Why on earth is believing in God a requirement for spirituality?
Celeste has a bone to pick with the need to divide between "secular" and "spiritual." (Celeste is also having a wee crisis as a spiritual companion who hates the word spiritual).
“Are you looking to play a spiritual Christmas song or a secular one?”
My harp teacher asked me this last December when I asked for new Christmas sheet music.
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Last month I created a profile on the spiritual directors international directory.
I have to select a personal affiliation for my profile.
“Atheist” is not an option.
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When my parents come to visit, I wonder what to plan for us to do on Sunday. They’ve labeled going for a walk “spiritual” enough for Sunday, but walking to a park crosses over into the “not spiritual” enough category. Having people over for dinner is “spiritual” enough, but going to a party is “not spiritual” enough.
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This line- this dividing line we’ve drawn between “secular or spiritual,” “God or atheist,” “spiritual or not spiritual” has irked me the past few years like an itch on my back that is never satiated.
I blurred those lines.
I dumped buckets of paint all over the black and white dividing line between spiritual and non-spiritual. I gleefully smeared orange, purple and turquoise all around the dividing line with both hands.
I call my morning coffee sacred. I declare a lack of spirit in my old religious rituals.
It’s all just life.
ALL of it- heartbreak, traffic, scripture, sex, NPR, the mormon temple, pine trees, prayer, my Macbook, PTA, meditation, macaroni and cheese.
It’s all just a part of this beautiful mess.
And yet we’ve created buckets.
Labeled them “God” “no God” / “spiritual” “not spiritual.” We’ve divided up ideas, behaviors, opinions, places, words, things and people and assigned them a bucket.
Christmas songs including a nice man named Jesus in the “spiritual” bucket. Songs including a nice man named Santa in the “not spiritual” bucket.
Belief in an old man in the sky? “Believer.” Belief in universal connection, love or literally anything but old man in the sky? “Non believer.” Not spiritual. Atheist. Secular.
A group of men reading what old dead men thought (aka scripture)? Def spiritual.
A group of women in a book club reading Riane Eisler? Secular.
Kids walking on the sidewalk on Sunday? Spiritual.
Kids walking on wooden planks and slides on a Sunday? Not spiritual.
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I have no tolerance for the lines, for the buckets anymore, and yet I am continually called upon to honor them.
Almost two years ago I attended an orientation meeting for my new spiritual direction program I was about to start.
“If you don’t believe in God, you will struggle with this program. You can call God whatever you want- the Tao, the divine, universal connection, consciousness, but you need to believe in some higher divine presence. You need to be spiritual. You need to have spiritual practices.”
There it is again- that link between belief in a deified person and spirituality. That unquestioned assumption that “God” and “spiritual” are synonyms, sharing a bucket. “Not spiritual” and “atheist” by default are also synonyms, also share a bucket.
Why?
Once in one of our classes a classmate raised her hand and asked, “What if an atheist wants to hire me? I have no idea how I could spiritually companion an atheist.”
Wut.
Why on earth is belief in an old man in the sky a requirement, a pre-requisite for spirituality?
If you think about it for more than a second, it makes no sense. It is utterly absurd.
The definition of spiritual, at least according to dictionary.com is “of or relating to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature.”
So everything, anything not expressly related to what we can see and touch physically is off-limits for those who don’t believe there is an omnipresent being in heaven?
We’ve entered cloud coo-coo levels of crazy here.
Yet that is often the unconscious belief of Western Christians.
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Recently my friend introduced me to her friend. “Celeste is a spiritual director!” she says. And I can’t help but grimace. I am a spiritual director, but I know what the word “spiritual” connotes and I don’t identify with that image.
I want to say, “Hi yes, I am a spiritual director, but also I despise the word spiritual. I think the tulips in my backyard are more spiritual than prayers, and yes, I got my training from a spiritual direction program, but held great detestation for the gate-keeping the “spiritual” community I’m paying has done for the word ‘spiritual,’ so really I would like to just be called a ‘companion’ instead of ‘spiritual companion’ because everything in life is spiritual, making the word essentially meaningless, but saying that you are hiring just a ‘companion’ sounds dirty, so I’m sticking with ‘spiritual companion’ but also I hate it. Nice to meet you.”
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I wrote this poem this week:
I don't like the word God. Hate it actually. Hate how people cling to their belief or disbelief in this word and construct an entire self-identity around their cling. Hate the impossible math of how many billions of lives have been lost based on the disagreeing of what that word means. Hate the fanatical loyalty the definitions of that word bring out. Hate that fathers feel justified in cutting off their sons and sons their fathers because they change their mind about that word. Hate the word's power to divide and instill fear, guilt and shame. Hate that people think love and connection could never exist without that word. Because that's what it is- a word just a damn word- a word we've assigned the weight of the world to. And if you assemble a room of all believers- sub-rooms of those who claim agreement on the exact meaning of the word- Islam, Mormon, Jew- Still, still still that word will mean something different to every person in the room- millions of variations- no two alike- the word will conjure different images, personalities, preferences, likes, dislikes, priorities, opinions, functions. I hate the word but I love the worlds of universal connection, the power of pure creation, the beauty of nature that are taking root and blooming in my mind worlds that others would justifiably call "God."
What do you think? Are “God” and “spiritual” synonyms in your mind? Why or why not? How do you define spirituality?
And if you are in the market for a spiritual companion who doesn’t care for the word spiritual- you are in luck!
I just opened up for business last week! Woo!
Head over to my website to have all your burning questions answered: what is a spiritual companion? How much does it cost? How do I sign up? Why would I want to do that?
And if you already know you want to book, you can do that right here.
Thank you for writing this. I have recently left my religion and I would argue the hardest part has been understanding who/what God is to me now. Reading this helped me so much. I love that I can re-claim the word spiritual and let go of all the things it used to mean to me before. No more black and white.
I love the paragraph where you talk about the tulips and the fact that you can’t call yourself a companion. Hilarious! I think that spiritual for me is a connection to the larger, to the thing that is bigger than all of us. I also find my spiritual connection through nature. I think that whatever journey one takes it needs to be more about questions than answers. I think it’s cool that you are posing questions for yourself and for others.