Lauren Redniss’s Oak Flat is about the conflict over sacred Apache land in Arizona
It’s also about a conflict within the order of the universe.
sacred
The Spirit is God’s wild card, played over and over again when old forms fail.
At its worst, Protestantism has long been deeply suspicious of all holy things, of the very notion that a physical object can carry anything of the sacred. At its best, such a suspicion is aimed instead at the notion of holier things—of an elite, rarefied sacrality that sets a few things utterly apart. So I’m not among those rolling my eyes at Rep. Bob Brady for seeing something holy in a glass of water.
We had not one but two baptisms the other day. What absorbed me most was the way the little kids edged toward the event like wasps to a picnic.
I decided our family's Christmas would be simple and spirit-centered. Green to parenting, I defined spiritual as anything that allowed me a minute to reflect on what, beyond the laundry, mattered.