Faith Matters: “Spiritual, but Not Religious”
From The Gardner News, Saturday, July 1, 2006:
“I’m spiritual, but not religious.” As a spiritual director and pastor, I hear this over and over from people I meet. Often, when they discover that I’m a clergyman, they seem to feel they owe me an apology for not attending church.
I’m not at all surprised they identify themselves as “spiritual”. Humans seem to be hard-wired for the spiritual emotions of awe, joy, hope, love, compassion and forgiveness. In children these feelings are still close to the surface. And most adults experience moments when we too feel a deep connection with the mysterious spirit that infuses the world with life. Having sat as a spiritual director or pastor with men and women sharing how this spirit moves in their lives, how they encounter and name what they experience as sacred and holy, I am always humbled by the diverse places and ways we connect with that spirit. We are fundamentally spiritual beings.
Spiritual experiences often leave us wanting more, desiring a deeper connection with the mystery that transcends our everyday world and that breaks through in unexpected ways into our lives. But for most of us, moving deeper into the life of the spirit requires a shared language to describe, to reflect on, and to nurture our experience. For most of us, this process of finding meaning in our spiritual experiences requires a community of like-minded folks where we can share, discuss, and learn from the experience of others.
Religion at its best gives us a shared language to talk about this mystery at the heart of life, a mystery that doesn’t fit neatly into words and yet ultimately gives our lives meaning. Religion gives us a language of words and images and symbols to talk about the mystery of how life came to be, and how the spirit present at the beginning of time is still active in our lives. It gives us a language for embracing the future, a future that is bigger than any of us individually. And it gives us companions on the journey who speak the same language, who ask the same questions, and who have experience, strength and hope to share. Religion keeps us honest about focusing on something that is not just our own safe projection onto the world. Religion, at its best, asks hard questions that challenge us to grow.
Religion gives us rituals that are rich with meaning and symbolism. Pictures may speak more than a thousand words, but rituals nourish us in ways that are so profound we can only begin to grasp their depths. A simple loaf of bread, broken and shared has the power to heal us and make us whole. Water, the most common substance in the world, has the ability to reveal a new reality, a new understanding of how we are related to that which gives our lives meaning.
Religion gives us music that speaks a language beyond words and that touches our hearts and souls in profound ways. Religion gives us a place to listen, to hear the music wash over us, and to risk opening our mouths and hearts to add our own shaky and out-of-pitch voices to a mix of other voices, creating something unique and holy and beautiful linking us in the moment, and even across time.
Religion gives us community, a profound sense of connectedness with one another and something larger than all of us. When strangers gather to open themselves up together to the mystery of life, when they sit in silence together to pray and reflect, when they share their prayers, the most intimate joys and desires of their hearts for healing and for wholeness, or when they share how God is present in their lives, deep connections are formed. When they care for one another in times of need, or when they bring covered casseroles and offer to sit at the bedside of someone as their breathing slowly ebbs, they are linked in ways that transcend family and friendship.
Those who sheepishly describe themselves to me as “spiritual, but not religious” don’t owe me or anyone else any explanation or justification. But I hope that they will listen to whatever desire for meaning they find inside of them. I pray that they will honor that desire, and nurture it until it finds what it is ultimately looking for. Our hearts and our lives are often restless, looking for something “more”. That “more” is out there. And perhaps, that “more” is even now looking for us!