The Edge of the Sacred

"The idea of sacredness tends to come up often in my work. What anoints something as sacred? Its a question I often receive as a Din poet talking to audiences across the country. But its a subject I feel I cant talk to, because that kind of esoteric knowledge is unreachable. Not in the sense that I cant learn it, because I can. Its unreachable in the sense that perhaps I am not ready to learn it, or I have not made the right kind of commitments to learning that kind of knowledge. During the Emerging Din Writers Institute, a summer program for creative writing held at Navajo Technical University in Crownpoint, New Mexico, Philmer Bluehouse talked about the three realms of Din knowledge and the ways esoteric knowledge is almost meant to be just beyond our grasp. Because that knowledge unlocks a different coding of reality, a different approach to the world, and its one that has sustained Din thought and lifeway for generations. In the wrong or unprepared hands, the knowledge could backfire. So, instead, I answer knowing what I know based on the stories Ive been told: that a sacred space is anywhere meant for reverence to a realm beyond our current spatial awareness of reality. That this sacred is beyond our three dimensions, maybe even dimensionless. It is the beyond itself." Poet Jake Skeets shares more...

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