As far as I can tell, the main reason for finding a practice whereby you can refresh your connection to the forever stuff is that it sustains us in the bad places, and it helps us be resiliently our best compassionate selves, no matter what the circumstances. I struggle with this! Sometimes I feel downright selfish! Sometimes, when a person asks for a bite of my granola bar, this evil little voice inside says, What about ME?
The practice: I’m not about to throw down and say that religious people are any better at knifing their inner troll than the rest of us, but I can say that most of the people I’ve known who can levitate over their rolling moods and be the person they believe they ought to be practice religion. Ray was this way. He held out the same warm hand to everyone, always. When I told him I’d lied to him about being a Christian so that I could write a book about his church he was shocked, asked a few questions, sipped his soda, and forgave me. Maybe he could tell me about spirituality. Maybe he was the most spiritual person I’d ever known.
According to him, he wasn’t. But could he tell me—what was a spiritual person?
“A spiritual person is the searcher, the pioneer looking for the land of milk and honey. I’ve found the land of milk and honey, but I do have responsibility there. It’s hard! I’m not a robot. But when you’re committed, it’s easy to forgive. It’s easy to do the right thing.”
Can I extrapolate from this? Can I make an evangelical Christian’s version of spirituality approximate an atheist’s? I’ll try: maybe we can say that spirituality is the system we design to make doing the right thing feel easy.
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