Each Sunday morning, a friend of mine goes hiking. It’s usually something he does alone. Taken while on his hike, he’ll post a picture on social media of something that caught his eye. The caption is always the same. It’s a one-word exclamation. Church.
For decades, I’ve facilitated workshops on spirituality for diverse groups of people. I ask people to recall an experience they’ve had that they consider to be spiritual. The majority of people share an experience in nature. It could be a sunrise or sunset or something else they encountered out of doors. Even church-going folks usually report spiritual experiences they’ve had in nature rather than in a church building.
What happens for most people in a spiritual experience? Spiritual experience is almost a paradox. On the one hand, a person often becomes more present in the moment and comfortable about who they are. There’s a sense of peace and being rooted or grounded. It’s something like a coming home to self most deeply. On the other hand, there’s a connection with someone or something beyond oneself that’s difficult to put into words. This sense of connection may be specific. For example, when working in the garden, I often experience a unique connection when digging in the dirt or caring for the plants. Or it may be a connection that’s deep and wide, like when walking along the beach and looking out over the horizon. Or even a deep connection with a belief in God or a sense of a unifying presence. Life can take on a different perspective in the immensity of the open horizon at the ocean. In spiritual experience, there’s both an inward movement of self and an outward movement that connects with something beyond us.
The ongoing decline of church attendance is paralleled by the increase of people seeking out ways to nurture spiritual experience. In American culture today, there are many opportunities to nurture the spiritual dimension of life through meditation and yoga classes as well as the incorporation of mindfulness into every facet of life from the workplace to healthcare. While I’ve valued my involvement in religion because it provides a demonstrated set of practices that nurture the spiritual dimension of my life, I also recognize that most people in the United States and other Western countries experience religion as shallow, boring, and based in dogma rather than spiritual experience. Further, levels of spiritual abuse and other forms of abuse are quite high within church settings and have often been tolerated.
While I experience time in nature as deeply spiritual, whether walking or hiking, working in the garden, or looking over a vista, I find that I understand the spiritual dimension of life through Christian metaphor. While I am very well versed in various Buddhists traditions, beliefs, and practices; Earth-Centered traditions; and Native American practices and ceremony, ultimately I return to Christian metaphor for my spiritual life. That’s not because I believe Christianity is somehow right or true and other traditions are wrong. In fact, I’m embarrassed by how much Christians have gotten wrong and, based on those errors, cling to ideologies that are incongruent with the teachings of Jesus. I find that the uniqueness of Christianity is that the Divine is incarnated in each of us and in our cosmos. A fundamental Christian perspective (much more than a belief) is that the Divine is experienced in our relationships with others and our world as well as in the stillness of our hearts. This Christian understanding is rooted in the Jewish concept of Emmanuel (God-with-us) and takes the understanding of Emmanuel radically further. This has led Christian mystics to understand that we are in the Divine and that the Divine is in us.
What I find profoundly sad is that if one walked into a Christian Church today, one wouldn’t find this profound understanding of God-in-us and we-in-God: the incarnation. Instead, one may be asked if Jesus is personal Lord and Savior or whether one could make a proper affirmation of belief system.
I can’t change what the Christian Church has become even as an ordained minister. But I can share what I experience as deep and profound joy in the awareness that God is more present to us than we are to ourselves. Perhaps you experience something of the Divine in nature, or in church, or while sipping a glass of wine with your beloved. In whatever way you experience this profound mystery that’s woven through life, I encourage you to savor that experience. By savoring such profound spiritual experiences, we are transformed to be the people we are at our deepest level.
Photo source: foster.com