Secret and Sacred

Think of an operating room. Clean, sterile, functional. In this room lives are lost and lives are saved.

The operating room is not open to everyone. Only those sufficiently clean and who can appreciate the nature of what goes on in this room are allowed to enter.

This is to avoid two things: contamination and misunderstanding.

Contamination. Germs, those happy little hitch-hikers we carry with us almost everywhere. And while on the outside of our bodies they really don't harm, if the gain entry there is the risk of illness and even death. Were a person to enter an operating room without properly cleaning, disinfecting, and donning proper protective clothing, they would defile the cleanliness of the room and risk the life of the patient.

No benevolent person would ever enter with the purpose of causing infection. Loved ones wishing to visit the sick may not even think of the risk, and, were they allowed to enter might inadvertently and accidentally kill the person they care so much for.

Contamination, for this reason, must be avoided, and the operating room must have limited access.

Misunderstanding. The goings on in an operating room can be quite ghastly. Slicing of skin, breaking of bones, spilling of blood, removal of body parts, and the invasion of hands within the delicate internal spaces of the body. These things under any other condition would be viewed as evil and dangerous. Imagine that you had no knowledge of modern medicine and walked into an operating room during an open heart surgery.

How would you react? If you knew nothing of modern medicine and saw the person laying on the table, surrounded by strangers, splayed open, taped and tubed, would you stand by idly and watch? Or would you try to 'save' this poor soul, fighting off the doctors and nurses, which would most likely result in the death of the person on the table?

Misunderstanding can hurt. A lot. Sometimes it can even kill.

And so we see that while the goings ons in the operating room are not secret, though they are hidden from the world. They are too precious, too delicate, too sacred to allow just anyone inside.

There are many things like this in our lives. Conversations between friends and lovers. Intimate little details we know about those around us. Special moments and thoughts we have to ourselves. Some religious rights and ordinances. These things are not shared, or should not be shared, as to protect them from contamination and misunderstanding.

These things are not secret.

They are sacred.