Spirit Level: Increasing Our Sensitivity to Life

Last Sunday the God of humour was certainly at play. I tempted fate by talking about “the church where everything goes wrong”, plenty did. There were many amusing moments, which always help during challenging times, both congregations have faced them of late. There was a particularly amusing moment at Altrincham when Edna began to comment on the candle being wonky, not being straight enough. For next minute or so there were several attempts to get it perfectly level. I even joked about the need to get a spirit level, to check it was just right. Then someone piped up that this would be a great subject for a service. Well surprise, surprise it got my homiletic consciousness going. The interactions filled my spirit and awakened something inside of me.

On Tuesday morning I noticed a friend obsessively trying to get the right balanced arrangement of tea-light candles to aid our morning meditation. What amused me was that at this time of year we begin in daylight, so really the candles make not one bit of difference, but hey we must have the right number of candles, in the correct shape, in the middle of the circle. Another thing we obsess about is the right number of chairs. Whenever I arrive, I always comment that there are not going to be enough, there rarely is and thus when late comers arrive they have to initially sit outside of the circle. I didn’t comment this week as there were plenty. Well, there was initially at least. As my friend was arranging the candles the person who set up the room began to remove some of the chairs as they thought there were too many. I remember thinking this was a mistake but decided not to comment. Then folk began to arrive, and we soon discovered that more chairs needed to set out, about the original number. We all laughed at this in the end, at our attempts at being goldilocks and making everything perfect. It’s good we can laugh at ourselves; it is a good sign of being in good spiritual health. That said obsessive compulsive disorder is no laughing matter, how ever it manifests itself. So many are plagued with it, including myself although mine is not in seemingly obvious ways. I am though constantly concerned about the right number of chairs, so that no one feels excluded. Mine isn’t about the shape and arrangements of the chairs, more the sense that no one ever feels left out of the circle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of worship and what I create and share, as well as its purpose in recent weeks. I have also been thinking about ritual, its need to hold things together, as well as the dangers of becoming a slave to it. There is a place and need for structure as it allows the freedom to explore. There is also the need to cater for different types of people. There is a balance needed between structure and total lassez faire. I know myself I need a mixture of the two, although I know the balance will never be perfect.

Yes, there are benefits to enabling the spirit to be level and ritual helps with this. Having said that there is a real danger in becoming too enslaved to ritual. Sometimes it becomes all about the ritual and the spirit dies. Surely the purpose of such activities is the feed the spirit and not just follow some pattern.

All this brought to mind a favourite story I have shared before, “The Guru’s Cat”

In India there was a great religious guru who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the guru and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the guru had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the guru, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit – tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God – but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. After the guru died, the cat continued to be tied during evening worship.

Then one day the cat died. The guru’s followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis – how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

Centuries later, learned treatises were written by the guru’s scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed.

Sometimes we become so tied to things that we forget the purpose of why we are doing what we are doing. So yes, I have been thinking once again about the purpose of worship, particularly in the context of a free religious tradition, one that should never be a slave to anything. I have also been thinking about the purpose of spirituality and the spiritual life. I have been thinking about balance and of course that interesting item, the “spirit level”.

How do we define spirituality and the spiritual life? What is its purpose? I have heard many explanations over the years. The best I have heard came from Rev Bill Darlison, he said “that the purpose of the spiritual life, is to increase our sensitivity to life.” I believe that the purpose of spirituality is to aid us to become more affected by life and thus become more effective in life. It is not to rise beyond life, to escape from life, but to enable us to engage fully with reality. I know that the more engaged I am in such practices the more engaged I am in life. That said I also need such practices to recharge my spiritual batteries and thus return back to life and increase the affect and become more effective. It is about keeping one’s spirit levels up, it is about getting the balance right. As I so often say the spiritual life is not so much about transcendence but transformation. Its not about escaping life, but to be changed by it and thus be a force for good within it.

The realm of the spirit and the realm of the material are not separate, they both feed and are fed by each other.

The twentieth century French Jesuit Priest and Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It is a phrase I have heard many times over the years. Now while I think I know what people mean by it; it bothers me greatly. The reason is that in my view it appears to diminish the human, the physical life. It seems to suggest that the physical life is of little importance, merely a home for the spirit. That what comes before and perhaps follows our physical life is somehow more important than this life. That somehow our human experiences are less than sacred. I am not convinced; dualism has always troubled me. I personally don’t see a separation between body and spirit. This disembodied spirituality troubles me. The reason is that if we see the body as somehow less than spirit, or on the other hand see nothing sacred at all in our humanity this can lead to all kinds of troubles. I personally see the body as deeply sacred indeed. For me the body is a beautiful expression of the spirit come to life.

This view about body and spirit has been described by Jorge N. Ferrer, professor of religious psychology as “embodied spirituality.” He wrote that:

“Embodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as the home of the complete human being, as a source of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual transformation.

The body is not an “It” to be objectified and used for the goals or even spiritual ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a “Thou,” an intimate partner with whom the other human dimensions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing forms of liberating wisdom.”

For Ferrer the body is the home of the complete human being. It is the physical reality in which we live. It is through the body that we both literally and metaphorically walk our own unique path. The mistake that so many religious understandings have made is that they have seen the body as the prison of the soul. Something that the spirit or soul needs to be liberated from. He claims that the mystery of incarnation never suggested that spirit entered into the body but that the spirit became flesh. To quote John’s Gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh.” Through our bodies, our lives, the way we live our lives the spirit comes to life. We are here for a reason, life truly means something and it is our task to bring that something to life, through our lives, through our bodily existence.

Embodied spirituality is about fully inhabiting our lives, our thoughts, our feelings our relationships with ourselves, our lives, each other and the mystery that connects all life. It’s about being fully present in our bodies and lives and therefore fully experiencing our potential, being fully alive. The body is not just a suit that clothes our being. It is through the body that we experience what it is to be fully alive. They say “listen to your body”, sage wisdom indeed. For me the body is not a separate entity to spirit, I cannot agree with this dualistic view, it seems to me that it is through the body that spirit comes alive and further through the body that the spirit is fed.

Embodied spirituality views every aspect of our humanity, whether that be body, spirit, heart, mind and consciousness as equal partners in bringing the self, community and world into a fuller alignment with the mystery that brings into being all life, while at the same time connects all life. I suspect it’s a kind of panentheism, that sees all life as being in God and that God is in all life and that little or perhaps infinite more. It sees the full engagement of the body as being vital to spiritual growth and transformation.

This brings me back to that definition of spirituality, to “increase our sensitivity to life” to which I like to add and thus to be affected by and thus become effective in life. The purpose of spiritual and religious ritual and practice is to enable this to happen, to fill our spirit levels. It is important though that we do not become slaves to such things, as we will then completely kill the spirit and become slaves to the ritual.

Carol P. Christ wrote:

‘Embodied theology is rooted in personal experiences in our individual
bodies. At the same time, we all live in a relational world, shaped by
social and historical events and forces that are shared.’

The spirit comes alive through our experiences, both personal and shared. By increasing our sensitivity to life we will know experiences beyond our imaginings and life will become our constant teacher. We will grow in deeper understanding and most importantly we will become more effective in our daily living and truly become of service to life and those we meet in it.

So let’s increase our sensitivity to life. Lets engage fully with everything. Let’s be affect by and increasingly effective in life. Let us not become slaves to our rituals but inspired by them. Let us engage fully with life, mind, body, spirit and soul.

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