Anything Goes

Anything Goes

The 25th of May will mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Mr. Floyd’s death was one of many at the hands of police, yet this incident sparked global outrage in ways other incidents did not. Mr. Floyd’s death was captured on video. The world watched repeatedly as a white police office, with his hands casually placed in his pockets, knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck until his last breath left his body. The world listened as witnesses begged the officer to take the pressure off his neck. The world listened as Mr. Floyd begged for his life, saying more than 20 times that he could not breathe. That day, the sacred and the profane coalesced. The sacredness of Mr. Floyd’s life was debased by the profane act of a police officer. This was not the first or the last time that the profane has captured our attention and in doing so has left scars and wounds.

Along with members of Creekside United Church of Christ, I made pilgrimage to George Floyd Square to remember Mr. Floyd and others whose lives were lost at the hands of police. These lives are currently memorialized in the street and in the Say Their Names Cemetery. “Each headstone in the cemetery bears the name of someone murdered by police.” We walked in silence. We poured libation. We chose the sacred act of remembering and honoring the lives lost because they are sacred in memory, though profaned in their deaths.

There was a once upon a time when there was a distinction between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is beyond the definition of being set apart for worship or service of a god. The sacred also refers to that which is entitled to reverence or respect. As such, the land we live on is sacred, worthy of respect and the deeper respect of reverence. People’s lives are also sacred, with every life worth being of high value and importance. Loving neighbor as self begins with a regard for each life as sacred. There is no “list of the sacred” out there, instead, based on social and cultural norms, there are perhaps common understandings of the sacred and by contrast the profane.

The profane would be the opposite of the sacred – simply put, profane references that which is not sacred. However, the meaning of the word changes depending on how it is used. To profane is to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use or to desecrate. These days it seems there are blurred lines between the two.

People’s lives are being debased in new ways. The killing of black and brown people garnered attention at various times and with every killing there were the questions of what victims could have done differently. Eric Gardener. Alton Sterling. Treyvon Martin. Philando Castile. These are a few of the 146 names memorialized in the cemetery and painted in the street. Now we see people being taken off the streets and detained. People being deported. The sacredness of life debased by incarceration and detention in prisons designed to denigrate life. Every day the line is being crossed in ways that are making it harder to find a way back to the clarity needed to ensure the safety of all and to see justice present for all.

There should be no ambiguity about the differences between the sacred and the profane, between upholding and breaking the law, between loving and hating people. With the blurring of the line between, there is a quiet redefinition of the rules. Where the rules are blurred, it seems anything goes, and anarchy creeps silently into the mainstream with new rules being created.

These days, it is hard to determine where the line is, or if a line even exists between what we hold sacred and what we identify as profane. Every time the line is crossed, it loses its clarity. Every time the line is crossed, society loses the ability to give respect and reverence where due.

As we stood on the incline overlooking the markers in Say Their Names Cemetery, one of the participants removed her shoes from her feet, an act which recognized the sacredness of the land on which we stood, and the sacredness of the memorial dedicated to lost lives. The cemetery is on Lakota land. That too is sacred. The marker outside the cemetery states: “Stolen Land, Stolen Lives.”

There is truth to be unpacked in confronting these words. People’s lives are being stolen daily with deportations being added to the list of the lives that will be impacted by the cuts in the federal budget, the lack of attention to environmental care, the dismantling of civil rights and the disregard for human rights. And, even as lives continue to be stolen and made profane, the theft of land and resources is profane as oligarchs rule and the gods of capitalism and greed are worshipped and made sacred.