ON THE SACRED AND RELIGIOUS RITES

ON THE SACRED AND RELIGIOUS RITES - I don’t know about you, but when I grew up life was clearly divided into the secular and sacred.  The sacred included Sundays (we weren’t allowed to work in the fields, burn trash, or any such like thing on Sundays when I was small), The Sacrament (Holy Communion), the church building, the minister, the Bible, and such.  Most everything else (Monday-Saturday, work, sports activities, sex, vacations, etc.) was in the realm of secular.  But for many mystics and other spiritually-inclined devotees, the lines between the Sacred and the secular have not been so clearly defined.  Some have gone so far as to view all life as being in the realm of the Sacred.  And the older I get, the more I lean towards seeing the Sacred all around me, as did naturalist folk like John Burroughs, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and others.  Could something as simple as immersing oneself in a mountain stream become a religious or spiritual experience, as John Burroughs suggests?