November 17, 2007
Where Did My Spirituality Go?
The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Be a spot on the ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
– Rumi
Since my becoming unchurched, I have had some time to think about what speaks to me spiritually. And I’ve come to no conclusions whatsoever. What I have learned, however, is what I don’t like.
One of them is bad sermons.
Sadly, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, unless you’re attending a church that has hired an amazing minister that always knows just what to say to draw people in, or keep people around, or whatever that congregation wants to do at the time, you’re pretty well guaranteed to get bad sermons at least half the time. And that’s if you’re lucky.
My own home church in Akron was like that. I was lucky that the minister there was great about half the time, and I felt blessed by that happenstance. That’s part of the reason I stuck around for so long. The other part was that I felt like I could get the other half of my spirituality in other ways. Service to the church, participation in small-group worship (a la the young adult group), choir, and so forth.
The trouble with religious communities that rely on the sermon as the center of their worship experience is that they will never attract and keep younger people who either didn’t grow up in a traditional Protestant faith system or felt like those kinds of services were the hallmark of a religion that they just don’t get into (in other words, folks who don’t like “organized religion”). And that’s fine. If they don’t want me there. Although, they tell me they do want me there. All the time.
And yet, they won’t get me to stick around for very long, and so long as they hold onto the Minister-In-Pulpit style of religion, or at least avoid trying the alternatives and making those alternatives just as valid as the Sunday Morning Lecture (er, Service), then they’re missing out on a whole population of possible new recruits. Which, again, is fine.
But that doesn’t help me at all. I ascribe to all the tenets of Unitarian Universalism: treating all people with respect and dignity, justice, compassion, non-creedalism (though that UU churches actually practice this is questionable), environmentalism, and all that. And for now, I still call myself Unitarian Universalist. Trouble is, in most of the churches I’ve attended in this metropolitan area, I just don’t feel spiritually fed.
And after reading some stuff about Quakerism, I’ve found that what I really don’t like is something simpler.
Intellectualism.
There is a time and place for lively debate. For working the brain. For exploring the meaning of life and the infinite and .. well .. stuff. Not when I’m trying to calm my soul and find peace and meaning in life. Notice how I said I don’t like exploring the meaning of life when I’m trying to find meaning in life. Fun little paradox to say the least.
See, the trouble with intellectualism is that it fairly regularly causes folks to step outside of themselves and look at a problem as if they weren’t really in it. They read about mystical experiences, and hear about meditation and prayer, and then wonder why they don’t feel spiritually fulfilled. They learn music theory and wonder why they can’t feel what the music is making them feel because they’re so busy picking it apart. The one thing I fear most is learning so much about the mechanics of art that I refuse to let the art touch my soul.
When the core of your religious worship experience is singing a few songs (a step in the right direction, I assure you), and listening to a half-hour to forty-five minute sermon, well, at least for me, something is missing. Our ministers stand in the pulpit and preach about how to inject spirituality in your life, and yet fail to make the hour-long experience of Sunday morning … spiritual.
How odd.
And yet, it makes sense to me. Maybe not to everyone else, but that’s okay, too, since I’m really the only one I’m trying to fix here. In Buddhism, meditation is it. In Quakerism, of course, sitting in silence waiting for the voice of God to speak through you is it. In Catholicism and Episcopalianism the rituals around Mass help to bring people closer to feeling a connection with the Eternal. In evangelical Christianity dancing around, speaking in tongues, calling out “Amen” in the middle of a lively talk from the pulpit serves to bring a sense of holiness. In earth-centered traditions drum circles, dancing, chanting, communal invocations of the Goddess link people in an experience of Transcendent wonder.
And yet, in a Unitarian Universalist worship service all we can generally muster is a few hymns and a lecture.
Blech.
So I wonder, is this a crisis of faith? Or a feeling that the faith is losing itself in its watered-down include-everything-but-offend-no-one religious precepts? What is the Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice? What is the thing that we do to feel connected with each other, with society, with the world?
A good question.
Wish I had a good answer. Coffee hour isn’t it. Really.
So I’m going to keep going through the motions, at least for a while, and hope I can find that kernel of the Holy that our worship services are supposed to bring to us. Since I really do love singing nice music and listening to nice messages from a minister that at least pays some homage to all of the Sources of our faith, I’m hoping that I’ll see some ritual, some glimmer of activity that will bring me closer to the people I’m sitting in the lecture hall with.
Filed by Stephen at 6:53 pm under General, Religion, UU, The Arts, Fightin' Words
If I may be so bold – a crisis of faith, it seems, is not something to run from, but something to confront head on. If you’re seeking a stronger source of faith, what exactly is it that you’re lacking faith in? And why?
Shifting gears: I actually thrive on intellectualism. I always have. I love it. And it’s neat to hear the skeptical side of awareness of knowledge…’cause for me it’s like Jello – there’s always room for more. I enjoy magic tricks the most when they tell me afterwards how they did it. The search for the truth behind the mysticism kind of drives me, and I just happen to insist that the mysticism live up to my expectations. For me, it’s an absolute thrill to know how it’s done and then to see it done brilliantly.
Intellectualism is actually a major component of what I guess I would call my own spirituality, even spilling over into my emotional and even sexual sensibilities. I crave knowledge and, more specifically, to get inside the heads of others and learn more about what drives them. I think you run the risk of pigeonholing intellectualism as being preoccupied with facts with no room for emotion, and while it certainly can be this way, so can so called “spiritual” individuals as well. The common search for truth is what binds me to others; this bond is my spirituality. To connect, to love, to understand is paramount. And all of it falls under the heading of intellectualism, I feel, because the primary objective is the collection and examination of facts.
However, music is incontrovertibly the single most important source for “spirituality” in the world; there is a reason why music and the Church are so irretrievably fused. In fact, I believe that without music, Unitarian Universalism would shrivel up and die. And this is coming from me, Steve — I am so critical of music, it irritates even me at times. You said in your post, “They learn music theory and wonder why they can’t feel what the music is making them feel because they’re so busy picking it apart. The one thing I fear most is learning so much about the mechanics of art that I refuse to let the art touch my soul.” Well, I’m here to tell you that I know music theory and music history inside and out and up and down, and those things have not prevented me from having genuine praise-Jesus-holy-crap transcendental experiences while listening to music. What those tools have provided me with is a keener sense of what is true and what is trivial, the same way that people learn to recognize the work of Thomas Kinkade as hackneyed bullshit and instead turn their attentions to genuine expressions of the soul. Basically, it’s very difficult to impress me when it comes to music, but when it does…oh, the rush is total and better than any drug.
And all through the acquisition of knowledge.
Embrace this spiritual crisis you’re experiencing, Steve, particularly in the knowledge that you are absolutely not alone in it. Your own struggles cross-nourish my own, and if I’ve learned anything throughout this ongoing process, it’s that I hope the day never comes when my search comes to an end.
I don’t know.. there’s so much good stuff in the comments I don’t have time to respond to it all..
But I will respond to Trevor on the question of art and music..
I know people who respond very well to Thomas Kinkade, and I for one sometimes am moved by music that professional musicians disdain as “hack-ey”.. this is why I don’t want to learn music or art, because it feels like it would take the huge collection of that which moves me and narrow it to a pinhole. You said it yourself, “it’s very difficult to impress me when it comes to music, but when it does…oh, the rush is total and better than any drug” .. I don’t want to have to search for that rush, I guess..
Now I’m off to get ready for church. Maybe I’ll have time to write more later. But I appreciate everyone’s comments! It’s been enlightening to hear from the intellectuals in the audience.. :-).
One more thing about intellectualism.. a quote from a pamphlet I’ve been reading entitled “Creeds and Quakers: What’s Belief Got To Do With It?”
“The thinking mind — the grasping mind of the ego, the mind that constructs and attaches itself to beliefs — is confined to what it has chosen, thus making it a defective instrument. What doesn’t fit in doesn’t get in. Our trust in our intellect needs to be overcome. Its authority needs to be overcome. Fox’s discovery (and ours today as well) is that when we let go of what we are most certain we know, when we have humbled and opened ourselves in silence, what we need to know to guide our lives comes to us.”
Interesting that this same message that comes from the Quakers in the 19th century, came to the Buddhists about 4000 BCE, and is still resonating with them to this day. That’s the thing that draws me — an bit of what Buddhism preaches that is in Western language expressed in a faith system that grew out of (and still is growing out of) a monotheistic system.
The important part: non-belief. Avoidance of grasping. The ability to see the beauty in all things, even those things that our mind thinks are “hacked together.”
For me intellectualism is a very important part of my life, it’s partly due to my job as a tech and partly due to how I was raised by educators which lead me to question everything. Which is why I love packing my brain full of various and sundry info in the multitude of topics that I enjoy learning about. But I have to keep reminding myself that we are not intellect alone and for every decision made with the mind should be cross checked with the heart (and the other way too) just to at least see how the choice works on both levels. At least for me this keeps me from getting too locked up in my head and keeping too far away from where I feel, because I need to strike a balance between these two forces to navigate my life effectively.
I know this may not be regarded as particularly spiritual, but since I do not consider myself a man of faith and the closest I get to belief in a deity are my agnostic beliefs; this is just what I know within myself.
I suppose something you may want to ask yourself, Stephen, is whether your current crisis of faith is in part due to a lack of desire for knowledge, or a fear of knowledge. I think it’s far better to take in the knowledge and then be able to let go of it than to refuse to take it in at all. Like Trevor said, embrace it and let it run its course, and you’ll come out even shinier and stronger on the other side.
Thanks, David and Bil. I appreciate both your points of view.
A rare moment of brevity from Bries:
There is as much intellectualism in the questions as there is in the answers. To be an intellectual is not to undermine the mystical but to be conscious of its position in your life. The opposite of intellectualism is denial, not ignorance.
I just stumbled onto this blog entry and I wanted to comment, because I can very much relate to what you are saying. I am not a UU, although I have attended UU services and I very much a spiritual progressive. But I do find dry intellectualism to be boring. When I attend worship, I want to be connecting to something Transcendent. That is probably why I was attracted to Quaker meetings for a long time, and that is also why I like other forms of contemplative services, such as Taize.