Journey to the Sacred

Journey to the Sacred

When summoned to my mind, the term ‘sacred’ often carries along the image of a formal religious space. The Oxford dictionary tells me that the sacred lies within that which is holy, and that which is holy is “dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose”. This binding of terms – sacred and religious – furthers the twist that serves as a mechanism to ‘other’ people who do not identify with any religion. In doing so, usage and application of the term ‘sacred’ is taken away from those who do not identify with the religious connotation.

Is it possible—can the sacred exist without religious power? Cheryl Strayed’s journey goes to show that sacredness transcends the ancient paradigm.

The presence of the key word ‘sacred’ makes its debut in Chapter 10 of Strayed’s narrative. At this point in her journey, Strayed meets a Latino man named Paco, who gives her a shirt that he tells her is sacred. When given the shirt, Strayed “nodded, silenced by emotion and…. certitude that the shirt really was sacred” (167). Paco also insists that Strayed is on a spirit walk, which Strayed does not deny. This utterance of ‘sacred’ calls to question the pairing of sacredness with religion. Strayed’s described instance deviates from the tangle of the twofold— it has no grounding in religion, though it is imbued with spirituality. Strayed calls this shirt sacred, and it is a legitimate statement, as it has a value that exceeds materiality. This treasuring of the tangible cannot simply be disregarded in its terming simply because it has no basis in religion – sacred is sacred, and depends not only on its divine attributes, but its reverence in association with time and space.

Pilgrimage: “a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion” (Dictionary.com).

There is no name for Cheryl Strayed’s ‘pilgrimage’ – while other walks of sacred historical significance are called Hajj or the Camino de Santiago, Strayed’s walk has no spiritual or religious grounding in the past. While this and the definition of ‘pilgrimage’ may be a cause not to believe that Strayed did embark on one, the naming of her journey as a pilgrimage should not be neglected. In Chapter 15 of Wild, a woman named Susanna tells Strayed that her journey is called “the pilgrim way” (244). People in Strayed’s story can tell that her journey is profoundly spiritual and sacred. The holy site which Strayed makes her way to is the ‘Bridge of the Gods’, which resembles the sacred destination, as it is a site of religiously connotative naming.

A religious space is not all I see in the term ‘sacred’. Nature is also sacred to me. It is what stays here as we go, as religions come and go. As many of us make our own journeys of self-discovery, some cling to the familiar regardless of the situation. It is easy to forget that before the concept of religion and its sacredness was established, there was only a reverence and veneration of the earth. Strayed returns to this primordial essence of the divine, which religion has since overpowered. Her return to nature follows with her return to herself.

Nature cannot be formalized to match the constructed spaces of religious activity; it serves as a stark contrast to any humanly composed space. A church or temple is regulated by people—kept tame and orderly; the forest is wild, though it is not classified as a sacred space in the same terms. The revelations of Strayed are deeply connected to her natural surroundings, which are in no doubt, sacred. While the definition of sacred may be somewhat contrary to her experience, she challenges and redefines its meaning in her experience, proving how religion is not necessary for a sacred and revelatory experience to occur – although her spiritual experience is very closely analogous to that of a religious revelation.

We tend not to be intensely moved by nature as it confronts us on the crack of a sidewalk. This division of the sacred space being ‘over there’ leaves our reverence ‘over there’, where the experience occurred. When seeing this experience as ‘other’ to the place we live, the reverence is not integrated into our lives. This is a problem within both religion and nature – while there may be veneration, it remains within that certain place of sacredness, and not a part of life. We have deep divisions to overcome, to bridge. However, this reverence of nature does nothing to protect nature.