What does sacred mean? What is sacred?

It’s a question I’ve been contemplating deeply this past week or so.

It began with a moment between two people. A sudden, unexpected moment of deep sharing, vulnerability and trust. Something was shared that touched me profoundly, and almost immediately I felt the desire to share what I had experienced and what it had awakened in me. There was meaning in it. There was a lesson in it. Perhaps even something that might help another person.

Then the words came to me, “this moment was sacred.”

The moment did not belong only to me. It had been created between two people through unspoken trust, vulnerability, care and a willingness to be seen. No one had said, “Please don’t share this.” There had been no agreement of confidentiality, no rules established, no boundary spoken aloud. Yet I felt something deeper had been shared. The moment itself carried the boundary.

That feeling has stayed with me. It has caused me to think much more deeply about the word sacred. About what we recognise as sacred, what we hold sacred, and perhaps most importantly, how we honour what is sacred.

I have been thinking about the stories we carry from the people in our lives. The beautiful things they tell us, the fears they reveal, the longings they name, the wounds they expose, the hopes they are still learning how to hold. When another person allows us into those places, there is something extraordinary in the trust of that moment.

Someone’s story is their story. Their experience. They get to decide whether they want to share it, when they want to share it, how they want to share it, and why.

Of course, sometimes we ask permission. Yet even permission has caused me to reflect more deeply. Is the other person simply agreeing because I asked, because they care about me, because they want to support me? Or do they genuinely want their experience shared? Does the desire to offer it to others come from their own deeper place because they believe there may be meaning, support, hope or some other gift in sharing it?

That distinction feels important to me. A moment of vulnerability between two or more people creates an opportunity to honour the vulnerability itself and the trust that made it possible. Being part of the moment does not necessarily give any one of us the right to make all of it public. Sometimes the lesson is ours to carry while the story remains with the person who entrusted it to us. Sometimes simply knowing that I felt the sacredness of the moment is enough. I can hold it gently, honour it and cherish it.

This matters particularly to me because sharing stories is such a part of my life. I write these letters. I have written books about my own journey. I host The Sincerely Show, where people choose to share beautiful acts of service and contribution, and often the difficult, painful and awakening journeys that brought them there.

What makes those conversations meaningful is that the stories are offered. The guest decides what they want to share and why. Together we try to create a space that feels safe, loving, curious, kind and free of judgement. There is something sacred about being trusted with another human being’s truth, and about allowing them to remain the steward of that truth.

All of this has caused me to look at myself honestly too. What causes me to want to share something?

Sometimes it is love. Sometimes it is genuine excitement about an insight or a lesson that feels important. Sometimes it is the hope that another person might feel less alone or see their own life differently because of something I have experienced.

And sometimes ego speaks. A desire to be seen, to be appreciated, perhaps even a little insecurity seeking affirmation.

The awareness of all of those possibilities has made me more interested in the space between desire and action. That brief space where something deeper can speak. Where I can ask myself whether what I am about to do honours the person I am trying to become, the relationship I have with another person, and the trust and care that exists between us.

What has surprised me is how that one reflection has opened something much larger over the course of this week. I began noticing sacredness everywhere.

Yesterday afternoon, a friend stopped by the farm with her family and friends while they were visiting Prince Edward County. We first came into one another’s lives through the Catalyst Awards, and over time that connection became a friendship I deeply cherish. There was no agenda to the visit. She simply chose to come by, spend a little time together and say hello.

I was touched that she had chosen to stop by.

Earlier, four women I went to public school and high school with had driven five hours to Prince Edward County to visit me and attend an event where I was speaking. I felt deeply humbled by their visit. A couple of them I had not seen in almost forty years, and one I have known for more than fifty-five.

What struck me was how quickly the years disappeared. It was as though no time had passed. We walked the farm together, sharing memories from childhood and adolescence, laughing about joyful moments and talking about some of the very difficult ones too. We had tears for people who have died. So much had happened in each of our lives since those early years, yet the familiarity was still there, as though no time had passed.

They chose to drive five hours simply to be together again. I have been thinking about what a gift that is.

Later that day, I experienced sacredness in a completely different way.

A group of friends and I participated in the Pumpkinfest parade here in Prince Edward County. Our float was inspired by The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, a song that has already found its way into another Sincerely Letter. I got to be Farmer Katie, driving the tractor while my friends rode behind me dancing and wearing their papier-mâché pumpkin heads. It had been at least forty-five years since I had been in a parade.

For more than an hour, we drove through the village of Wellington, which seems to explode with life every year for Pumpkinfest. Pumpkins weighing close to two thousand pounds are entered in the competition. Families line the streets. Music is playing. Children are waving. People are laughing and cheering.

We played Peter Pumpkinhead and danced our way along the route. It was pure joy.

The planning had been joyful too. These are friends who have adopted me since I moved to Prince Edward County. We imagined the float together, created it together, laughed together, and then had the wonderfully ridiculous experience of driving and dancing through the village wearing giant pumpkin heads.

It reminded me that sacredness can be playful too. It can be laughter and music and a tractor moving slowly through a little village while friends wave at strangers and, for a little while, everyone seems simply delighted to be alive together.

Then three of my four children came home for our belated Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas because they bring people we love together.

What began as our family dinner grew to include three families. Biological family and chosen family gathered around the same table, sharing food, gratitude, stories, laughter and love.

Food has always been one of the ways I show love. Preparing a Thanksgiving meal, gathering people around the table and watching different parts of my life come together carries such meaning for me. I felt so grateful to have my biological family and chosen family gathered around the same table.

Over the course of this week, I began to see sacredness in so many different places. In an intimate conversation between two people. In a friendship that has travelled across fifty-five years. In people who enter our lives much later and somehow become family. In a Thanksgiving dinner. In the joy of a village parade. In the simple act of someone deciding to stop by because they care.

It can be present in grief, in joy, in vulnerability, in belonging and in love.

Here at the farm, I feel it in the living world around me too. In the old oak trees, Joey and Maggie. In the flowers and the bees. In the birds moving through the land. In the changing light across the inland sea. In the gardens giving their final gifts before winter. In the quiet awareness that this land existed long before I arrived and will continue long after I am gone.

I do not own any of it in the deepest sense. I get to witness it and care for it for a while.

Perhaps stewardship is part of sacredness too. Recognising that something has worth beyond what it can give us, and allowing that recognition to change the way we care for it.

I think the same may be true of one another.

The more I have contemplated all of this, the more I wonder whether sacredness has less to do with making something extraordinary and more to do with recognising what is already extraordinary. Life. Another human being. Trust, spoken and unspoken. Friendship and love. A tree, a flower, a bee, a bird. A table surrounded by people we care about. Honouring those we love who have died. A moment of complete vulnerability. A rare morning of complete joy.

We live in a time when sharing has become easier than ever. So much can be captured, posted, reproduced and amplified, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are causing me to think even more deeply about what it means to be human.

I keep returning to love, care, compassion, empathy, curiosity, intuition, respect and this deeper moral knowing. That quiet place within us that recognises another person, their life and their story as sacred before our own desires begin to take precedence. The part of us that feels the significance of another person’s vulnerability and knows that some things can be shared while others deserve to be protected and honoured quietly within the connection itself.

I’m beginning to think sacredness is not simply something we experience. Perhaps it changes something in us. It can make us more present to what matters, more grateful for what we have been given, and more careful with what has been entrusted to us. It can remind us to make time for the people we love, to show up, to gather, to play, to care for the land and to honour another person’s story as their own.

Sometimes sharing something beautiful can be an extraordinary gift. Sometimes the most loving and beautiful thing we can do is hold it quietly within our hearts.

The moment that began this contemplation is still private. An intimate moment I hold with love, honour and respect.

I have shared what it awakened in me, but not what another person entrusted to me. Perhaps that is part of the answer I have been looking for.

Some moments are sacred because we share them. Others remain sacred because we choose not to. I think both can be profound expressions of love.

Perhaps that is what I have been discovering this week.

Sacredness is reverence. Reverence for life itself.