we will explore the sacred in poetry, in image, in music, in prayer, in film, in animation in an attempt to understand what is the sacred.

The sacred intertwines poetry, music, and the visual arts into a symbiotic relationship. Each is a tool of expression, the voice of the other. The deeper and more profound the sacred experience, the more abstract and transcendent it becomes. The experience is intangible and ineffable, straining verbal communication. . William Wordsworth wrote, “Truth that wakes to perish never,” a poetic explanation of his transformitive personal encounter with God. This visionary event creates a communication gap. How do we express sacredness or mysticism? The human family, a tribal social species, needs to share. The communication gap created by personal sacred experience encourages the human being to use intuitive creative forms of communication not managed by rational thought. Most societies have priests, rabbis, clerics or other ministers as teachers, translators of the divine. These individuals learn to express the divine. Some share their sacred experience by finding a voice for the personal knowing that has gifted them. An inherent desire to express and to understand forces humans to use other forms of communication, which often take shape, either separately or in combination, through poetry, music, or the visual arts.