Paul Please note: Due to the large amount of email Paul receives and the limitations of his physical condition he can no longer respond to all email. But please keep sending — he reads them all.
Last month I heard a BBC report in which an official from the Greek Orthodox Church condemned worshippers of the twelve gods of Mount Olympus - they've started holding services at some of the ancient sites. The official referred to the devotees as “miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion.”
Sounded pretty harsh. From what you could hear in the report and what was being described, the activities of the Mt. Olympus folks consisted of wearing long robes and chanting.
The BBC report also mentioned that Druids have resumed worshipping at Stonehenge and that belief in Thor has been revived in Denmark. Indeed, a glance through the religion and spirituality books available on Amazon.com shows the great variety of belief systems that have gained currency today – ranging, one might say, from Old Age to New Age.
Adding to this diversity is a phenomenon that often concerns religious conservatives: large numbers of people “pick and choose” their beliefs from among a variety of traditions. Finally, the many denominations within mainstream religions themselves display discrepancies, sometimes sharp ones, in the beliefs they espouse.
Is belief today in a state of thriving diversity or fragmentation?
Sometimes I've heard people talk about feeling loved by God as being important or perhaps even central to their experience of religion. Yet I am struck by how forcefully religious traditions exhort us to give or practice love. For example, following his enlightenment experience Buddha is said to have decided to teach others his Eightfold Path rather than retire to monastic life from out of compassion for others. Jesus, when asked what the two greatest commandments are, replies: to love God and love others.
God is often conceived as an Other entity existing in distinction from the rest of reality - a Creator of creation. If you don't believe in the existence of such an entity, you may want to think of love in relation to a context larger than the individual person such as society, life, or our planet.
Any thoughts, then, on the significance of receiving/giving love in relation to other individuals - or, let's say, the larger context or Context for our lives?
In a comment to the previous discussion thread, Kevin at Acoustics, Health & Sufism cites “having a clear heart that knows through experience, the difference between ego and ‘not ego’” as central to understanding what authentic religious experience is.
For me, this also points to a key issue in spiritual development: getting over ourselves. Whether you call the self that gets in our way sin, selfishness, or ego, it's what prevents us from being more alive to what is more and greater than ourselves alone.
And whether we view spiritual development as “dying to self and living to Christ," articulate it in the framework of another belief system, or speak of ignorance vs. becoming more enlightened, to me, it is our movement in this direction that matters most.
In Christian terminology, this is the way and the life. This is “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." This is the direction of our peace, strength, and joy as individuals and the direction of our long term viability as a species.
Salmon Song
Singing, singing, throw a life into the sea Like salmon flinging, ringing out the changes, Strong charges of their swimming, leaping destinies Running home to spawn and die. I too Fling, sing, dive down, hurl forth again Gladly in Thy name; Unfurl my length, uncurl coiled strength without reserve To move more sleekly, sing more sweetly, Better serve; help stir the waters running through this earth Help move, help birth, a world.
Swim strong, to God return, give all: It is a cleaving song that calls, And life that in the losing lives.
Prayer, worship, and ritual; visions, voices, and dreams; hallucinations; meditations; responses to nature and to other human beings. Signs and miracles. Séances and communications from the dead. Conversion experiences – from highly private ones to very public ones.
What do you make of the idea of religious or spiritual experience? Certainly people have referenced a wide variety of phenomena in such terms. Can religious experience be distinguished from experience that is imaginative, psychological, or even pathological – and on what basis?
What is the central purpose of religion and spirituality? What’s it for?
In particular:
A) If you consider yourself religious or spiritual, why is your religious or spiritual perspective important to you?
B) If you don’t consider yourself religious or spiritual, what do you think makes this of central importance to some people? If your answer is critical of religion and spirituality, do you see it as ever playing a positive role? And… What’s central to your own perspective on life?
C) If you feel religiously or spiritually lost, what is it that you feel you are therefore missing?
First, in response to the kind words, I want to say that I’m happy for the wonderful group of people that have been posting comments to my blogs on this subject. It brought to mind something I’d thought of in the past: what a great conversation we’d have if we were ever in the same place at the same time!
Not surprisingly, comments to last post are thoughtful and come from a variety of angles. I’ve needed to focus on just one of the major themes.
Individual and Community
I was led to think about the distinction between community and the individual “alone with his or her God.” On the one hand, there are religious communities; on the other, there is the spiritual experience of individuals.
Some of you weren’t comfortable with the word “spiritual” – it does have a number of connotations. How about if, as a working definition, we call “spiritual experience” whatever it is that goes on in our hearts and minds that leads us to do good? And, on our bad days, to aspire to it despite ourselves! Let’s call this the G factor – admitting that we haven’t defined what goodness is, which would obviously be a major topic in its own right. For many of us there is also a B factor, with “B” standing for belief.
Perspectives
Some of you point to the value and perhaps even the necessity of participating in a religious community. Others do not see this as essential or even necessarily desirable. Here are some thoughts that occur to me:
1. Participation in a religious community usually assumes acceptance of a belief system.
2. From the viewpoint of the participant, participation is crucial. Going to the church, mosque, or temple is a matter of affirming the belief system through ritual. Furthermore, there is the belief that rituals mediated by church officials constitute special transmissions, so to speak, of God’s power.
3. A member of Religious Community X may view a member of RCZ as not having got it quite right in terms of belief and the attendant rituals – or, at the extreme, view RCZ as warped or evil. Differing religious beliefs are difficult to impossible to reconcile.
4. To me, religious institutions don’t stand out as paragons of the G factor. They seem to represent pretty much what might be expected of human beings. There are many examples of religious organizations doing good things for others; there are many examples of religious organizations bringing suffering to others. As individuals, the majority of religious officials and community members appear, like the majority of our species, to fall somewhere in the middle: people who are neither great saints nor criminals.
The Wider Community
Note that a person’s spiritual experiences (as in “G-factor” above) – whether the person is a believer or non believer – can powerfully alter his or her behavior within whatever communities he or she participates: for example, family, school, or work. The wider community may be as spiritual as we collectively make it.
“Religion” and “spirituality” - these terms seem like good starting points for this discussion.
Do you consider yourself religious, spiritual, both, or neither? Is it possible to be religious without being spiritual - or spiritual without being religious?
What is a "humanist?" Someone who cares deeply for humanity but isn’t religious? And yet caring, love, agape… these concepts figure prominently in religion. The New Testament presents Jesus as someone who gave his life for humankind.
Of course, some of this is just semantics. “Religious” usually connotes participating in religion as a social institution. Still, if someone felt strongly that he or she was religious apart from any church affiliation, there appear to be grounds for such a position. Consider, for example, that there was a Buddha before Buddhism, a Mohammed before Islam, a Jesus prior to Christianity.
Consider a cleric who commits crimes and a layperson who leads a well lived life but doubts the existence of God. Is a tree better known by its fruit or through being recognized by church institutions as a vehicle of grace even if we see little manifestation of it?
In The Varieties of Religious Experience William James defines religion in terms of our attitude toward life as a whole. How might this fit in, or not, with your idea of what religion is?
