Faith (August 2013) by Jonothan

Hey guys.

I had a conversation with a recent seminary graduate who is totally in to the preservation of "particualrity" when in comes to spirituality. I may have told you some of the previous conversations that I've had with him. This weekend at the beach we were using our group (some of what we talked about when you were down) as a case study for what "shared spirituality" might mean for us, being as we are at different places. None of this is rocket science, but it is nice to have words.

A1. We do have a shared spirituality in that we have elements of worldviews that are common: we "believe" in simple living, in sharing meals, in life together. We believe in the support of friends and deep connections. We believe in choosing to be together [how ironic] and sharing what we have and receiving what others have. This is a shared spirituality... this is our "confession".

A2. It just so happens that this spirituality we share is not "meta" in the way that organized religious traditions are. We don't have a common confession of epistemology or of teleology (to use Randy's' seminarian words). We are not joining in to the work of something bigger (like a tradition or a history) directly, even thought -- as we have pointed out-- many people have lived like we seek to live for a long time. In other words, our confession is of practices and not of reasons, of the what and not the why.

B1. Which brings us to Randy's suggestion of "a community of communities". What would be wrong with saying: "These are our common practices that we do as a whole based on our (actual) shared spirituality. And these 'sub'-practices are the things that the neo-pagans, or christians or earth-based-spiritualists among us do as a part of their shared spirituality... each their own set of practices that serves and emphasizes the particular spirituality (in the more "meta" sense) these sub-groups espouse."?

B2. Nothing, I suppose. There would be nothing wrong with this if we understand that a sub-communities particulars of language and practice and ritual are just that: the part of a peoples spirituality that is not common to the whole. And this is not so hard to fathom: we already do this all the time in a hundred different ways. Try this image: a Vin Diagram. Or perhaps more appropriate for the complexity and the layers: a kaleidoscope. All over the place there is "religion" that is held by some and not by others: think of sports fans with their religious practices and smokers with theirs and the goths and the soccer moms and the monks and folk-music-concert-goers. So the soccer-moms all gather to worship whatever it is they worship, and smokers take time out of their day (better than most of us) to honor whatever they honor on smoke breaks. A chain-smoking soccer-mom? A monk who won't miss a radio broadcast of the Phillies? A person who loves shared meals but does not care for the language of the Eucharist?

C1. One shared value that would make this Kaleidoscope of practices possible is grace: a grace that sees the difference of practices, the different particulars, and understands that they are good for "us". Note that I don't want this to be the same as tolerance; tolerance has a boring shrug-of-the-shoulders to it, a 1980's "whatever" to it. That is not this grace. This grace says: "I am a emerald green parallelogram. You are a mesmerizing violet ellipse. There are times and places that we overlap and have space in common. There are times and places that do not. And that interplay is what makes a Kaleidoscope interesting.  By way of contrast, think of a musical piece where all of the instruments and voices were reduced to the lowest common denominator: Noise is the result, even static perhaps, but not music.

 

So, here is to faith in whatever it is that creates the possibility for a kalsidoscope of practices within a common confession. May this mystery visit us often.

                   -Jonothan