Spirituality, god and religion. The three big words that carry so much baggage with them from childhood that we often can’t think of them in any other way than when we were in our parents care. That is, I often have difficulty thinking of them in any other way. Spirituality means you need to believe in a fairy tale. God is the supernatural being that Michelangelo first drew on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Religion is something people kill each other for in Northern Ireland.
I think I’ve at last got them under control. The words that is. Or should I say that I have the feelings they engender within me under control. Maybe even enough to use them on my own terms and not the world’s terms. We’ll see won’t we? So let’s see if I’m brave enough to define them for myself, today. Of course as a good U.U. I reserve the right to change them at any time in the future – even while reading what I’ve written on this page.
Spirituality is easy – it’s the word I’ve been working on for the longest time. Spirituality is the knowledge that there is more to you than you. There is more to you than what you see, feel, smell, taste and hear. Why is the view of Red Tarn from the peak of Helvellyn in the English Lake District so beautiful? Why does the touch of your lover sear your mind? Why does the smell of baking bread take you back to a different place and time? Why does a cheesecake taste like heaven when it provides no wholesomeness whatsoever? Why does Beethoven’s 9th, Tubular Bells, or Bat out of Hell touch our souls. Well that’s where spirituality comes in, in fact that’s what it is, the ability to appreciate the gifts.
Religion is the toughest one for me because I’ve worked on it less than the other two. It’s also the one that holds the greatest worldly dangers because of its main actual requirement. It fundamentally requires a group for it to exist. The power of a group or religious people is an unstoppable force. But power can just as easily be used as evil as it can for good, I haven’t even decided if it’s abused more than it’s used for good. All I can say is that I have found my religious group. I can’t say we U.U’s have never used our religion for evil purposes. All I can say is that I have not seen it abused to the same degree as have the other religions of the world. On the other hand religions have been tremendous forces for good throughout history maybe mine could be the greatest. It’s a major source of ministry to all individuals. Religion is what makes humans great – it a pity it is what can make us a disaster
And god for me gets easier all the time (even if I do refuse to spell it with a capital G). It’s the connection between the other two. It’s what connects the personal spirituality with the group religion and more. It’s that unknowable, tasteless, invisible, silent, odorless, unfeeling thing that connects each one of us to everything else in the universe. You to me. Me to the sunset, Us to the lilies’ aroma. Your response to your spouses touch. My will, to the cheesecake. Our souls to the rising crescendo of a glorious piece of music. God is poetry not theology, but my baggage still wants to use e e cummings unconventional orthorgraphy.
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