For the Life of the World

I have been reading through a great little book called For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann, and thought I would post a quote and some questions. Schmemann, in the midst of talking about food (of all things), says this:

We can interupt here for a while this theme of food. We began with it only in order to free the terms ‘sacramental’ and ‘eucharistic’ from the connotations they have acquired in the long history of technical theology, where they are applied almost exclusively within the framwork of ‘natural’ versus ‘supernatural,’ and ‘sacred’ versus ‘profane,’ that is, within the same opposition between religion and life which makes life ultimately unredeemable and religiously meaningless. In our perspective, however, the ‘original’ sin is not primarily that man has ‘disobeyed’ God; the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for Him and for Him alone, ceased to see his whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God.

It is this last aspect that I am most interested in, particularly in light of the discussions concerning the “sacred” and “secular” dichtomy. Schmemann goes on to say,