As I said in a previous post, most of us, if we think about spirituality at all, deem it to be a kind of higher tier of our make-up. I also said that it might be easier to try and figure out what it means to us, or how we understand it, rather than define it as such.
I think, though, in general, (and as I mentioned already) we feel that it has a transcendent quality and it cannot be grasped fully. We know that it can transport us to a different level of awareness, or happiness, and we assume that it is unique to humans.
Given the indefinability and vagueness about describing exactly what spirituality is, and how personal or subjective a thing it is, I propose that the least we can say is that, even if we don’t know what spirituality is, we know what it does.
If spirituality is the cause, the effect is movement or making things happen or, at least, the catalyst, i.e. assisting the process of making things happen. (This is, after all, what the Holy Spirit did).
And yet, paradoxically, the effect of spirituality is also to slow down so we can appreciate beauty, silence, darkness, and see benefits in solitude and reflection.
Now, I know that terms like vague and vagueness have a bad press.
Anything that is vague is unclear, and we generally don’t like lack of clarity. Any description, plan, process etc. that is vague can be manipulated to suit whatever goal the person being vague wants to achieve. Just listen to a politician answering an awkward question!
Religious leaders throughout the world, in almost every established religion, for thousands of years, have manipulated spirituality to channel people into thinking a particular way so that they can build vast empires rich in material wealth and power, and even going to war to protect them, but lacking what many would consider to be true spirituality.
In the previous post I described how the religion in which I was brought up separated spirituality and sexuality. In our understanding, going to Mass every Sunday was an expression of our spirituality. So was saying the rosary. Giving pennies to children starving in Africa (who, to us, were described as black babies) was a good thing to do, and it had some sort of spiritual dimension. As did making sacrifices, offering things up, not eating sweets during Lent etc.
I believe that the fact that spirituality had an unclear or vague quality, and was more understood than defined, allowed the institutional Catholic Church to be sometimes at variance with the message of the Gospel – and still claim to be the entity that determined what spirituality should be.
But, looking from another perspective, there can be great strength in something being vague, indefinable, (and even a little nebulous [1]) in that we, with good intention and integrity, can be creative about how to use it.
In being creative, I believe that if we write a song, or sing a song, paint a work of art, produce something from our imagination, play, or even pray – all of which can be intensely spiritual experiences – we’d be at risk of doing something bland and predictable if we could pin down what spirituality is.
Whatever it is (the muse – as it is called by some people) moves us, as U2 might say, in mysterious ways, not in definable ways. In fact, songs written to formula devoid of the spark of originality, or painting by numbers run the risk of being considered by most people to be a little unimaginative.
Now, orienting our work so that we build unconditional relationships with very distressed people (meeting them where they are at) will often have an element of spirituality. That is, we can be moved by the process – and it can be full of mystery too.
But if we try and define what it should be, against some predictable yardstick that we have in our menu of behaviours, it would lose its mysteriousness and indeed unpredictability.
I am sure that it would result in less excitement and reduced sense of joy too! Imagine U2 singing ‘She moves in predictable ways’.
[1]. Nebulous comes from the word cloudy – clouds are beautiful and at the same time transient.