Spiritual, Schmiritual… What’s that even mean??
Good question. It’s a commonly-used word with many definitions, and probably with as many nuances within those definitions as there are human beings who consider the topic at all!
Here’s the broadest, most distilled definition I’ve come up with so far:
Spirituality is an inner sense, awareness of, and experience of being in relationship to an ultimate power or force of creation vastly greater than one’s own and a desire to connect with it more fully in a meaningful way.
I’m sharing this here just to let you know the basic construct underpinning what I’ll be saying over time in this blog; I’d certainly expect that my own nuances are somewhat different from your own. After all, we each have our own personal experience of (not to mention–but I will–names for) the Divine, the Creator, the I Am, Father God/Mother Goddess, Great Spirit, Allah, All That Is, the Source, etc.
Here’s the part that’s about as “teachy” as I want to get here:
Spirituality does not equal Religion. Folks with an active spiritual life don’t necessarily have a religion, and religious folks aren’t necessarily spiritual. Some religious people are very spiritual, while other folks identify themselves as being non-religious and non-spiritual. You already know this, of course, but it bears repeating. [NOTE: If you’re interested in scientifically-conducted social research about spirituality and religion, check out the Study of Spirituality in the United States at www.fetzer.org or neurological research about spirituality or nurturing childhood spirituality.]
When I was a kid learning about the beliefs and practices of the religious denomination I was being raised in, nobody in my life was making any distinctions between religion and spirituality, and it didn’t occur to me for literally decades that they could be mutually exclusive or that they might coexist.
Picture this: I’m 6 years old, a pale, freckle-faced, plain-looking little girl sitting in a creaky old wooden folding chair that is one of about ten such chairs set in a semicircle. Each of the other creaky chairs holds another 6- or 7-year-old kid, and all chairs sit on an equally creaky wooden floor in a dim room in an old house that serves as the convent for the few Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur who have come to live and work at my parish to start a new school.
We are there for our weekly Catechism class, listening to the good nun explain as best she can the great Mysteries of God and the Church as they are revealed to us in our little blue booklets, the first of many in a series containing the basic catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.
Q: Who made me?
A: God made me.
Q: Why did God make me?
A: God made me to know, love, and serve Him in this world.
Yep, those were the first two questions and answers in the first booklet. As the Q&As in the series went on, the questions got more complicated and the answers longer. We were expected to memorize them all, as if they were lines in a play, and be able to spit out the answers accurately, when Sister asked the questions and called on one, or sometimes all, of us to answer.
Though I was pretty good at memorizing the questions and their answers, it was a nerve-wracking exercise for me, a quiet child who always wanted to do well. But I persisted because I was sure this religious training was setting me on the path to holiness.
And what did I want to be when I grew up? A Saint, of course!!!