"Celebrate the Sacred in the ordinary"
About this Quote
A benediction disguised as a lifestyle tip, "Celebrate the Sacred in the ordinary" is Sarah Ban Breathnach at her most disarming: spiritual language smuggled into the realm of errands, laundry, and lukewarm coffee. The line works because it refuses the hard split modern life keeps trying to enforce between meaning and maintenance. It doesn’t demand a mountaintop revelation; it asks you to relocate reverence to the kitchen counter.
Breathnach emerged in the late-90s/early-2000s boom of accessible spirituality and “simplicity” writing, a cultural moment when wellness was starting to replace formal religion for many people, but people still craved ritual, steadiness, and a vocabulary for gratitude. “Sacred” is the bold word here. It’s not “nice” or “mindful” or “appreciate.” It carries the charge of devotion, but without specifying a doctrine. That vagueness is strategic: it invites believers to feel affirmed and skeptics to translate it into presence, intention, or attention.
The subtext is quietly corrective: you’ve been trained to chase significance somewhere else - in productivity, big milestones, optimized selfhood. Breathnach counters with a politics of perception. Celebration becomes a practice, not a reward; the ordinary becomes not a consolation prize, but the primary site of a life. The phrase also softens self-reproach. If the sacred can be found in smallness, then an imperfect day isn’t wasted - it’s still available for meaning, which is exactly the kind of permission her readership was seeking.
Breathnach emerged in the late-90s/early-2000s boom of accessible spirituality and “simplicity” writing, a cultural moment when wellness was starting to replace formal religion for many people, but people still craved ritual, steadiness, and a vocabulary for gratitude. “Sacred” is the bold word here. It’s not “nice” or “mindful” or “appreciate.” It carries the charge of devotion, but without specifying a doctrine. That vagueness is strategic: it invites believers to feel affirmed and skeptics to translate it into presence, intention, or attention.
The subtext is quietly corrective: you’ve been trained to chase significance somewhere else - in productivity, big milestones, optimized selfhood. Breathnach counters with a politics of perception. Celebration becomes a practice, not a reward; the ordinary becomes not a consolation prize, but the primary site of a life. The phrase also softens self-reproach. If the sacred can be found in smallness, then an imperfect day isn’t wasted - it’s still available for meaning, which is exactly the kind of permission her readership was seeking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|
More Quotes by Sarah
Add to List
