Law For The Sacred

Posted by 600.60sc on December 23, 2024

During my 20 years in the legal profession, I’ve had an ever growing feeling that the work of lawyers is disrupting something that should not be disrupted. I don’t believe it can be expressed in words, but I see it expressed everywhere. Perhaps I can offer a picture:

Last year, I found myself quite captivated by a goose sitting on her eggs. I was struck with how, inside of an egg, liquid was slowly turning into a live gosling. I was struck by how the mother goose herself came into being in the same way, as part of an unbroken chain of millions of years of life creating and nurturing life.

Whether you view this as divine unfolding or simply as biological facts, this is a flow, a pattern, and a force that we likely all agree should not be disrupted. A goose does not design and assemble her gosling. Rather, she lets life come into being, under her gentle and protective warmth.

Since that moment with the geese, I’ve often repeated to myself: “Life unfolds beautifully.” The geese offered me a vivid recognition of this, which I feel about all life on earth, including what people do when we come together. When given space to self-organize and act from our inner wisdom, I believe that humans create beautiful ways of being together with each other and with all life around us. I trust us. I trust life. There is something of utmost importance, something sacred, that makes it all work. The last thing I would ever want to do is disrupt this sacredness.

Meanwhile, I believe that our dominant legal system and legal profession are founded on different values: the idea that we can’t trust humans, and that everything that is not human can become property controlled by humans. Far from allowing life and societies to unfold beautifully, our laws exert control — backed by violent force — to have us behave in certain ways and to mechanistically allocate everything that has become property.

It’s like our dominant legal system breaks open the sacred egg and seeks to assemble a goose according to formulas. This is deeply disruptive. This is increasingly how I’ve felt as a lawyer attempting to “help” beautiful groups of humans fulfill their dreams. When people come together in the spirit of love and care, and when they have a vision to create something, a lawyer can sometimes disrupt this beautiful unfolding with admonitions to comply with regulations, adopt bylaws, appoint officers, and confine activities to the boxes designed by our legal system. My heart was aching more deeply about this over my years of work as a lawyer.

But I didn’t believe the answer was for me to abandon the law. Most humans are now steeped in these kinds of legal systems, and the law impacts so much of what we want to do, even in the most intimate and sacred realms of life. I resolved to hone my legal skills in ways that could be evermore nurturing of the sacred, which has included a lot of learning and unlearning. I also made a series of cartoon videos as I grappled with this.

Then, in late 2023, eight of my Law Center coworkers and I started a new project we call Sacred Legal Circles, described in this brief cartoon video.

We wanted to build relationships with, learn from, and offer legal support to land and housing projects that center spirituality, the sacred, and/or non-dominant/non-Western worldviews. We shared this via word-of-mouth and, in the first year, spoke to 37 groups, some of whom are listed below.

I do not yet feel ready to encapsulate my learnings, and many are beyond words. But I can say that some of the humans and their projects feel, to me, like my reason for being, my reason for doing this work in the world. I was amazed at the loving energy that some groups brought into the zoom room, in awe of the ways they care for and engage one another, and grateful for how many seem to avoid the trappings of dominant culture expectations about how nonprofits and real estate “should” be done. We encountered spaces of love and creativity that, I believe, are testament to the power of intentionally centering the sacred. With such groups, I aspire to be like the goose, offering just the right amount of warmth, energy, and protection – in the form of legal and strategic support – so as to not disrupt their awe-inspiring and sacred work.

We have been careful not to over-promote this program, because we want to preserve our capacity to deepen existing relationships. However, if you believe your group might be a good fit to be in conversation with us, feel free to email me and inquire at Janelle [at] theselc.org.

Here are some of the groups we’ve been in conversation with: