But there are a few who use the cliché as an honest description of a deep yearning inside their being -- a longing for a sense of connectedness, of unity, of wholeness with a Mysterious Holiness that is experientially knowable but defies reduction to a verbal description. Perhaps these lucky few recognize they have experienced that union in some deeply satisfying moment of their lives and want that experience to repeat itself again and again.
For me, spirituality is best described as “as awareness of the Beyond that is in the midst of everything.” Another word for that Mysterious Holiness could be “Moreness,” as Marcus Borg suggests, or perhaps it would be best to return to the early Hebrew, refusing to pronounce or spell the holy name at all.
In any event, this numinous reality is beyond all human intellectual, artistic or other form of expression. Yet, it is knowable as an intensely personal and wholistic happening in any individual life. It may occur anywhere or at anytime. It may break through into consciousness whether we are in Notre Dame Cathedral or while in some lowly, secular pancake house - as I once experienced.
When such a transforming event occurs it is our nature as human beings to feel driven to share it with someone else. (Try to stop a teenager’s from sharing his ecstasy over a new-found love.)
In order to share with another, a story is needed. Religion is the story we tell about our spiritual happenings.
Note carefully: In contrast to spirituality which manifests as an awareness of the depths of life, religion is a human production. Religion is something we make up to try and explain life. It uses human words, human images, and human symbols -- all reductionistic and never capable of permanently describing the wholistic spiritual happening completely. But, being a human production religion is constantly open to being updated and changed as our understandings of life and our powers of expression grow.
Let's not denigrate Paul the Apostle for using the Ptolemaic seven story universe to locate heaven or Luke's use of image of a virgin birth to describe the incarnation of divine energy. Both were the most meaningful metaphors available in their time for a mystery. Their metaphors for communicating that reality may seem severely inadequate to modern men and women who understand new sciences like cosmology and psychology.
We do not share the same world as Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Martin Luther or even Billy Graham. Like them, though, we can best tell our personal life's story in the language of our own time. When we do we can rejoice when someone hearing our story responds: “Yeah, I had something like that happen to me, too.” That shred of sameness makes possible the development of friendships that grow into community. At that moment, when community is created, a low level sense of unity and understanding is experienced. Community is an early step toward an enlarged awareness of the Holy Mystery that is eventually realized as the wholeness and unity we all long for.
Unfortunately, the story that awakens us to community gradually formalizes into creeds, rituals, and celebrations. It formalizes into buildings with steeples and begins to declare that its story is the only true story. At that point, religion often degenerates as an expression of spirituality and starts protecting its community of believers against the reality of life’s constant changes; against its evolution and growth.
The creation of community is a valid and appropriate thing to happen. Every experience of the Numinous needs to be nurtured, cared for, and given a place of safety for its growth. As such, the Church is a valid contribution to life. It provides succor and sustenance to the transforming spiritual awareness.
But the church needs to let its own story constantly grow, evolve, and expand in keeping with Life’s evolution. If it doesn’t, then believers will be attracted to whoever tells a better story. Seekers yearning for the Numinous will depart. Spiritual beings will cease being traditionally religious, for the old story no longer satisfies. It is no longer consistent with what life is presenting.
Science has become the champion story teller of modern times. Regretfully its stories often give unnecessary anxiety to the church. Copernicus and Galileo studied Nature’s library and unfolded a story of a sun-centered solar system. That story trumped the ancient geo-centric system, and much theology tumbled as the old understanding that the Earth was the center of God’s attention came unraveled. Darwin’s work accomplished the same by presenting a story that undermined man as a “little lower than angels,” and connected humans to all other forms of creation.
Portions of both the Church and the scientific establishment resist the reality that life in this universe is not static - as was once assumed. It is constantly changing, growing, emerging. The belief that “the faith of our fathers” is sufficient for all time fights against the present and future realities. Despite wishes to the contrary, Life continues to change. The universe is expanding. New ways of being -- and maybe even new beings -- are arising.
The old story is not big enough. A new story must unfold. New images of truth must flow out to close the gap between the spiritual awareness and both the religious and the scientific stories that are important to our human need for community and an enlarged understanding of Total Reality.
It is the new images -- the new stories -- that will be explored here in this blog.
(to be continued)
Robert C. Ouradnik
Greensboro, NC (June 2011)
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