would think twice about some of the destruction they are causing to the Earth.
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