Spirituality and Religion

Spirituality and Religion

January 8, 2006

The Rev. Penny Rather

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie

This morning’s reading is adapted from A God Who Looks Like Me by Patricia Reilly.

In the very beginning of her life a child has direct access to the Spirit of Life. It is as near to her as the breath that fills her. And it connects him to everything. He is not alone. Her spirit is one with the spirit of her beloved grandmother, of her favorite rock, tree, and star. He develops his own special methods for contacting the Spirit in all things.

He climbs a tree and sits in its branches, listening. He loves the woods and listens there too. He has a special friend – a rock. He gives it a name and eats his lunch with it whenever he can.

She keeps the window open next to her bed even on the coldest nights. She loves the fresh air on her face. She pulls the covers tight around her chin and listens to the mysterious night sky. She believes her grandmother is present even though everyone else says she is dead. Each night she drapes the curtain over her shoulders for privacy, looks out the window near her bed, listens for Grandma, and then says silent prayers to her.

His imagination is free for a time. He needs no priest or teacher to describe “God” to him. Spirit erupts spontaneously in colorful and unique expressions. God is Grandma; the twinkling evening star; the gentle breeze that washes across his face; the peaceful quiet darkness after everyone has fallen asleep; and all the colors of the rainbow.

The Spirit of the Universe pulsates through her. She is full of herself and she is very good.

There are those who are threatened by the child’s unique spirituality that cannot be contained in a doctrine or creed. Whether well-meaning or abusive, they will attempt to imprison it. They will call her names if she insists in communing with the spirit of a tree, the mysterious night sky, or her grandma.

He is told,

Your grandma is not God; neither is your favorite star or rock.

God has only one name and one face.

You shall have no gods before him.

God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

He is found in the Church, in the heavens,

in the Holy Book, not in you.

Eventually, she will turn away from the Spirit-Filled One she once was. Her original spirituality will become confined within the acceptable lines of religion.

Sermon:

After not belonging to a religious community for over 20 years, I first visited a Unitarian Universalist congregation sixteen years ago this month. My first visit was prompted by the ad in the Saturday paper. Nan Hobart delivered a splendid sermon and I felt instantly welcomed by the people I met during coffee hour. But what really got me hooked was the retreat at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park sponsored by the Women's Spirituality Group 3 weeks later. And although I quickly became active in many aspects of the fellowship, it was this group that connected me most with individuals, the community and my inner self.

And yet for years I heard women say they're reluctant to attend a group called a “spirituality” group. And I hear men ask just what does such a group "do", in a tone that implies a degree of trepidation.

Now, I can understand a distrust of a particular group or institution based on its name. How many of us would go to the Tom DeLay School for Campaign Financing or the Kevorkian Headache Clinic? But what is so intimidating about a Unitarian Universalist Women's Spirituality Group?

On the other hand I have often heard people say, as perhaps you have, “I’m not religious, but I am very spiritual.” Depending on to whom this statement is addressed, it can come across as an apology for not belonging to a church or a declaration of disdain for organized religion.

So what are we to make of this elusive word, “spirituality”? And what does it have to do with “religion”? And how are either or both of these concepts expressed and experienced in a Unitarian Universalist congregation? In this congregation?

So this morning I am going to reflect on what I understand about spirituality and religion, and how I experience spirituality and religion in a UU context.

As a framework for exploring these two concepts – how they differ and how they interact – let’s first consider what UU minister Robert Latham defines as five compelling questions of human existence. These questions are:

Who am I? How do I know what I know? Who or what is in charge? What does my certain ultimate death mean? What is the purpose of my life?

I would add a question specifically about relationships – What is my relationship to and responsibility for other beings and our environment? Perhaps during the discussion time you can add some of your compelling questions.

Religion and spirituality offer us different ways to approach answering these questions. Perhaps even different answers. Let me begin by explaining how I understand and experience religion and spirituality.

Religion is an organized system that exists to help people answer these questions. The tools of religion are beliefs, practices, symbols, sacred writings, tradition. There is often an ethnic or national component to religion – it is essentially tribal. One of religion’s most important functions is to give individuals and groups a sense of identity. Feeling like we belong to something bigger than ourselves is one basic human need that religion fulfills. But it may also be religion’s Achilles’ heel; for in defining an “in-group,” we also define – either explicitly or implicitly – an “out-group.” And we all know that has led to some of history’s darkest hours.

I experience spirituality as both more personal and more global than religion. In one way, spirituality is an individual’s quest for the answers to ultimate questions about life. Whereas my religion may offer me the symbols, the texts, and the rituals – may even tell me what to believe – to answer life’s fundamental questions, ultimately I am alone in my seeking those answers and responding to them. I think spirituality is an innate human characteristic. Even people who do not follow the organized system of a religion respond to these questions in their own ways.

I think this is what some people mean when they say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” I think even people who would say they are not spiritual grapple with these ultimate questions at some point in their lives. Even an assertion that there is no meaning to life is, to my mind, a spiritual statement. But it would be presumptuous of me to tell someone who claims not to be spiritual that he or she is. That is a very personal self-understanding. We’ll come back to this later.

So spirituality is more personal than religion because it relies on individual resources rather than institutionally defined ones to address ultimate questions. It is more global than religion in that it transcends the tribal nature of religion. Spirituality moves beyond the need for personal identity and the definitions of “in-group” and “out-group.” It sees the individual as being a member of the universal family of humankind, or even of all beings.

A 1997 survey by the magazine US Catholic reported that the most consistently used words used by respondents defining spirituality were “connection” and “relationship.” The people interviewed overwhelmingly described spirituality as an awareness of their “connection to God, earth, and others.”

Let’s go back to those “compelling questions of human existence” for a moment and see how religion and spirituality approach them – how they sometimes differ, and sometimes overlap. Let’s start with “How do I know what I know?” All religions have something to say about this. Our Unitarian Universalist statement of Principles and Purposes includes a list of six sources of our Living Tradition; we know what we know through a combination of direct experience, prophetic words and deeds, Jewish and Christian teachings, wisdom of the world’s religions, humanist teachings, and earth-centered traditions. The particular combination of these ways of knowing is unique to each person.

A lot of us came out of traditions where we experienced being told to believe something we could not. I think that is what this morning’s reading was getting at. Children learn what to believe – they discover what they know – through experience and intuition. At some point in their development they are introduced to the teachings of the religion of their parents. This can quash what they have already discovered, as the reading implied. But it doesn’t have to.

I am reminded of a favorite children’s hymn from my days in Presbyterian Sunday School: “Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.” The Bible tells me so. This is the most common understanding among Unitarian Universalists of how Christians “know what they know.” Another is the creeds – statements of belief developed centuries after the life and teachings of Jesus. So two of the ways that Christians know what they know are through scripture and tradition.

Many Christians recognize other ways of knowing as well. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, identified four sources of knowledge in that tradition. Listen to this entry from the website of the United Methodist Church:

The Christian witness, even when grounded in Scripture and mediated by tradition, is ineffectual unless understood and appropriated by the individual. To become our witness, it must make sense in terms of our own reason and experience.

Recall that in my earlier definition of religion I included the tools of religion, and that one of those tools was practices. One of the practices of many Christian churches is the recitation of a creed. I remember having to memorize Bible verses to be confirmed in the Presbyterian Church when I was about 14. One of the passages we had to memorize was the Hundredth Psalm It begins:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!

Serve the Lord with gladness!

Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the Lord is God!

It is he that made us, and we are his;

We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

The rote recitation Scripture illustrates one answer to the question, “How do I know what I know?” This is the answer that is given by many religions and that I learned in Confirmation Class. “I know what I know by the words of the Bible.”

But there is a practice that is part of the Catholic tradition that illustrates other ways of answering that question. It is called lectio divina, or divine reading, and this practice illustrates to me one of the finer combinations of religion and spirituality. The practice consists of reading a passage of Scripture in a contemplative way; a way that invites different ways of knowing. It involves a rhythmic reading of the passage and a repetition and contemplation of phrases as they speak to you. Let me illustrate:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!

Make a joyful noise

a joyful noise

joyful, joyful, joyful

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!

all the lands!

all the lands!

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!

Just this brief passage, recited by this ancient tradition, invites me to a different understanding of its words. It invites a different answer to the question, “How do I know what I know?” I have tried this practice with Unitarian Universalist writings as well. Let me show you with a passage from the hymn we sang earlier:

Then, when life is done for me, let love be my legacy.

when life is done for me

when life is done

life is done

let love be my legacy

my legacy

let love be my legacy

love, love, love

let love be my legacy

Then, when life is done for me, let love be my legacy.

I have just used an ancient Christian religious practice with a Unitarian Universalist text to invite a spiritual reply to several of life’s compelling questions: What does my certain ultimate death mean? What is the purpose of my life? What is my relationship to and responsibility for other beings and our environment?

Then, when life is done for me, let love be my legacy.

This is just one example of a spiritual practice that came out of a religious tradition. As Unitarian Universalists, we draw on many traditions, so we have many spiritual practices at our fingertips. One that has been especially meaningful for me came directly our of our Unitarian religious heritage. And that is journaling.

Keeping journals was a favorite exercise of most of the Transcendentalists of 19^th Century New England. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and Henry David Thoreau’s journals are probably the best known. Much of the published writings of these two of our Unitarian forebears comes from their journals. Listen to selections from this date – January 8 – in each of their journals.

From Emerson’s journal: Jan. 8, 1826:

My external condition may to many seem comfortable, to some enviable but I think that few men ever suffered. (in degree not in amount) more genuine misery than I have suffered.

And Thoreau's Journal entry of January 8, 1852:

I go forth each afternoon and look into the West a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. . . . Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window. And now the first star is lit and I go home.

These men were using their journals to explore compelling questions of human existence. About the meaning of their lives, and about their relationship to other beings and to the environment. They left to us a legacy of a Unitarian spiritual practice. Many of the programs that have been the most meaningful over the years in the Women’s Spirituality Group at my home fellowship have made use of the spiritual practice of journaling.

Religion and spirituality don’t have to be in conflict. That is the sad, and all too common, situation described in this morning’s reading:

Her original spirituality will become confined within the acceptable lines of religion.

But authentic religions with living traditions will build and maintain bridges between religion and spirituality. Building bridges between religion and spirituality involves progressing from disciplining the body, then the emotions, then the mind. And then, by combining these disciplines with some form of spiritual practice, coming in touch with the divine, however that is understood.

All of the steps are necessary for genuine religion. And traditional religions have worked them out over the years. It is not necessary to follow a traditional religious path to achieve spiritual maturity, but when you try to do it by yourself, you have to do all the experimentation and go through all the common mistakes yourself. You’re basically trying to re-invent the wheel by trial and error.

When the bridges between spirituality and religion are absent – when they have never been built, or they have been destroyed – we get the kind of religion or spirituality that makes many of us uncomfortable. Religion without a bridge to spirituality can become tribalistic and divisive. Spirituality without a bridge to religion runs the risk of being flaky or airy-fairy.

I’ve talked so far about the relationship between spirituality and religion. There’s another pair of concepts that is a perennial source of tension among Unitarian Universalists: spirituality and rationality. In UU congregations across the continent, the longing for more spirituality is expressed alongside the admonition to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science.

These two ways to approach life’s compelling questions are both counted among the sources of our Living Tradition, and they are not mutually exclusive. I can think of nothing more spiritual than using the intellect with which I am blessed to try to help solve the problems of this world – the scourge of war and the stain of poverty and oppression. I can think of nothing more rational than to engage in spiritual practices that nourish my connection with this earth, so that I might feel inspired and empowered to take steps to preserve the only home we have.

In every UU congregation with which I have associated I have heard people who are tired of the rampant materialism of our culture say they want more spirituality in their religious community. And I have heard Humanists reply that spirituality is nonsense; that what we need it to cultivate our use of reason. Once again, spirituality and reason are not mutually exclusive.

Listen to this excerpt from the Humanist Manifesto III, published in 2003 by the American Humanist Association:

Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.

And to this meditation written for the Unitarian Universalist ritual of Flower Communion by David Bumbaugh, one of the most staunchly Humanist UU ministers I know:

In this world,

all things are connected and interconnected.

These flowers are made of star-stuff.

We, too, are star-stuff,

carrying in ourselves the same life

that struggled out of the sea

and learned to love.

The flowers and we

are gifts from the stars

and the fragile bridge across which life moves

into whatever the future will be.

Rejoice this morning

in earth and sky

in flower and tree

in life and the living of life.

Do these statements not sound like expressions of the connection to other beings and to the environment that is characteristic of most people’s understanding of spirituality?

I wonder if those among us who would claim to be spiritual but not religious were hurt by experiences in a religion that had no bridge to spirituality. That had become stuck in a tribal mentality that paid undue attention to rules of discipline of body, emotion, or mind at the expense of spiritual practices that cultivate connections to others and to the divine.

I wonder if those among us who claim that spirituality is nonsense have only experienced or witnessed a spirituality that is devoid of religious tradition.

I wonder if those among us who think that Humanism is dry and say they long for more spirituality have never been exposed to the deeply spiritual writings of some of our Humanist Unitarian Universalist poets.

If you are someone who say you are not religious or spiritual, I invite you to consider re-thinking your understanding of religion and spirituality. I don’t have a vested interest in how people identify themselves, but I find it sad when people are too put off by a word that they miss out on some of the richness that life has to offer.

I am a Unitarian Universalist because it is in this tradition, more than any other I know of, that religion and spirituality and rationality come together to weave a rich tapestry of experience and opportunity for growing into the best person I can be. That offers the best resources to help me answer life’s compelling questions. Resources of tradition and fellow travelers on this path of life. I am glad you are on that journey with me.

May it be so.