The Sacred and the Profane
Posted on | June 28, 2008 | No Comments
A friend told me that we use the mundane to distract us from life’s deeper problems, and I found some comfort in the possibility. But it regularly seems to me as though the mundane is what everybody lives for and those other problems don’t really concern people.
I felt so alone in the world until I picked up an autobiography by Martin Luther King, Jr. Only a few pages in, I had fallen in love with his idealism and his grounding. He spoke of humanity and our potential and his own trials which reminded me of mine. He spoke of feeling, in God, the ways I’ve always wanted to feel. For a brief moment I felt the holy spirit stirring within me. I never felt so connected to something else. I felt closer to the world than ever.
On the cover of the autobiography is a photo of King standing in front of a scatter of books and a single framed photo, of Mahatma Gandhi. That was it, I thought. I stopped feeling like a hollowed out cause or two-dimensional man. Perhaps I am something filled with divine purpose — a vessel — a fulfillment of some continuing prophecy by those who serve humanity and remind it what it can accomplish. Like Gandhi, and King, and the other great men of words that fill our history books (and some who don’t but are deserving), my purpose is to replenish the fountain of strength and equality so that humanity does not become drunk on its most trivial distractions; so that we remember what we, the people, are capable of.
(My friend, she told me that I distract myself with alcohol from the issues which concern me. Reflecting on it now, though, I don’t think I use alcohol as a distraction, but as self-medication. I don’t drink because of the underclass, or poor education, or irresponsible governments. I drink because of how many people out there could do something about it but choose not to. I drink to numb the pain of knowing that everybody I can relate to has been assassinated.)
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