Unity of Life

Unity of Life

Sacred and Profane Beauty/Gerardus Van Der Leeuw

September 16, 2015

Wilderness teaches us that the cosmic and local, sacred and profane, as well as the ordinary and extraordinary categories of life are constantly crossing over the defining borders and structures that society assigns to them. In the marketplace we find clearly defined structures that constitute a set of social and cultural norms that everyone is expected to adhere to. In the liminal space of wilderness all forms of human structure, status, merit, and tradition are stripped away.

Man’s proclivity to be in control creates a division in life. Whereas modern society separates and systematizes the different realms of society into their own objective categories - such as economics, government, religion, education, science, etc. — primitive man viewed life as a unified whole. To them, everything — cooking, buying, washing, etc. — is a religious act. The most ordinary, mundane activities of life became ritualized by primitive humanity. In his book, Sacred and Profane Beauty, Philosopher Gerardus Van der Leeuw says, “the religious is not a particular sensation alongside other sensations, but the summation of them all.” van der Leeuw goes on to insightfully say that,

“The great difficulty, indeed the tragedy of our modern life, lies in the fact that we differentiate between the things that concern us and things which do not concern us. We are musical or we are not; we are religious or we are not; we are concerned with economic affairs or we are not…In a word, we have lost the unity of life.”

A key difference between modern and ancient societies is that modern man is not exposed to wilderness as the primitive man once was. Stepping into the liminal space of wilderness we find a place where everything belongs. Amidst all the diversity found in nature there is an overarching unity and coherency, a divine life energy that binds all things together in symphonic ecstasy. In his letter to the Church in Colossae, the Apostle Paul reveals the force behind this energy: “by him [Jesus] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”(Colossians 1:16-17)

The pursuit to simplify life through increasing control has proven to be counteractive all throughout history. For example, the technological advancements achieved during the Industrial Revolution were meant to make everyday life simpler and easier. In reality, the complexity and complications of life have risen in direct proportion and intensity to man’s increase of control through technology. In our highly civilized societies we have a firm grasp of control over everything that happens to us on a day to day basis. We have made everyday life safe and predictable. We are used to the noise of machines rather than the chorus of creation. Wilderness wrenches every notion of control from our hands, reminding us that we are not in control and pointing us to the presence of a sovereign God who orchestrates, ordains, and sustains all created order, from natural phenomena to human affairs. It is in this wild place of vulnerability that our hearts become opened to the reality that life is a unified whole; that the division we create to control things only serves to harm us and those around us. Wilderness transforms us by relinquishing our control, removing us from the center of our lives, and showing us our relational connection to everything else in creation.