Spirituality

When asked to take the program for this evening, I was told that there was no special topic assigned, as long as it was "something spiritual." So I asked for a few suggestions, and was given what I thought was an excellent one. Since the session was to deal with some dimension of spirituality, why not deal with all of it, and talk about, simply enough, what is spirituality in the first place? What does it mean to be "spiritual"? I liked that idea for a couple of reasons... first, almost anything that a person might say would be relevant, somehow, and second, it is probably true that it is a notion that many of us take for granted.

We propose spirituality to ourselves as a desirable goal. We use the word an awful lot. We tell ourselves that we should work at becoming more spiritual, that a strong spiritual life is a good thing, a necessary thing. So perhaps it is a good idea to do a little reflecting on just what we mean when use those words… so I will do that this evening. Or rather, I'll do a bit of it. Whole libraries have been written on the question, "What is spirituality?" and I certainly won't try to duplicate whole libraries here. More importantly, I have learned from experience, over the first few sessions of our adult group, that the discussion method works very well here. No need to lecture at great length. So I will offer, fairly briefly, a few ideas that seem to me to be central to an understanding of spirituality, and then we'll see how it builds from there.

I'd like to start by underlining a few things that spirituality is NOT. I won't actually ask this, but a good beginning might be to ask for show of hands, "How many of you consider yourselves to be genuinely spiritual people?" Probably not many would raise their hands. Those that did would probably add a disclaimer something like, "Well, I'm not all that terribly spiritual, but I am trying to be." and if I were to ask those who did not raise hands why not, answers might well be something like, "Well, I just don't think about God all that much"... "I spend really very little time in prayer or meditation." "I am much too taken up with the concerns and cares of this world, family, job, community." Those with an especially honest bent might answer something like, "I got nothing against spiritual perfection, mind you, but I am very much a creature of the flesh. I really enjoy food, drink, sex, all of the pleasures and satisfactions of the senses. And genuinely spiritual people somehow get beyond all that, don't they?" Another typical answer might be something like, "Let's face it, spiritual growth is something for the privileged few, those who have a lot of free time, and don't have to work for a living."

I would bet that those kinds of answers wouldn't be too far off the mark as many of us assess our own spiritual lives, and the reason why, I propose, is that many of us measure ourselves against a model of spiritual development that is really pretty poor. Poor because it is built of assumptions that simply are not true. So much so that very probably the model for many of us of a genuinely spiritual person would be the image of a cloistered monk or nun, at prayer in the convent chapel all day, or even more so, a picture from an old catechism of a hermit living in a cave somewhere on the side of a mountain, living on nuts and berries, and wrapped in visions of angels from dawn till dusk. That may overstate it a bit, but perhaps not too much.

Let me list a few of those assumptions, and see if they hit any nerves.

1. Spirituality equals perfection. The extent to which we have overcome weakness, turmoil of any sort, and achieved moral, emotional perfection is the extent to which we are spiritual. So spiritual people don't get angry, don't get scared, don't get lonesome, don't get self-involved.
2. Spirituality is explicitly prayerful. The extent to which I relate my life to God, and do so explicitly, by name, the extent to which I approach God precisely as God, in formal prayer, that is the extent to which I am spiritual. Another way to say the same thing might be that spirituality is measured by explicit piety.
3. Spirituality is achieved in opposition to the material, an opposition expressed either in constantly struggling to overcome material, physical reality in ourselves, or in fleeing from it, ignoring it, heading for that cave I talked about.

As a corollary of this last, spirituality is measured by the extent to which a person remains unconcerned, uninvolved in the affairs of the world. Again, that such concern and involvement is in fact in opposition to spirituality.

Well, that list of assumptions could go on and on, but those three illustrate, I think, the core of what I called a poor model of spirituality and I call it that for a very simple reason. None of those assumptions describe what Christ did. And no matter what else we may or may not be able to say, we can say with utter confidence that authentic spiritual growth moves a person along the path of becoming more and more Christ-like. In our adult series we spoke at great length about the nature of faith, in all of its aspects. We said that if faith is authentic, if it is saving, it is Christ centered, and that really nothing else matters very much. True of this as well. The one model of which we can be absolutely confident as we measure our own spirituality, is Christ Himself.

Christ didn't fit the first assumption. He got angry, He got scared, He got lonesome. He was buffeted by every feeling you and I have ever had. Spiritual strength does not equal emotional perfection, it does not mean to have broken free from the whole range of human passions. In fact, an authentically Christian spirituality, I believe, should lead us to seriously doubt that such a breaking away could be called freedom or perfection at all. There is a good reason for that. It is that God created us human, and human is what He wants us to be. So for you and I, an authentic spirituality can never be anything but human, our model can never be the state of mind of an angel, or the experience of an angel. For you and I to become like angels would not be spiritual perfection at all. It would be spiritual aberration, a distortion of an authentic spirituality.

As we talked about the other night when we were discussing death, our God-given goal is not to become pure spirit, but pure human. So for you and I spirituality can never mean an angelic sort of perfection. Can never mean breaking away from the whole range of human feeling, human emotion, human passion, even the negative ones. Much more accurately, for us, spiritual perfection will mean a constant willingness to struggle with that whole range, to get better and better at assuming those feelings, those passions into our lives in a healthy positive way. For us, spiritual perfection will mean plunging ourselves, perfectly, into the human condition, assuming into ourselves that condition, not denying it. And one element of the human condition, one essentially human element, is movement.

We are a pilgrim people, a people in process towards something, and we are that way by God's design. So an authentic human spirituality will be marked not by a static perfection, there is no such thing for human beings, but marked rather by a constant, conscious movement towards goodness, towards perfection. In fact that movement is our perfection. So an authentically spiritual human being moves not so much away from anger and fear and loneliness and etc, but rather towards an anger that is not destructive, a fear that is not paralyzing, a loneliness that is not isolation, etc.

The next assumption, spirituality is explicitly prayerful, pious. Or better, the one is measured by the other. Obviously, Christ prayed, related His mission, His experience explicitly, directly to God. But I don't think He ever used that as the measure of holiness, goodness. He wasn't much impressed by either the volume, or the eloquence of prayer. He wasn't terribly impressed by a lot of overt piety. Today's Gospel is as good an example of that as anywhere in the Scriptures (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18). Elsewhere, "When you pray, don't multiply your words, like the pagans do. Keep it simple, direct (Lord's Prayer, e.g.)" Elsewhere, "Not everyone who says to Me 'Lord, Lord" will enter the Kingdom of heaven." Christ's personal prayer, formal prayer was never given an absolute value. When there was something else to do, more immediately related to His mission, that came first. A few days ago, in the Gospel, Jesus went off with the Apostles to be alone and pray, a big crowd followed. The Gospel says He felt sorry for them, sheep without a shepherd, gave up or at least postponed His retreat plans. So for Christ His formal prayer was a consistent thing, but not an artificial thing, never something imposed on the rest of life, rather flowed from it. So, in the most authentically spiritual people, there may not be a lot of surface piety as a sign of that spirituality, and certainly never as its measure.

And the third assumption, spiritual life is opposed to material, physical life. Some of this we talked about in the first assumption. We are, by God's design, material, physical creatures, and so to set ourselves in opposition to that fact either by overcoming it, or ignoring it, fleeing from it, far from being growth in spiritual perfection, is really to set ourselves in opposition to God's design. So rather than creating, emphasizing a gap between spiritual and physical, for us, perfection will mean denying that gap as an abuse, extinguishing it, bringing the two closer and closer together, so that ultimately there is no real difference between physical and spiritual. Another way to say the same thing, being spiritual does not mean being non-physical. Rather it means becoming more and more physical, better and better at being physical, as God means the word. More on that later. I think it is a central notion. So if we do a good job of being physical, then we are in fact more spiritual because of it. In the light of that distinction between material and spiritual, it might be a good time to take a look at a very popular Scriptural model of spiritual perfection, one which I think has been misused, and in that has been the source of some of those false assumptions.

Gospel story of Martha and Mary... classic example of "spiritual direction" immediately by Christ. Christ and a few others go to visit their friends. When they get in, Mary sits down with Christ, Martha runs around getting the table set, beds made, etc. She gets madder and madder, because she is left with all the work to do, and Mary is sitting out there with the men, talking. It would be wrong to assume that all of that was just compulsive housekeeping on Martha's part. Probably not. Hospitality, taking good care of guests was a strong element of Hebrew cultural and religious obligation. Not just Hebrew, most desert cultures, really. To violate hospitality, even just to be casual about it, was a major affront. Reason for warfare. So to give Martha her due, part of her motivation at least, was noble enough. To do her duty, as it was laid out for her in the Law of Moses. Her perception of Mary must have been then, not just lazy, but impious, insulting. So she blows up, asks Christ to tell Mary to get on the stick. But He doesn't do that, surprisingly enough to her, I would imagine, He criticizes Martha. Mary has chosen the better part, and I won't take it away from her. For a long time, we have used that as a model of the contrast between spiritual concerns, and material concerns, and used Christ's response as an affirmation of the greater value of withdrawing from material, worldly concerns, and adhering to the spiritual. Well, I think that is a misuse of that passage. And I think we can use it better if we look more closely at just what it is in Martha that Christ criticizes.

He doesn't scold her for being concerned with her responsibilities. As much as anyone else, Christ would have appreciated a good meal and a clean bed after His trip. He doesn't scold her for her adherence to the law of hospitality, far from it. He would have expected that from her, and would more than likely have been a little ticked off if it hadn't been provided. Look at what He does say to her, "Martha, you are anxious and upset about too many things. Only one thing really matters, right now, and Mary sees that, I won't take that away from her." I think that is a powerful line, I think it says a lot about spirituality.

Christ does not criticize what Martha does, but rather the way in which she does it, why she does it. Her anxiety, her readiness to leap into judgment of Mary, her inflexibility, her need to control, and the imbalance that all of that induced in her. An imbalance that made it impossible for her to really pick up on the genuinely good things that were actually happening right there in front of her. And that is the point, some good things were happening, right there. Some friends had come to visit, one of them Christ. They came expecting hospitality, no doubt. Good food, good wine, good conversation. Very immediate material realities, a very physical experience. And yet Martha's anxiety over her duty of hospitality really made her unable to capitalize on any of those good things. It was as though her version of hospitality was really destroying hospitality and I don't think we need to weight this with the notion of a choice between dinner and divine revelation.

No reason to assume that the minute Christ walked in the door, He started into some heavy sermonizing. I think His approval of Mary's choice stands out a bit more challengingly when we stop to think that the "better part" He spoke of was probably not much more than casual conversation. Joking, how was the trip, boy am I tired and so on. One, at least, of the good things involved in that situation was simply the company of one's friends. Mary picked up on that, and Martha didn't. At least not right away. I like to think that after Christ talked to her, she had a moment of spiritual growth, growth in the ability to pick up on what is really happening here, what is the real goodness involved, and that she said, "Oh the hell with it, we can eat later, nobody's going to starve if we sit and talk for a while. My friends are here. What am I doing in the kitchen, getting madder and madder, more and more upset?" And again, it was not being in the kitchen that was the abuse. It was the getting madder and more upset.

Well, I think all of that says a great deal. It says that at least one thing truly, necessarily opposed to spiritual growth is anxiety. Not concern, not involvement, not activism, but anxiety. Anxiety roots you to the here and now, narrows your focus. Imbalance. Disproportion. And it says what I will propose to you as what I believe to be one of the most reliable yardsticks we can use to measure our own spiritual growth. And I emphasize, "our own." Never someone else's. And that is a willingness to ask, and an ability to answer, in every situation the question, "What is really going on here? What is the real goodness involved in this situation, right now? How can I best pick up on that goodness, underline it, emphasize it?" Put as a statement rather than a question, I think spirituality at the heart of it is the willingness, ability, though willingness is really more to the point, to get beneath the surface, to go beyond immediate experience, immediate feelings, and pick up on fullest reality of the situation.

Ok now. Talked about what spirituality isn't, and hinted at least at what I think it is. Now go beyond hinting. Wrap it up by describing spirituality in terms of four words, realism, wholeness, balance, or proportion, and I couldn't think of a good word for this last one, so I'll call it a "holy incompleteness." We could do volumes, I think on each of those, but I'll comment only very briefly

1. realism. I talked about that a moment ago. Living in the world as it really is, picking up on what is really happening, beneath the obvious, beyond the assumptions, prejudices with which we approach experience. I said spirituality is opposed to anxiety… True. Anxiety always involves a departure from reality to some extent. Here we could repeat everything said in first adult session about faith. Genuine spirituality flows from an act of faith, is a mark of a genuine believer, a person who knows the world as it really is, as God knows it, or close to it as we can come. A person who knows that the world is God's, and to live in it successfully, satisfyingly, it must be done on His terms, and in His company. It is from this, I think that formal prayer flows naturally. In the light of the conviction that the world is God's, it works as He says it should, on His terms, at His pace, a believer moves to prayer as readily as Mary sat down to casual conversation with Christ. And for precisely the same reason. In God's world, one of the good things happening, is His company. As He is really the only One Who can genuinely enjoy the world, we are going to get far more out of it if we do it all in His presence.
2. wholeness. Because the above is true, there is always more going on than what seems to be. If the world is truly God's and it is, then the world can no more be captured accurately in immediate experience than can God Himself. Nothing means only what it feels like. Nothing bad is ever just bad, can never be measured only in terms of immediate dis-satisfaction. Nothing good is ever only as good as it feels, can never be measured only in terms of immediate satisfaction. So spiritual perfection means bringing together what can be seen felt, experienced, and what cannot be seen, felt, experienced. Bringing together into one reality, physical, emotional, intellectual, every dimension of the human experience, refusing to see that experience in parts.
3. balance. Again, flows from everything else that has been said. If our view of God's world is real, and whole, then we can center in on what is truly important, truly valuable, what really ought to be pursued, honored in any particular situation, and devote our energies to that. Again, that is a pretty good counter for anxiety as well. Using the Martha and Mary model again, balance means not being so caught up in something like the duty of hospitality, that the reality of it is ignored, even destroyed. That model can be imposed on any number of other situations.
4. finally, a holy incompleteness. It flows from what we said about the fact that central to a human spirituality is a sense of being in movement, in process. We can never say about anything, "This is all there is. This is as good as it gets." A spiritual person, a person who lives in real world, God's world, is always aware that there is more to come. Whether an experience be good, bad, or anything in between, we never reach a point at which we have said all there is to say about it. And that makes final judgments on our part, about anything, virtually impossible. As Scripture puts it, "Judgment is mine, says the Lord." The reason for that is simple. Only He can judge, because only He knows.

Well. That's a lot of stuff. A lot more stuff could be added. But for now, to be spiritual means to live in the only world there really is, God's, to do so on His terms, as He made us to be, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, all at once, all at the same time, to devote all of those dimensions of what we are to discerning and building on the goodness that God has placed in the world, and to do so always aware, and even a little bit impatient over the fact that there is so much more to come.

Presented as part of an adult faith formation program having as it's overall theme "The Nature of Faith". The date of the presentation could not be found.