Spirituality and Religion #1

Spirituality & Religion
Lecture #1

As Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton observed, the reflective life has fallen out of fashion. We may give lip service to the idea of stillness, but we do little to cultivate it. In today’s hurried world, a person who refuses to make efficient use of time, who is not practical, who does not actively pursue some concrete goal is somehow disturbing to others.

I’m afraid we’re addicted to activity and more activity as we move through life at “interstate speed,” in a hurry to get from one place to another, while, at the same time, talking on our cell phone, drinking coffee, shaving, studying notes for a class or meeting, or even putting on make-up. Back in 1990, I was involved with a school system who had just hired a new superintendent. Because of the new emphasis on state testing, he vowed that our system would move into the top one-third of the state’s school systems. His theme became “Reaching for the Top.” That is when our teachers and other school staffs began moving at interstate speed, and education became test-focused rather than student-focused. It’s all reminiscent of a 1980s TV show, The Jefferson’s. Their theme was “moving on up in order to reach the top,” but George Jefferson was never satisfied with life and was in constant turmoil.

In 1893, North Carolina adopted as its state motto the phrase, “To Be, Rather Than to Seem.” The focus then was on authenticity, of giving ones all to the purposes of democracy and community. But what has happened to the “being” part of our motto: being responsible to a calling higher than ourselves, being true to our values, being the best student I can be? Today, “seeming” is in vogue as posing for the camera after a great play is more important than the play itself, as what we wear and with whom we associate are more important than the inner-self that is crying out for attention and enhancement.

All organizations partake of this malady; so does the church. As we focus on our “stuff,” our spiritual sensibilities are diminished and our spirituality is reduced to a few scripture verses, a Sunday morning service, a couple of concrete beliefs, the condemnation of those who are different or just disagree, and our spiritual natures are subsequently lost in the quagmire of dogma, doctrine, and inauthentic practice.

Spirituality or spiritual reflection is not just a matter of distancing oneself from people, buildings and professional obligations or from organizations such as church, temple, and synagogue. We must make room in the region of our minds and the domains of our spirits and there soak up the teachings of our faith and the values that are able to transform us from spiritual nomads to people with a purpose.

Horace Williams, the first philosopher in the south and who taught at the University of North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century and through World War I, was asked by his nurse as he lay on his deathbed, “Dr. Williams, do you ever pray?” His response was, “No, madam, my life is a prayer.” This was a spiritual life lived in relationship to God and man. Indeed, our lives are commonly shared gifts from God and if we believe that in Christ, God became man, then we are compelled to acknowledge our shared humanity and our shared moral sense. This is the foundation of our spirituality.

Spirituality is not a struggle between faith and reason; rather, it’s a struggle in our minds about what matters most—about ultimate values. When we open our lives beyond our mental clutter, we discover the company of a deeper silence within. It is letting God come alive in us.
In 1951, Edgar S. Brightman provided insight about this predisposition. He stated, “As the second half of the 20th century opens, freedom, reason, the rights of man, the worship of God, the love of truth, beauty, and goodness—all of man’s highest values—are threatened by ‘military necessity,’ the totalitarian state, materialistic theories and practices, and ruthless competition. A conflict of ideals is raging in the world. It is not merely a conflict between East and West, or between science and tradition, or between communism and capitalism, or between political and economic democracy, or even between totalitarianism and freedom. It is a struggle ‘in the minds of men’ about ultimate values.”

In 1953, Jacob Bronowski – a distinguished professional scientist and an inspiring humanist – delivered a series of lectures at MIT entitled Science and Human Values. These lectures were later published in 1956. In them he emphasizes the values of tenderness, of kindliness, of human intimacy, and love. He observes that values are not rules, “but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and unjustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.” He also says that “the exactness of science can give a context for our judgments” and “the gravest indictment that can be made of our generalized culture is, in fact, that it erodes our sense of the context in which judgments must be made.”

Bronowski provides the following example to illustrate his view of ethical responsibility: “When I returned from the physical shock of Nagasaki, which I have described in the first page of this book, I tried to persuade my colleagues in governments and in the United Nations that Nagasaki should be preserved exactly as it was then. I wanted all future conferences on disarmament, and on other issues, which weigh the fates of nations, to be held in that ashy, clinical sea of rubble. I still think as I did then, that only in this forbidding context could statesmen make realistic judgments of the problems, which they handle on our behalf. Alas, my official colleagues thought nothing of my scheme; on the contrary, they pointed out to me that delegates would be uncomfortable in Nagasaki.”

He tells the following story: “On a fine November day in 1945, late in the afternoon, I was landed on an airstrip in southern Japan. From there a jeep was to take me over the mountains to join a ship, which lay in Nagasaki Harbor. I knew nothing of the country or the distance before us. We drove off; dusk fell; the road rose and fell away, the pine woods came down to the road, straggled on and opened again. I did not know that we had left the open country until unexpectedly I heard the ship’s loudspeakers broadcasting dance music. Then suddenly I was aware that we were already at the center of damage in Nagasaki. The shadows behind me were the skeletons of the Mitsubishi factory buildings, pushed backwards and sideways as if by a giant hand. What I thought to be broken rocks was a concrete powerhouse with its roof punched in. I could now make out the outline of two crumpled gasometers; there was a cold furnace festooned with service pipes; otherwise nothing but cockeyed telegraph poles and loops of wire in a bare waste of ashes. I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon. The moment of recognition when I realized that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune, which had been popular in 1945, and it was called ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”
Bronowski then paused and said, “These essays, which I have called Science and Human Values, were born at that moment. For the moment I have recalled was a universal moment; what I met was, almost as abruptly, the experience of mankind. On an evening like that evening, some time in 1945, each of us in his own way learned that his imagination had been dwarfed. We looked up and saw the power of which we had been proud to loom over us like the ruins of Nagasaki. … The implications are both the industrial slum, which Nagasaki was before it was bombed, and the ashy desolation, which the bomb made of the slum. And civilization asks of both ruins, ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby’?”

And what is the foundation for moral life that we have created since Bronowski wrote these words? Now in the 21st century wake of the postmodern transformation and its propensity to question that which we once thought absolute, both philosopher and theologian have scrambled to articulate a foundation for morals that supports and sustains the ethical life, and avoids what some have called “a return to nihilism.” Bronowski’s central ethical motif bears repeating, “The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”

In its truest sense, spirituality is transformational because it motivates us to change our lives. Spirituality is religious and partakes of religious experience in the broadest possible sense. In a more narrow sense, religion is more connected to belief, doctrine and dogma whereas spirituality understands that there is one God, while there are many paths to this God. My personal faith is, however, only one path. I’ve often wondered why we try to limit the omnipotence of God to our own experiences and shallow beliefs. My mom would whip me good for saying this, but I believe that for many of us, our God is too small; that is, our understanding and conceptualization of “God” is too small. Chris Butler has observed, “What’s really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body—even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments.”