Yes, I know what you think of me. You never shut up, never shut up, never shut up, never shut up. God bless the child that's got his own. Welcome to Never Shut Up.
I'm your host, Rose Kress, and today is April 7th, 2026, and we are talking about Jory's cover of God Bless the Child, which is a Billie Holiday song. Now, Will Friedwald, in his book about Billie Holiday, talks about this song being about the sacred and the profane. I got this off of Wikipedia. And it's referencing the Bible while indicating religion seems to have no effect in making people treat each other better.
Which I think is a really interesting take on the song and, well, a take on life, the sacred and the profane. So I began to do my own little investigations and things, and how do we balance the sacred and the profane? The profane being the natural world and the sacred being the sacred, right? Profane language.
It's the dirtiness and the way people believe that there is no room in the sacred for the profane, rather than viewing the world as a balance of the sacred and the profane. And how do we infuse the profane or everyday lives with the sacred? One way to do that is through sankalpa. Sankalpa means to become one with time.
It's about setting an intention, but it's not just like, oh, it's an intention to go to the store later, that's great, but setting a spiritual intention. So in what way do we set an intention that brings a sense of sacredness to our lives? How do we link our spiritual practice to our daily lives? Those two things do not have to be mutually exclusive, where we set aside time to engage in the sacred, and then we exit the church and everything's just profane.
It's about bringing those two aspects, those dualities of ourselves together. So the intention here, spiritual intention, if you will, could be infusing every day with the sacred. It could be about seeing the sacred in other people. I always think of, I mean, we see it in Beauty and the Beast, and I just read a story about it today.
Not Beauty and the Beast, but a story about seeing ourselves, seeing the sacred in everyone around us. And Beauty and the Beast, you don't recall. The Beast, who is a prince at the time, gets a knock on his castle door, and I guess he answers the door, and he turns this old woman away. He's like, no one can help you, he's going to have an ass.
And he just, you know, throws her out on her ass and wants nothing to do with her. And because she's a witch, she curses him to live as a beast. Curses him, maybe, blesses the rest of us, where his inward appearance is now his outward appearance. You know, he was a beast internally, but very handsome.
And so now he has to live with his outside matching his inside. And I think about that a lot. And how do we approach people that may be beastly on the outside, wounded on the inside? The person who is asking for money or asking for support.
Do we see them as beastly on the outside and beastly on the inside and undeserving? Like, who am I to make a decision that you're unworthy of getting a dollar or two dollars or whatever the case may be? So, as my teacher, Rama, reminded me from a story I read today, there but for the grace of God, go I. So, can we bring the sacred into our regular interactions as we see other people as sacred?
No longer profane, no longer dirty and undeserving of love and God's grace or what have you. That no more original sin, but instead seeing everybody as the sacred, as the embodiment of the sacred, as the sacred spirit experiencing itself through human form. And so that's your task today, is to walk through the world and to view others as sacred. And start with looking in the mirror at yourself and see yourself as someone sacred.
And with that, I thank you for joining me and Tori for a little mental yoga. Remember, five minutes a day, so much better than 60 minutes once a week. Bless the child that's got her own, that's got her own. Yes, the strongest mold, are the weak ones made.
Empty pocket star, ever made of grace. Oh yeah, Papa may have, but God. Bless the child that's got her own, that's got her own. Money, you've got lots of friends.
They're grinding round your door. But when you're gone, yeah, spending it, oh, they don't come round, I don't know. Rich relations kick it, yeah. Cross the bread and such.
You can help yourself, but don't take too much. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Oh, bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own. Oh, bless the child that's got his own.
But when you've got lots and lots and lots of friends, right around your door, and when you're gone, yeah, it's spinning it, oh, they don't come round no more. Oh, it's really just kick it off. Cross the bread and such. You can help yourself, but don't take too much.
Papa, me, yeah. Papa, me, yeah, boy, God, bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own. Never Shut Up is a production of the Sideway Society. For more information and links to things mentioned on the show, please visit us online at songvittoriamis.com.
Yes, I know what you think of me. You never shut up.