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The Way of Spirit

The way of spirit is not only the way of the individual.
The way of spirit is not only the way of the group.

As far as spirit is concerned, there is a falseness to the notion that
What I owe to myself, and
What I owe to others
Are different.

Put the individual on an Island and spirit will be lonely.
Put the group on an Island and spirit will want to swim out into the vast ocean.

Between the two ideas…the individual and the group…there is a turmoil which spirit reconciles.
Sociology and psychology cast their lines into an ocean empty of fish.

There is no individual.     Sorry.

There is no group.     Sorry

These are ideas.
Spirit is beyond ideas.

Do not force it to seat itself in the one or the other.

What then is spirit?

The way the “New spirituality” is usually introduced tends to make it into a thing, an idea whose time has come, an object that we might manipulate to fit our ideology or religious beliefs and make serve our commands. For centuries, we have tried to do that with God. To no avail. Walter Brueggemann, an eminently practical theologian, in The Prophetic Imagination (1978) points out that God is free, unchurched, not just there hiding behind the alter, not “on call” like a surgeon sleeping on a cot in the emergency room, ready to bind up our wounds and address out grievances. Much to our dismay, God is free. So is spirit. We cannot capture our spirit and simply add it to our arsenal of problem-solving weapons, training protocols, or therapeutic techniques.

Is Spirituality a Fad?

The “New Spirituality” is a fad, captured by coffee-table conversation, late-night talk shows and management training. Typically,  Americans are responding at a surface level, acting out of ingrained cultural patterns. If our problem is the lack of something we need, let’s go out and get it, buy it, make it, market it sell it, consume it…and eventually throw it away as the next chimera appears on our empty horizon.

But beneath these surface responses, a sea change is taking place. At the depths of our humanity, our culture, our civilization, our very presence on this planet, something authentic and transformative is at work. But no amount of intoning, proclaiming, advertising, marketing or generally publicizing will uncover it. We must learn to experience it at a depth unknown and untried by most of us. We must seek the right starting points of what may well turn out to be a new journey along an ancient path.

What’s Going on Here?

The words “spirit,” “spiritual,” and “spirituality” are on everybody’s lips these days. After centuries of absence from the language of getting things done, references to the spiritual have re-entered the popular mind. Leaders proclaim the need for a spiritual approach to everything from employee motivation to health care reform and the inability of our schools to educate many of our children. Editorials announce the need to bring spiritual values back into quality of-life decisions. The breakdown of the family and the high divorce rate are now blamed on the absence of a spiritual element in our most intimate settings.

For some, the new spirituality is like a psychological aspirin. Finding a real or make-believe spiritual path assuages the guilts, fears and pains that come from living in a world of social disintegration and personal upset. For others, the new spirituality is a rallying cry, bolstering their unwillingness to listen to any but their own version of God’s call.

Spiritual Poetry – Giving Attention

We want to explain to ourselves

What is the point of us,

What is the point,

In the dim light of the universe?

And so we claim to ourselves

Countless points about who and what we are,

And why too.

While not attending to that which we are

By virtue of not attending.

But the cloud through which we walk unconscious-

So proud, so brave, so commanding, what a performance!-

Could bring us to brightness over dimness,

Attending over not attending,

And thus to who and what we are,

And why too,

If we stopped the walking…..

and gave attention.

Spiritual Poetry – Ways of Knowing

There are many ways of knowing.

Why do we not take them all
Like a handful of pebbles,
Examining each for its worth?

Knowing that each has its worth,
So not to be tossed aside
As we toss each other aside.

In that handful is a special one for you.
Your own way of knowing spirit.
Special to you.

Acknowledge them all.
Through this acknowledgment
Acknowledge all of us, the peoples of the Earth
On the Journeys of our spirit.

Pebbles in your hand.

Give Attention to the Spiritual Life of Your Human Journey

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
- Lao Tzu

How do we know if spirit is real? How do we recognize its voice? How does it work within us?

Some people experience physical feelings when they “hear” their spirit. They feel shivers or goosebumps; they get a “gut feeling,” or a sense of calmness suddenly comes upon them. Others see images, visions and flashes of insight.

Author Pat Conroy said as much when he first encountered his prospective students on South Carolina’s Daufuskie Islands. Even though he lacked teaching experience and was not yet prepared, he knew immediately upon seeing them that he was meant to teach these children. they were “meant to be his students.” How did he know?

For many of us, we “hear” our spiritual voice. No one else hears it, yet the words surround us with an insightful message or words of protection that give us hope.

When Your Spirit Calls Hits Amazon Kindle

Great News! The Kindle version of When Your Spirit Calls : In Search of Your Spiritual Voice is now available direct from the Kindle Store as a Kindle Edition. WYSC joins the quickly expanding category of spirutality and self-help books available on Kindle. You can download When Your Spirit Calls Kindle Edition, or if you have an iPhone and the free Kindle for iPhone App you can also read WYSC on your iPhone! Downloading the free Kindle for PC application and read WYSC driectly on your laptop or desktop. Amazon is selling the Kindle Edition for only $9.95!

Spirituality in The Financial Crisis

Organizations are created to fulfill a purpose. Corporations, small businesses, churches, schools, social clubs, and even the family, are organizations invented for a purpose. We participate in organizations for many reasons. Some are work related, some educate us, and some entertain us. The reasons are endless. Each is regulated by expectations and roles within the nature of the organization. We are all members of organizations, and we cannot be without them.

But when events in our lives take a downward turn, and the purposes of the organizations to which we belong can no longer support us, we find ourselves in disarray. For example, the expectations and roles of our financial and investment institutions and our mortgage companies collapsed causing an economical crisis. The result was unemployment, foreclosures, and loss of retirement funds. People experienced fear, depression, anger and loneliness. It also caused a breakdown of roles in the family for many causing dysfunction and resulting in pain, anger and sometimes violence.