This is a juicy topic, one I’ve been mulling over for a few weeks now. The difficulty has arisen from one thing: it’s been hard to reconcile profane acts like terrorism into my essential notion of a sacred universe. With events like 9/11 lingering in the culture and the day’s glorious rainbow after a hard rain, I’ve been stumped. Then I realized that it boils down to a simple dichotomy: nouns are inherently sacred, but verbs have the potential to profane. While this may seem a bit simplistic, it actually describes how profanity can exist in a sacred universe.
First, lets take a look at the words “sacred” and “profane” themselves.