I should write a post about the Sacred and Profane but you already know this subject as only a poet and mystic can, and I am in a sort of hibernation or literary winter, not putting much out there anymore, for assorted reasons, none of them valid. #WeShouldBeWriting, as Jess used to say. But I keep saying "we should be reading too!" - in moderation - we should read each other, and avoid throwing rotten tomatoes and wet blankets, and send encouragement. (You know all this--I post it here for those who might not know--but I have a hunch no such readers will ever see my words.)
Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist.... among the first to distinguish between the sacred and the profane. Let's take a look at these two concepts with more detail.
Most things we come across in life can be distinguished as quite ordinary. If you think about the everyday things a person does - driving a car, going to work, checking your email - these things are all quite ordinary and are included as an ordinary element of everyday life. Durkheim would term these things profane - those routine aspects of our day-to-day existence. We cannot deny that we consider some things as sacred, however; those things we set apart as extraordinary, inspiring awe and reverence.
Driving in our car on the way to church is profane. Reading our favorite romance novel would be considered profane. Reading the Bible is sacred for Christians in the same way that Jewish people believe the Torah to be sacred and Muslims pay tribute to the Qur'an. Religion, then, is a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred. https://study.com/academy/lesson/profane-vs-sacred-definitions-lesson-quiz.html
Ok, I need to keep surfing the web to get at what you touched on here with the Divine and the Sensual. Song of Solomon, the most sensual book of the Bible, is not regarded as profane.
Time now to check in with @owasco, one of the best of Hive's poets. :) She always startles me and makes me see things in a new light. Her writing is more cynical than yours, perhaps (if that is the right way to think of it). But I am ever a skeptic and a cynic, for all my wannabe mysticism, and @owasco speaks for me.
But I keep trying to focus on all that is POSITIVE and constructive and hopeful, even though it don't come easy. So I will close with something hopeful:
and let’s laugh
together wildly
under this beautiful
falling sky
fall into this sacred
moment with me
it’s really all we have
it’s all about time
~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)