Tools, Sacredness, and the Work of the Heart

"If we use a tool on sacredness, we profane sacredness. The only way to make this right is for the person using the tool to maintain the highest level of prayer." -Sal Gencarelle

Sacredness is not fragile, but it is easily forgotten.

In the old way of seeing, sacredness is not something apart from life—it is the underlying reality of life. The river is sacred, not because we say it is, but because it is the living water that flows from the hand of the Creator. The fire is sacred, not just because of ceremony, but because it carries the original flame that has been passed down from generation to generation, warming both bodies and spirits. Yet there is a great danger in our age: when we try to "work on" the sacred, when we bring our tools to it without the right heart, we reduce it from the infinite to the measurable, from the living to the merely useful.

The quote above strikes at the tension between the sacred and the instrumental. It says plainly: if you approach the sacred as an object, a project, or a thing to be dissected, you profane it. But it offers a way forward: if you must approach the sacred with tools, do so only in the highest state of prayer. Prayer is not about words muttered to the sky. It is about your whole being: mind, heart, breath, coming into alignment with the deeper order of life.

The Great Forgetting

To understand why such teaching matters, we must remember what has been forgotten.

The Great Forgetting is the slow amnesia that has settled over human societies, pulling us away from our original instructions. Once, people lived in a daily relationship with the world around them. Every plant was known as a neighbor, every animal as a relative, every star as a marker in the great seasonal clock. Sacredness was not hidden in churches or lodges alone—it was in the way you greeted the day, the way you gathered food, the way you buried your dead.

The Great Forgetting is not a single event but an ongoing drift. It began when we stopped living in constant reciprocity with the land and began treating it as property. It deepened when we replaced relationship with resource, when we exchanged the cycles of nature for the schedules of machines. The sacred, once the foundation of life, was moved to the margins, visited occasionally, but no longer known.

And when you forget that something is sacred, you begin to handle it carelessly. You bring tools to it without prayer.

The Four Sacred Gifts

Among the gifts given to the peoples of this land are four that are essential to restoring balance: the Canupa (sacred pipe), the drum, the sweat lodge, and the vision quest. These are not "tools" in the modern sense. They are living relationships, each one carrying a piece of the original instructions for how to walk in balance.

• The Canupa: Teaches that every breath is a prayer, and that our words carry weight in the seen and unseen worlds.

• The Drum: Holds the heartbeat of the Earth, reminding us that life itself is rhythm and relationship.

• The Sweat Lodge: Offers purification—not only of the body, but of thought, intention, and spirit.

• The Vision Quest: Returns us to the wilderness, stripping away the noise so we can hear the voice of the Creator directly.

Each of these can be mishandled if treated as mere instruments. A pipe can become a prop. A drum can become entertainment. A sweat lodge can become a spectacle. A vision quest can become an "extreme experience" for personal branding. Without prayer and humility, even the most sacred gifts can be profaned; once profaned, they lose their living power.

Tools and the Loss of Meaning

In the modern world, "tools" are not just hammers and shovels. Our cameras, computers, recorders, and even our words are tools. We use them to capture, categorize, and interpret the world around us. But when applied to the sacred without prayer, these tools can drain mystery from the living moment.

Take photography. In many Indigenous ceremonies, taking pictures is discouraged or forbidden. Not because the camera is inherently evil, but because it shifts the mode of presence. The person with the camera is no longer in the ceremony; they are outside it, framing and controlling it. The image is taken away, detached from the living context, and turned into a possession. The sacred has been reduced to a mere record.

The same can happen with academia. When we dissect ceremony to "understand" it, when we reduce the sacred to symbols and functions, we risk pulling it out of its living body. We might gain information, but lose a relationship. The sacred is defined by relationship, connection.

Returning to Center

The antidote to profanation is not abandonment of the tools altogether. It is to return to center. The center, as represented in the medicine wheel, is the place where all directions meet. It is a balance between the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. It is the point where our will aligns with the will of the Creator. When we act from the center, even our tools become extensions of prayer.

Returning to center means remembering who we are and why we are here. It means moving from control to connection, from extraction to exchange. When you are in the center, your tools do not dominate the sacred; they serve it. The knife used in the highest level of prayer does not desecrate; it becomes an offering, a witness, a helper.

This is as true for the carpenter shaping a beam for a lodge as it is for the writer shaping words about the sacred. The tool in itself is neutral. It is the spirit in which it is wielded that determines whether it becomes an act of profanation or an act of devotion.

The Inner State as the Real Tool

The deepest teaching in the quote is this: the real tool is you. Your mind, your breath, your intention, these are the instruments that touch the sacred first. If they are sharp with ego, rusted with distraction, or dulled by indifference, nothing you do will carry true power. But if they are honed in prayer, sanctified by humility, and guided by gratitude, every action can become an offering.

In this way, the highest level of prayer is not a technique; it is a condition of being. It is the carpenter singing as he shapes the wood, the midwife whispering blessings as she cuts the cord, the hunter offering tobacco before taking life. Prayer is not what you do before you work; it is the way you work.

Healing the Profaned

When sacredness has been profaned, it is not enough to stop using the tool. Healing must take place. This is where the Four Sacred Gifts come into play again, not as artifacts, but as relationships that can restore proper order.

• The Canupa can restore the integrity of our words and breath, helping us speak only from the center.

• The Drum can bring us back into rhythm with the heartbeat of life.

• The Sweat Lodge can cleanse the residue of careless action so that we may return to our work purified.

• The Vision Quest can strip away the distractions of the modern mind, bringing us face-to-face with what is real.

Through these gifts, we re-enter the relationship we once broke. We learn again to walk softly on the Earth, to hold the sacred with both hands, and to let prayer shape the way we work.

Beyond Ceremony

The temptation is to confine these lessons to formal ceremony. But sacredness is not bound to the lodge, the quest site, or the altar. It is everywhere, waiting to be recognized. The way you prepare food, speak to a stranger, handle a newborn, or bury the dead, all of these moments hold the potential for either desecration or devotion.

If we can hold the highest level of prayer while hammering a nail, writing an email, or turning the soil, we will find that the Great Forgetting begins to lift. Sacredness will not be something we visit; it will be something we live in. And when that happens, the tools will not profane the sacred, because we will no longer see a separation between them.

The Work Ahead

The old teachings tell us that the center is always there, no matter how far we have wandered. But returning to it is a deliberate act. It requires that we see how the Great Forgetting has shaped us, how we have used our tools without prayer, and how we have treated the sacred as a thing rather than a relationship.

It also requires courage. To live in the highest level of prayer in this modern world is to swim against the current. It is to refuse the quick photograph, the easy analysis, the careless consumption. To slow down, to listen deeply, and to act with intention, even when no one is watching.

And most importantly, it requires humility. We are not the keepers of the sacred; we are its servants. Our tools, no matter how advanced, are not what make us powerful. It is the prayer behind them, the center from which they are wielded, that determines whether we heal or harm.

Wrapping the Bundle

The quote above by Sal Gencarelle is not simply a warning. It is an invitation to live in a way that reunites the practical and the sacred, the useful and the holy. It tells us that the answer to the profane is not to withdraw from the world, but a deepened presence within it. It tells us that our tools, our words, our hands, our technologies, can be sanctified when guided by the highest level of prayer.

The Great Forgetting has taught us to separate sacredness from daily life. The Four Sacred Gifts remind us how to restore it. Returning to center shows us where to stand so that every action, even the use of a tool, becomes an act of reverence. And in that place, the boundary between sacred and ordinary disappears. Everything becomes holy again.