Inclusive Spirituality

It happened once again. I was asked to take a funeral in a tragic situation. The family described their dear departed as intelligent, philosophical, very musical AND particularly emphasized that he was spiritual but not religious. I feel right at home in that setting and have strong intuition about what people mean when they use the phrase.

I prefer to call it inclusive spirituality to avoid any unnecessary negatives. It’s generally healthier to talk about what you are than what you aren’t. It took me a while to come around to that distinction and I fought for the “spiritual but not religious” label for some time. But it’s not a fight I need to take on anymore. I’m very comfortable with the phrase inclusive spiritual and I think it catches the spirit of what people mean when they say spiritual but not religious but without the unnecessary drama. If there’s one thing we need less of in the world, its drama.

Labels are a funny thing. None of us want to live with them, but we can’t communicate without them. We spend our days growing in and out of various labels like a pair of jeans that shrink in the wash and stretch with use. That’s all fine as long as we don’t imagine that ANY of the labels fully define who we are. Even our most carefully crafted labels will fall short and grow holes eventually. Still, we do our best to identify ourselves with the language we have.

What are some of the features of inclusive spirituality? Let’s start with the bleeding obvious. It’s inclusive!

A cowboy went to an up market church wearing jeans, ragged boots and a worn out old hat. As the cowboy took his seat, people moved away from him. No one welcomed him. As the cowboy was leaving the church, the minister approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor. “Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what he thinks would be appropriate attire for worship.” The old cowboy assured the preacher he would. The next Sunday, he showed back up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored.

The preacher approached the man and said, “I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church.”
“I did,” replied the old cowboy.
“If you spoke to God, what did he tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?” asked the preacher.
“Well, sir, God told me that She didn’t have a clue what I should wear, seeing as She’d never been in this church.”

Maybe you have had your own experience of being made to feel unwelcome in church because you didn’t have the right clothes, lifestyle or labels. I couldn’t tell you how many people have asked me over the years, almost apologetically, if I would baptize their babies or conduct their weddings, even though they aren’t members of any church. Many of them have already been rejected by 5 or 6 churches who insisted that they go to classes or agree to certain labels.

The whole intent behind inclusive spirituality is to bring people together. Incidentally that’s also what the word “religion” means, “bring together”. If you are one of those people who have been shunned by the church because you didn’t measure up in some way or other, then this message is for you. Inclusive spirituality is concerned with bringing together; head and heart, past and present, beliefs and values, people and neighbors, tribe and nation, reason and passion, spirituality and religion. All of life is part of a unity that is miraculously connected and beautifully meaningful. Maybe you don’t even have to choose between spirituality and religion. Just be yourself, love what you love, and live beyond the labels.

Having It All. It’s All Spiritual!
Inclusive spirituality is about having it all, including it all, loving it all. Millions of people have been deeply moved by the Elizabeth Gilbert book, “Eat, Pray Love.” It’s the story of her search for meaning in a variety of places. She wanted her life to make sense as a whole, and she wanted to honor all the parts. She wanted to include even seeming opposites in a worldview that excludes nothing. She was on a quest to eat, pray and love with intention.

The concept of having it all always reminds me of a Seinfeld episode. George Castanza has a fantasy about making love to a woman while eating a sandwich. The scene has George under the sheets, his hands occasionally appearing out of the sheets to dip his pastrami sandwich in hot mustard. Then he says under his breath- “Now for the trifecta.” Grinning, he puts his ear piece in and begins watching a portable television under the sheets. The woman turns the light on, throws the sheets off and sees George eating his sandwich and watching television. She says, “what are you doing.” George replies sheepishly. “Pleasuring you?”

Narcissism, and pastrami, aside, what if it was possible to have it all and learn from it all? Inclusive spirituality honors all traditions, religious and otherwise, science included. It honors inner wisdom that intuits so much ancient wisdom. It honors the collective imagination and the earth’s wisdom. Inclusive spirituality touches every aspect of life, and includes all experience and all language. My favorite quote from Gilbert is about the value in cherry picking, which is taking wisdom from many different sources and not feeling tied to one tradition alone. She says, “I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted... You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light." (Eat Pray Love p. 208)

When it comes to life partners and family doctors you might want to find one and stick with them. There is something to be said for loyalty and intimacy in those cases. However when it comes to your spiritual essence on a unique human journey finding your connections to all else, no such limitations apply, because God is in your bloodstream. All of life is infused with wonder and meaning the way sunlight glistens on water and oxygen moves through your body. You don’t want to limit your experience of life any more than you want to limit your oxygen intake.

Inclusive Spirituality is Universal
I like to think that Jesus was a great humanist preacher and an inclusive spiritual teacher in his day. He seemed to prefer ordinary people over priests, compassion over rituals, and justice over judgment. Jesus traveled with a group of rural hippies who were critical of a religion controlled by Roman yuppies. Jesus was nominally Jewish, knew nothing of the later Christian movement named after him, and was intolerant of the intolerance of the temple. He seemed to appreciate nature and laughter and food. I don’t know what he thought of pastrami, but he certainly had his own way of eating, praying and loving with intention.

Jesus was living the truth of many ancient traditions that life is beautiful and every person and every experience contains some golden nugget of truth. There is an ancient story from India that points to the universal truth of unity.

The God Brahma got sick of being alone. So he created the goddess, Maya. Just for fun, Brahma and Maya created a whole world of illusion; sun, stars, planets, oceans, animals. Then they said, “Let’s create an animal that is so intelligent and aware that it can appreciate this wondrous creation.” So they created humans.

Then the game began. Maya cut Brahma up into millions of little pieces and placed a piece of Brahma in every human being. Maya said to the human beings, “ I am going to make you forget who you are, then you can try and find yourself. You will spend a lifetime searching for your true essence.”

Every now and again, a little spark of light awakens in each of us. It comes at odd moments, sometimes with thoughts, sometimes while eating, praying and loving, but also in spontaneous moments of new awareness. As more and more people have more and more moments of waking up to their true essence, the world becomes a more peaceful place.

Religion is one place that this awakening happens, but it’s not the only place. For many people, it doesn’t happen in religion anymore because religion has over identified with its labels and confused the label with the reality. If one religion or another still gets the job done for you, that’s great. If not, or if like me you don’t want to be limited to one perspective alone, then look to the life in front of you for inspiration. It’s all there, all inside of you, all at your feet. As Franz Kafka wrote,

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Reposted from Soulseeds, which is now my main blog. Please visit.

In the Field Beyond Labels

Christian, evangelical, liberal, progressive, fundamentalist, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, theist, deist, atheist, post theist, pantheist, panentheist, naturalist, religious naturalist, humanist, spiritual humanist, spiritual, spiritual but not religious, religious and not spiritual, spiritual and religious, neither spiritual nor religious..........there are enough labels flying around these days to start a philosophical supermarket.

When it comes to human beings, labels have limited value. Store items need their labels fixed firmly in place. People are better off keeping a loose hold on labels. You and your thoughts are so much more than any one, two, three or four word label could ever capture. Better to write your labels in pencil because they are likely to change over time. There is no need to feel trapped in a label from the past.

In fact some of the desire for labels comes from an egoic need to be special and marked. We end up in our own philosophical brand label competition – my label is better than yours, my label is more popular than yours, my label is more elusive and ambiguous than yours. Who are we kidding? There’s no lasting self worth in a stick-on label. Eventually the adhesive wears out and usually before you are ready.

My motto is to be open to everything and attached to nothing, including labels. This is the path to freedom and inner peace. I take truth from where it presents itself and keep moving towards the light. If a label nudges me along for a while, I use it. If its effect begins to fade, or it begins to make me feel smug, I leave the label for the open roads of possibility. At my best moments, I am at peace with my true self which is beyond any label because it doesn’t depend on any particular thoughts or feelings for verification. It is my born identity, and like the amnesic superspy Jason Bourne, I sometimes struggle to remember its origins. It is my unchanging essence that is one with the source of life.

It’s in this space between the labels that I am most at ease. It’s also in the space between the labels that the best human interactions take place. We can genuinely connect from a place of openness and without defense. We have so much more in common than our labels can even hint at. The poet Rumi described it like this-

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

For now, I choose the label that simply reads, “I am.” What is the way? “I am!” Where is the truth? “I am!” Who is the life? “I am!” Of course, you are too. Many “I ams” make a powerful “We are”, freed from territorial defense and related at the most intimate level.

Ps- Just a reminder that Meg and I have launched our website, Soulseeds, and we invite you to check it out. You are sure to find something that inspires and encourages you.

Spiritual but not Religious

I am comfortable describing myself as spiritual but not religious and to name Jesus among my spiritual inspirations. When I say I am spiritual but not religious, I mean this and more.

I am inspired by the life and example of Jesus who wasn’t a Christian, not even a religious person but a lover of life and a champion of the poor. The only time he is recorded as having gone to church was to protest religious corruption and hypocrisy.

I feel the presence of divine beauty all around me without being limited by the gods of one religion or another.

I find inspiration in the Bible as poetry without reading it literally or feeling limited by the lens of a particular tradition.

I experience every moment as a miracle without having to deny science or natural laws.

I live my life with optimism and love without needing to look over my shoulder in guilt or fear of judgment.

There is a verse (Isaiah 6:1) that illustrates some of these spiritual but not religious principles.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon a throne, and his train filled the whole temple.” A little later in the same chapter, “The whole earth is full of His glory.”

These verses CANNOT possible be understood literally. The dimensions of the temple are well known. It was HUGE. When Princess Diana got married, the train on her wedding gown was 25 feet long? That’s impressive, but wouldn’t fill a temple. The longest train ever worn was 4468 feet in Cyprus a few years back. That’s almost obscene, but still wouldn’t fill a temple.

Understood literally, the words lose all meaning. Understood as poetry, the train becomes a beautiful metaphor. The train of a gown or robe has no function, other than the hint of mystery. It hints at what lies just beneath the surface, where life comes alive with new awareness and wide eyed joy. Life is an outrageous miracle full of abundant mystery and extravagant wonder like a massive train.

It speaks of the mysterious connectedness of life, the bricolage of seamless entities that fills my life with synchronicity and meaning. It reminds me that I am connected to the world around me in so many ways. I am connected to the people around me – every one of them is an expression of divine beauty. I am connected to my passions and when my passions intersect with the world’s needs, healing takes place. The world becomes filled with possibility.

Spirituality without religion honors science and common sense without being limited by literalism or dogma. I can honor facts and scientific knowledge and yet spirituality is an awareness that certain facts give me goosebumps. They change me from the inside out and motivate me to be all that I hope for in the world.

Look around you! The whole earth is filled with the train of God, the hint of mystery and the miracle of love.

This is part of what it means for me to be spiritual but not religious. What does it mean for you?

Spring Spirituality

Something spring-like is stirring in the soul of the world. Something too powerful to ignore is awakening within many of us like spring buds. The lingering sun, the shifting shadows, the smell of soil; the emerging spirit within us is stretching and reaching for new adventures.

The calling of my ministry has long been to bring the power of the here and now into the church; to bridge the Sunday/ Monday gap and talk about real life issues in relevant language. Now I find my energies shifting subtly, to direct people to their own spiritual awakening wherever they are in the here and now.

This will be spiritual community unlike anything the world has seen before; connecting across ideological and geographic boundaries, forming profound partnerships and giving a legitimate voice to the millions of spiritual but not religious folk in the world.

Religion is still important for many, and I affirm religion that fosters healing in the world. That will continue and I’m glad for it. However many people now look outside of religion to have their spirits nurtured.

The message will be the same; one global community coming together around life affirming shared values, using religious language where it helps to affirm the wonder and beauty of human existence.

Many of you have traveled with me for 5 or 6 years now, from one hemisphere to another. We have laughed, cried and wrestled together with issues and possibilities. I am incredibly grateful for you and what you have added to my life with your comments and questions, stories and inspirations. Our online community has grown in number and spirit, as we have engaged the issues of the day. You have affirmed my teaching, encouraged my best, and accepted my unfolding journey.

Now we move into a new phase in our collective evolution. Its newness will bring incredible opportunities for even more authentic expression. Things are about to get very interesting! You will not want to miss a moment of the next season of this spiritual journey.

Will you answer the call to awaken and live with freedom and passion? Spring beckons, the horizon entices. This powerful vision is calling for your best humanity.

Are You Haunted by Memories of Religion?

As I flew out of the UK yesterday, the head of the Church of England was saying this-

“I believe we are living in a country that is uncomfortably haunted by the memory of religion and doesn’t quite know what to do with it....in a society which is religiously plural and confused and therefore not necessarily hostile.”

Haunted! Confused! Uncomfortable! Not necessarily hostile! These aren’t exactly words that inspire confidence. I’m pleased he is paying attention, but I’m not sure he has accurately captured the mood of England.

My experience in England was of small but passionate, progressive churches. Each one of these churches felt somewhat suppressed and restricted by their respective traditions that are becoming increasingly outmoded and irrelevant. They are frustrated that more people don’t attend, but don’t feel they are encouraged or resourced by their denominations to make the necessary changes to attract people.

On my way to these churches, I drove past scores of people cheering their kids on soccer fields and riding horses, shopping and reveling. None of these people looked haunted or confused at all. I suspect they remember religion like they remember school assemblies; a faint memory of disinterest, but not haunting memories.

The majority of English society has given up on religion. Many have also bypassed progressive religion in preference for a self styled spirituality that includes yoga, meditation, personal transformation, ethical values, a strong ecological commitment and joyful relationships. They are spiritual but not religious. They pile flowers on the site of road accidents because they feel connected to people, living and dead, and the religious differences are irrelevant in the scheme of life.

I arrive back from England, inspired and excited. I am more committed than ever to offering a space for spiritual but not religious people to be accepted for who they are, to reflect on their beliefs, to name their experiences and to connect with other spirit seekers who want to make the world a more peaceful place.

As I transited through Chicago, I realized that it was the five year anniversary of my arrival in America. I reflected on that milestone, recalled the tinge of sadness at leaving the most progressive Anglican Church in the world, and remembered the excitement at arriving to join c3. The vision of SBNR.org is the same vision I sat around the table in 2003 and discussed with the c3 selection committee. The DOW was up 400 points at this stage. The sun was shining in Grand Haven. I was overcome with a sense of excitement and optimism.

I boarded the plane for Grand Rapids, and whose distinctive belly laugh did I hear? Don Hoekstra. He and Patti were arriving back from family in Denver. Don had been instrumental in creating the connection between me and West Michigan back in 2003. He and I spent many hours in 2003 and 2004 talking about the reality of SBNR and the inability of churches to speak meaningfully to this group. In America, as in England (and I suspect many other countries), people have bypassed progressive religion and moved straight into the spiritual but not religious category.

I celebrate this group, and feel the strongest resonance with them. I suspect most of them are satisfied and comfortable with where they are, and not at all haunted by the memory of religion. They are profoundly passionate and committed to a better world. I stand alongside spiritual but not religious people everywhere ready to love the world to pieces, one peace at a time.

Spiritual Beings on a Human Journey

I’m now into my second week of the UK tour. It’s all going smashingly. I’ve met some great people, seen some incredible places and had some wonderful realizations. I continue to find myself enjoying the beautifully human moments. More and more, the ordinary moments hold the treasure for me.

I’ve always felt this way, but it seems very clear to me now that spirituality is about a full experience of life, all of life. My favorite moments in church have always been the human moments. There were some nice moments in church at St James Piccadilly yesterday. A St Patrick’s Day parade passed by the church (it felt and sounded like it was going right through the church). First it was bagpipes, then a Johnny Cash sound-alike, then a big band, and raucous cheering all the while. The Catholic celebration outside merged with our protestant celebration inside. It was a nice metaphor for the merging of perspectives, traditions and lives. We really aren’t that different; English, Australian, American, Catholic, Protestant, old, young.

This realization came to me as I was speaking to a group of people in England, not that different to groups of people anywhere in the world. At St James, they gather in a motley circle to receive communion. I found this moving, after sharing in my sermon about a former church where people elbowed each other for first sip of the communion wine and prostitutes nodded off while standing at the communion rail.

Then I discovered that Rabbi Rami had spoken at C3 the same morning on spirituality as humanity, even the challenging moments. I shouldnt be surprised by that synchronicity. Rami is a kindred spirit.

There have been memorable human moments with each group I have mixed with, too many to mention here. I have now been from London to the top of England, into “All Creatures Great and Small” country, and across to Leeds. In each group there have been atheists, progressive Christians, Buddhists and people becoming more and more resonant with the phrase ‘Spiritual but not Religious.” One moment from Leeds stays with me. A 93 year old man spoke up right towards the end of the workshop. He had struck me early on as someone who has seen a lot of life, and still smiles in the face of it all. He said he was drawn to nature and then recited a beautiful verse from William Wordsworth’s poem “Daffodils”. I was very moved and it has stayed with me-

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

He captured the essence of living as a spiritual being on a human journey through mystery, nature, beauty, love and humanity.

Spiritual But Not Religious

What’s your feeling about mainstream religion? Do you resonate more with the phrase, spiritual but not religious?

I grew up in the church. When kids said, “You live in a church?” I understood their confusion. I lived so near the church that I could hear church mice eating stale communion wafers. My early memories include over-sized bishops falling through dining chairs, adult home groups singing “trust and obey” with off key gusto and Jesus’ sister (from the local psych. hospital) snoring loudly in the front pew through my dad’s sermons. It was all curious to me, curious enough to draw me into its web when I came of age.

Maybe it was because I was so familiar with church that I never fell for religion’s dogmatic lair. I sat through four years of reformed theological education and didn’t get excited about much of it. It wasn’t that I disagreed. I just couldn’t see the point. My desire to run a church was about nurturing the type of raw human community that had intrigued me as a kid, rather than telling people what to believe.

Two decades, three countries, and a bunch of grey hair later, I bear the scars of my idealism. In every place, there are people prepared to bleed for their dogmatic comforts. There was the Benedictine Monk. He was an accountant by day, caped crusader by night, hell bent on removing me from “his” church. There was the threat of heresy charges for not condemning my gay and lesbian friends. There was the letter from a Bishop stating that I remain in good standing in the Anglican world, and his sneered tone as he handed it to me, “this isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

Then there were the constant reminders that my presence in churches, though offensive to some Christians, meant something positive to the church alumni. These were the people I wanted to be in community with, and I always believed that I could still nurture the type of community that met the needs of this scattered group. The homeless people, the broken people, the creative people, the liberated people, the recovering people, the inquiring people, the family people, those who put their humanity before their ideology; these were my people. I met them in pubs and on university campuses, in gyms and at school picnics. I stood alongside them at protests and bar lines. I just didn’t see them in church.

It was only when I arrived in West Michigan (of all the most unlikely places) that I found a sizeable population of church alumni who were prepared to get organized into a life affirming community. What’s more, they wanted to be part of a broader vision to resource and connect this massive network of people around the world. For the past 5 years I have worked with the most impressive group of human beings I could ever have hoped to encounter. C3 is ready to explode.

I am deeply committed to C3’s health and growth. I depend on this amazing community to feed and sharpen my vision and ideas. I am intimately related to the people and the shared vision. The next step in this evolution is for me to grow wings and fly into open space, knowing that the nest is secure.

The Spiritual but not Religious community is large in number, somewhere between 25 and 40 million just in the United States. Currently, the community is only loosely formed. A new and wonderful spirit is emerging that is passionate and inspiring. It is not bound by ideology or geography, but by a desire to live with integrity, grounded in the power of presence and compassion.

Together we serve the Greater Good, or God, or Wonder or whatever words best describe the beauty that sources our lives. We promote a sense of wonder, and the rapture of being alive. Spirituality is wonder, experienced in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.

I am most familiar with Christianity, but that is not an exclusive identity. I am Australian, but that doesn’t prevent me from being a global citizen. I am a parent, but that doesn’t fully define me. Above all else, I am a human being, on a journey of growth and discovery. The label I am most comfortable with, because it includes without compromise all the other roles I play, is inclusive spiritual.

Will you join me? You need give nothing up; neither identity nor tradition. If you like the idea of connecting with the massive number of people who no longer want to be defined by narrow beliefs, but want to have a deeper experience of life, then join the conversation. If you want to make a massive difference in the world, then join the conversation. Together we will love the world with abandon, in an ever widening circle of kindness, until the day when love conquers all hatred and no one and no thing is excluded from love’s tender embrace.