Dancing With the Sacred The experience of dancing/playing like a child with a Shuar tribesman in Ecuador’s rainforest and not knowing he was one of the jungle’s most powerful shaman led me to questions about knowing. How much would I have missed had I “known” he was a revered Holy Man? How much do any of us miss when approaching something considered sacred, with heads full of preconceptions/answers? Does an habituated response to the holy keep us from seeing? When we know the face of the sacred, or even the profane, do we close our eyes to the limitless possibilities of God?

Phyllis Barber