Sensing Sacred Objects

29 August 2014

 - “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real. . . . It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time.” –Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit.

How does an object become sacred? The Skin Horse is correct; time and love can do it, and children are especially gifted at infusing their most cherished objects with sacredness in this way. Every parent who tires of searching when such an object gets lost and tries to give up by saying, “It’s OK. We’ll buy you a new one,” quickly discovers what a profoundly unacceptable idea that is. Reluctantly, most of them join the community of parents the world over who are forced to cultivate the strangely intuitive ability to find lost objects!