We live in a time of great uncertainty. More people are unemployed in the United States than have been since the Great Depression. The number of families living in poverty has reached the level of the 1960’s when Johnson declared a war on poverty. The country is divided politically, economically, and socially. In those divisions, there is little agreement between the right and left about what it means to be an American. In the near term, the prospects for the United States seem dim, at best.
To come together as a country, we need to restore a vision for the way in which we live as a people. While a restorative vision is rooted in the best of what we have been, hope for the future cannot be limited by a nostalgic remembrance of the simpler times past generations. Recognizing that over the last thirty years globalization has become the driving force not just of the economy but of our way of life, the vision for our future way of living needs grow into the realities of globalization.
I understand spirituality as the foundation for the way we live. Because spirituality is the dimension of life which enables us to encounter or discover meaning, purpose and value in our lives, spirituality empowers us to live into the future. Spirituality is what animates us and provides us with a source of energy to sustain us.
Spirituality has often been approached as an individual, private enterprise that makes us, as individuals, feel calm, at peace, or inwardly whole. Much of popular Christian spirituality has focused on “Jesus saving me” from the problems of the world. So-called New Age spiritualities have focused on keeping “me at peace” in my own comfort zone. Such understandings of pseudo-spirituality are individualistic in nature. Interpretations of spirituality that are individualistic draw us away from others while drawing us into a state of self-absorption. They lead to an “us versus them” mentality in which the “us” has been saved from the chaos of the world.
An authentic spirituality draws an individual beyond self in a movement of compassion for others. First, authentic spirituality sustains the individual by enabling a person to live with a sense of harmony with self. It is this inner harmony that is the foundation for the individual’s way of living. Second, authentic spirituality sustains the larger world by evoking a response within us to live in harmony with others and planet. In other words, authentic spirituality fundamentally sustains the life of the individual and the planet through movements of compassion toward and harmony with all life.
Sustainable spirituality begins with the awareness that there is a fundamental link between my spiritual experience through which I find meaning and purpose in life and the larger world. Spiritual growth is both a deepening of inner experience and an expansion of compassion for the world demonstrated in tangible action. The tangible action of sustainable spirituality draws us toward is living with compassion so that all life on the planet may be sustained.
Sustainable spirituality is not the province of a particular religious belief or practice. Instead, it is deeply inter-faith as well as non-deistic. Sustainable spirituality acknowledges the deep interconnection in the web of life on the planet and understands that life is worthy of reverence. To that end, there are underpinnings for sustainable spirituality in all the great wisdom traditions of the world, whether those traditions are based in religion or science.
Sustainable spirituality provides the opportunity for us to live in whole and tangible ways on earth, reverencing the inter-connected life of the planet. Sustainable spirituality bridges the gaps of the multiple divisions in the world today and provides a lens to understanding the fundamental life connections which are the foundations of the wondrous harmony found on Earth.
How we will solve the many divisions we face in the United States today? I believe that the solutions will be found as we are animated by a sustainable spirituality which enlivens us to live in harmony and compassion with continued globalization of the planet. By living into the future in this way, we will be able to bridge divisions and find creative solutions to the tangible problems we face.
