How do you navigate life?

 

Spiritual Life/Secular World

“One of the basic tasks of a human being is to find ways to be spiritual and worldly at the same time.”

Thomas Moore (The Soul of Christmas, p.91; Franciscan Media, 2016)

          To me, this statement is about depth. I meet a lot of people in Alabama who are religious, but not spiritual, and many who are worldly except on Sunday morning. I have been asked many times if I am “saved” and I always respond, “From what?” People, especially evangelical Christians, feel compelled to delve into whether I believe the right things to make it to heaven after I die. I think that’s putting the horse behind the cart—one’s spiritual life is lived here and now, and it’s an interior life that produces behavior in the outer world. It is not a set of beliefs based upon any religion.

          We live in the world. A Zen proverb says that there are 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows here. As we live the life we are born into, we navigate in a spiritual way, or in a secular way, or in a religious way. The secular way typically asks, “What’s best for me?” The religious way asks, “What does the Lord want me to do?” and the spiritual way asks, “What does this mean and why is it happening now?” As you can see, the movement is from exterior to interior—from what is going to improve my circumstances in everyday life to what does this mean for my soul.

          If we are spiritual, we look for meaning in all that happens in our inner world, and our outer world, and the world at large. Spirituality is about finding the sacred in the ordinary, the everyday, and in everyone. It is not a set of rules and mandatory beliefs established by any religion. It is a way of seeing. It is why, I believe, Jesus often said, “He who has eyes to see, let him see.” When we are looking through the eyes of our souls, we see everything differently. We live in the world, but we see it through the eyes of the spirit.

          If we are spiritual, our moral compass rests within, though it may be informed by a religious tradition. It is expansive in nature, not exclusive. It is dynamic and diverse, not closed, or static. Spirituality is alive in every moment of every day, not locked into a creed. Our task is, as Thomas Moore says, to find ways of living a spiritual life in a secular world. Are we up to that task?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane