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“Spiritual Landscape”

May 8, 20905

Over the last few weeks I have been experimenting with a form of prayer. Four or five days a week I go for long walks either along the Erie Canal or around Green Lake. I empty my mind and just try to see what is there. I watch the gold-finches and robins and geese. I listen to their song. I hear the cry of the red-winged blackbirds as they sit atop the rushes, and watch the swallows dart and glide across the water. I monitor the gradual progress of life as leaves begin to unfurl and open themselves under the spring sun. I watch the carp swim lazily in the shallows.

I try to avoid thinking about my next sermon or what happened at work today or what student annoyed me or how petty and stupid people can be. Sometimes I’ll just repeat series of meaningless sounds to keep my head free of these concerns. Or I’ll walk along trying to mimic the songs I hear from the birds. Most of all, I try to direct my heart to God in wordless prayer.

And I’ve found that over the weeks, as I have been doing this, my thoughts grow clearer. I notice that I understand things better and have a better sense of myself and why I feel what I feel or act the way I act. I am more and more able to let go of the slights that bother me and the anxious thoughts that plague me. I have found too that my sense of peace and joy has increased.

I am seeking to be in touch with something more primordial than myself. I am stepping, for a while, outside the mundane concerns of the everyday world and renewing my contact with the reality that upholds all things.

Does it matter, I wonder, that my worship takes the form of muttered meaningless syllables, or endlessly mimicking the call of a bird? I think not, if my heart is turned inward to hear the Spirit that dwells within me and outward to the mystery that surrounds me.

Like dance and music and art, religion can take different forms. And just as art can vary from culture to culture, so too can religion. In addition, just as tastes in art or music can varying from person to person, what form your religion takes, what particular type of religious expression you engage in, will vary from person to person also.

Religion can be understood as a set of beliefs that we agree with. It can also be seen as simply a set of behaviors. At it’s best, however, religion is an attempt to access the spiritual realm. And all religions propose a path for our spiritual journey. The paths may be very different. They may vary from culture to culture and even person to person. But it may not be as important what path you take, as whether or not you take the journey.

It may be that in our criticism of religion we devote entirely too much attention to the externals. We may get too hung up in their claims to truth, their speculations about the nature of the sacred. We may focus too much on their rituals and the rules they propagate. After all, these things are what we notice first about a religion and are the aspects of religion that are easiest to criticize. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that religions offer more than their practices and doctrines. They offer a way into the spiritual realm.

When I was a tongue-speaking fundamentalist, we made fun of the Catholics for thinking they could magically change bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. When I became a Catholic, we made fun of the tongue-speaking fundamentalists for thinking they were speaking “the language of the angels.” I’m not sure why the fundamentalists thought that the belief they were speaking “angel” was more plausible than the Catholic belief they were transforming bread into flesh; or why the Catholics decided that their belief that matter could be ritually altered was more plausible than speaking a spiritual language.

I’m less certain today that it even matters. Maybe what’s important isn’t how religions get us somewhere; what story they propose or what rituals they use. Maybe where they take us is more important. Maybe their stories, rituals and doctrines are less important than a religion’s ability to bring people into touch with the unknown and incomprehensible Being some call God and some the Tao and others nothing at all.

Ultimately religion is a path into a mystery, a portal into the other. It is a dance toward the divine and there are as many forms of this dance as there are people. What makes a religion right or wrong is not the kind of dance or the number of steps. What makes a religion right or wrong is its ability to lift us and transform us, to give us peace and joy, to help us live lives that are increasingly in harmony with the divine.

But here things get tricky. It is possible to focus on just the beliefs one should have or the rules one should follow or the ritual one should observe instead of letting those things lead you into the spiritual landscape. It is possible to major in the externals of a religion, instead of letting it do its work on you soul. It’s possible to stand out on the porch instead of going into the house, to go through the motions of a religion instead of letting it lead you on the spiritual journey it offers.

The unfortunate thing about religion is that so many people do just that. Religion is something they do, not a tool they use to get into contact with the power that can transform them. And rigidly religious people who conform to the outward standards of a religion but remain unchanged within, eventually scandalize those of us who expect religion to change you and make you a better person.

So why don’t people enter the spiritual landscape? Why do they settle for the outward form of religion, while resisting its inner working?

The truth is the spiritual journey is hard. It takes time and that means discipline. In a world that demands more and more of our day, where our lives seem more and more hectic, to set aside an hour, to stop and quiet your soul, to put aside the demands of the world and listen to the soft murmuring of the Spirit, is difficult at best.

And the spiritual journey is long. The Spirit is not a crashing wave that sweeps away your weaknesses and faults with some sudden magical transformation. It is a quiet stream that over time smoothes the rough edges of your soul, gradually altering your being. A stone thrown in a stream will eventually change it shape, but the progress toward that goal is almost unnoticeable. In a world of instant oatmeal, it is hardly something we have the patience to endure.

And it’s hard to learn to listen to the Spirit. It’s hard to quiet your soul, put aside your thoughts and ideas, and just listen. It’s far easier to assume that what you think or feel is right. Learning to hear the Spirit takes time. Learning to sense the difference between the voice of God within you and your own thoughts and desires takes effort. It is a skilled gained over a lifetime, not something learned in a weekend seminar. And it is a skill that cannot be taught, it can only be learned.

That’s one reason people sometimes stand outside the gate, why they never enter the spiritual landscape. Who has the time or patience? This is also why a religion that makes saints of some people, seems to have no effect on others at all. They never really start their spiritual journey, they never enter the land, and their religion remains only an outward form of piety. They are never changed within.

And then there are the difficulties of navigating the spiritual landscape itself. To enter the spiritual realm is to begin a conversation with God. It is to embark on a path that can be difficult, that will alter you in ways that will be uncomfortable. To enter the spiritual realm is to allow the Spirit who is love to confront you, to shape you and exorcise those aspects of yourself that do not conform to love.

It can be a painful path. On it we confront our wounds, the scars left by those who should have loved us and didn’t and the scars left by the many disappointments that life inevitably hands us. As we listen to the Spirit whispering, we not only discover that these wounds are still fresh and raw, we also see how these wounds have affected us, how they have changed and twisted us, how they keep us from joy and life. We are forced to face things we would rather forget, to re-live pain we thought was dead, but which actually remains alive and exercises its power over us. And then we weep again and begin the process of truly mourning our loss, so finally we can be healed.

We also face the pain of confronting how our own failures have wounded others. We suddenly see how we have hurt those we love, how we have failed those we were supposed to care for. And we recognize that there was a way to avoid causing the pain we inflicted. We realize that our pettiness was not inevitable, we could have risen above it. We discover that our anger was not only destructive, but it was also unnecessary; no matter how justified we felt at the time. We discover that the resources to be better people were available to us, that better choices were there to be made; we just didn’t use the strength at our disposal, we just found it easier to do the wrong thing. And this is painful. It is one thing to admit a mistake, it is another to recognize that there is something wrong with the way you are.

Is it any wonder that people stand at the gate of the spiritual realm and hesitate to enter. It is a place filled with death to self. It may promise us that new life will come out of these death experiences, but it doesn’t promise that dying to our selfishness and dying to the right to hold on to our wounds will be painless.

The spiritual landscape can also be disorienting. As we see parts of ourselves that need to change; we are sometimes left not knowing how we should be. Sometimes we discover parts of ourselves that are not very caring, not very loving. And sometimes we discover that the ways we respond to life and to others, the habits we have developed over the years, the self-protecting strategies we have adopted over time, are so deeply rooted in our souls that it seems as if tearing them out will destroy our very selves.

For myself I find that I go through times when I know that I am wrong, that I need to change. But at the same time I don’t know how I should be, how I’m supposed to act. I feel off-balance and lost. I have learned that if I will be patient, a new way of being will emerge. I just need to wait. But these are intensely uncomfortable times, when one is caught between an old way of being and a new way that has yet to emerge. At that point the temptation is to revert, to return to what I was; or to simply avoid the ongoing confrontation of the Spirit that produces this sort of discomfort. Sometimes it is easier to withdraw from the spiritual landscape, and avoid these feelings altogether; sometimes its easier to settle for who I am instead of enduring the disconcerting process of spiritual growth.

And there are obstacles on the path to spiritual growth. As you journey there you will discover dreams you need to abandon, hopes you need to forget. You may discover that what you thought would make you happy was an illusion; that real happiness lies somewhere else. You may discover that what you thought you were supposed to be, is not what you are supposed to be at all. You may discover that what the world counts as success, no longer is to you. And you may have to chose between striving for what you have been taught your whole life to pursue, and what you now see as truly important.

Finally, the spiritual landscape can be a lonely place. It can be a lonely place because you are hearing a voice few others hear, and you are hearing a message meant for you alone.

Sometimes when we enter the spiritual landscape, when we begin our conversation with the Spirit, we do all the talking. We bring too much of ourselves onto the scene. But a prerequisite for spiritual growth is to be willing to listen to the Spirit, to be ready to be wrong.

It is possible to embark on the spiritual path ready to be changed, open to new insights, and open to discovering how wrong you are about some things and how you must change to become right. Then the spiritual landscape through which you journey, while sometimes painful, becomes a place of beauty and of healing. It becomes a place where even the tears you shed over the wrongs you have committed become sweet and bring forth new life.

But it is also possible to enter the spiritual landscape with your own agenda, your own ambitions, and most dangerously convinced of your personal infallibility. Then whatever truth is to be discovered there, whatever peace is to be found there, whatever beauty is to be seen; will elude you. And your religion will become disappointed, self-righteous, and angry.

Ultimately your spiritual journey is a conversation between you and the One who is love. The degree to which you quiet your soul, abandon your need to be right, and listen to the gentle murmuring of the Spirit; the degree to which you open your heart to the divine surgeon and the pain of spiritual surgery; is the degree to which your religion will transform you and bring you into harmony with the divine.

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