What/where is the sacred?

[novapsyche]

The sacred is here and now. The only God worth keeping is a God that cannot be kept. The only God worth talking about is a God that cannot be talked about. God is no object of discourse, knowledge, or even experience. He cannot be spoken of, but he can be spoken to; he cannot be seen, but he can be listened to. The only possible relationship with God is to address him and to be addressed by him, here and now--or, as Buber puts it, in the present. For him the Hebrew name of God, the tetragrammaton (YHVH), means he is present. Er ist da might be translated: He is there; but in this context it would be more nearly right to say: He is here.

--Walter Kaufmann, in his prologue to Martin Buber's I and Thou, pp. 25-26.