What Is Sacred is Sacred
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What Is Sacred is Sacred
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In this episode, I reflect on a strange and haunting scene in All the Pretty Horses where John Grady Cole plays pool with the hacendado in what used to be an old chapel. What seems like a small moment opens into something much bigger: the sacred, institutional religion, reason, violence, memory, and the strange ways God may linger in places we think have been emptied out.
I explore McCarthy’s idea that “what is sacred is sacred,” and how the holy may exceed the control of priests, institutions, and rational explanation. This becomes a way into thinking about the post-secular sacred: not a simple return to religion, but also not a flat, disenchanted world where mystery disappears.
Along the way, I also wrestle with the hacendado’s critique of reason, his fear that reason can become monstrous when it tries to master everything, and McCarthy’s larger vision of the sacred as beautiful, violent, terrifying, and impossible to fully control.