Honoring the Personal — the Sacred
We can transition the impersonal to sacred through prayer and intention
I’ve recently learned the “Wedding Industrial Complex” is a thing, and it got that way as it became culturally necessary to have big splashing weddings. Nowadays, individuals are even employing professionals to help them plan the proposal.
Imagine that!
Not that an overwhelming desire grows within to join lives and a proposal flows from a deep conversation about the kind of life two individuals seek to share together. But instead young couples are seeking for every aspect of their joining, beginning with the proposal, to be novel, creative, and entertaining.
The national average cost for weddings in 2022 was $30,000; $60,000 in New York. That’s average. Meaning some spend far more.
This past week I had minor surgery to have a small spot of skin cancer removed. The clinic was highly professional and efficient. The staff were helpful. Every aspect measured with what one would expect from such a professional service. But . . .
It was a mill. An assembly line of surgeries.
Not having to wait more than five minutes to be led to a treatment room, one person handled intake, another the prep, then the doctor entered the room. He barely greeted me, did his cutting work, and was out in less than three minutes. Then they took the removed skin to their in-house lab to check if the outside portions were clear of the cancer.
In the meantime, they cauterized, bandaged me up, and sent me back to the waiting room where I sat with some eight to ten other individuals with bandaged faces waiting for the next step in the process.
Thirty minutes later and I was back in the treatment room for a second cut — rinse and repeat. Three cuts in total to get all of it, stitches, instruction sheet for caring for the incision site, and I was on my way.
So, what do the Wedding Industrial Complex and my surgery have in common you may be asking?
They are deeply personal experiences.
There are a few things in life which to me seem personal and even sacred. Getting married is one of them. While I haven’t experienced childbirth, I’ve vicariously felt it enough to understand how profound it is. And yet children are largely birthed in hospitals.
Love and intimacy, sharing our stories vulnerably with another human being, and most certainly having someone cut away a portion of our bodies is deeply personal — even if it’s in the interest of a lifesaving procedure rooted in science.
Modern medicine is big business. And while I’m grateful for having my procedure conducted by a doctor and staff who crank out 8 to 12 of them a day, who have perfected the process for efficiency and accuracy, I was struck at how un-sacred and impersonal the process was.
Navajo people believe that when you cut away a portion of your body, or even hair, that it is best to offer it to the fire. Because it’s important to always remember the sacredness of life and how it functions in a circle, which means we acknowledge how living matter must be returned to the Earth. When a baby is born, the umbilical cord is retained for later burial in an intentional location, usually on family land.
Instead, my cutaway skin and tissue were likely discarded to a medical waste bin and later sent to a commercial incinerator, treated as hazardous waste.
A wedding statistic that came of no surprise to me is that couples who spend less than $1,000 on their weddings are 47% more likely to stay together than those who spend $20,000. Which reflects that the priority of the big-spend wedding is not necessarily in alignment with the spiritual joining of two lives, nor the ingredients necessary for lasting love.
And I wonder how we might be able to transform modern medicine in the distant future to marry (excuse the pun) science with Spirit. That we could honor both the science and the energy.
There is research that shows that smudging (the act of burning aromatics and blessing with the smoke) helps remove pathogens from the air. Imagine if people were able to smudge and pray and sing sacred songs in the operating room. Imagine if doctors, nurses, and all the related staff saw their roles as both scientific and sacred — both procedural and personal.
Maria and I married with a tobacco smoke. We didn’t rehearse our vows; we spoke from the heart. I’m not saying we’re all that, but just that we did it differently — personally, intimately, and sacred.
Marriage is not an easy thing. Especially when two people join their lives with an intention of helping each other heal and grow.
Big-spend weddings engender a different kind of energy — one in which materialism is emphasized over sacredness, and the process of crafting an intention together is lost in the stress of planning a one-day experience rather than a foundation for a lifetime together.
So today, I’m spending a little time praying about my removed skin and tissue. Wherever it met its transition from human remains to ash, those who handled it, the staff who cut and stitched and bandaged and instructed. Perhaps I can add a little sacredness to the process that has otherwise been impersonal and left me with an empty feeling.
We can transition the impersonal to sacred through prayer and intention. We can still make it mean something more than what our modern culture would otherwise make of it.
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Prayers and smoke for speedy recovery, Glenn.