In honor of TVUUC
Ten Qualities of Mature Spirituality
First
delivered at Friendship Fellowship of Pineda on March 26, 2006
Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield wrote
a popular book entitled A Path with Heart. I highly recommend it. Even if
one does not do all of the mental exercises, many of the meditations can be used
affectively in isolation. I use one in particular when I have difficulty falling
asleep, a purpose that might set a practicing Buddhist’s teeth on edge but I
suspect Kornfield would be pleased it is serving a positive purpose in my life.
I found the most compelling aspect
to the book to be his chapter on mature spirituality. (Kornfield 1993,
chapter 21 p. 309-321) He lists ten qualities that define mature
spirituality. Throughout the ten qualities runs an undercurrent that cannot be
overlooked, particularly by Unitarian Universalists.
The quality of nonidealism refers to acknowledging that no person, thing or event is perfect, including ourselves. We must adopt compassion and relate to others with the heart instead of through the lens of ideals held in the mind. Perfectionism is unattainable and leads to judgmental attitudes and being overly critical rather than caring and compassionate. We fail to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the world that when we attempt to achieve what can never be attained. What a burden if everyone we encounter was seeking perfection in us!
Nonidealism leads naturally into
the next quality of mature spirituality, kindness. This isn’t the sort of
kindness that inspires us to rescue scrawny kittens or say something nice to our
grumpy neighbor. It’s the fundamental notion of self-acceptance when we are
kind to ourselves rather than maintaining a constant emotional field of guilt,
blame or shame. Religion easily becomes what Alan Watts calls a “grim duty”
when we cannot bring ourselves to a point of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance
is harder than it sounds and requires the third quality of mature spirituality,
patience. A spiritual journey encompasses more than a christening, a
confirmation or a prayer over the Thanksgiving meal once a year. Very few of us
will wake up one morning with the realization that spiritual completeness came
to us over night. Living in harmony with dharma, Tao, the universe, God, nature
or with whatever we seek to harmonize is a process through time. Patience is not
striving for accomplishment of a spiritual goal but recognizing it as being a
journey through the seasons and beyond time.
Therefore the next quality of
mature spirituality is immediacy. We find our spirituality in the here and now.
It is not a gift to be bestowed in the future it is something we cultivate
within the context of our lives. I recently heard Joseph Campbell in The
Power of Myth define eternity as something other than endless time. He said
it was something outside of time. It was not the past and not the future, but
now. This moment. But as soon as one contemplates the moment it is gone. That is
eternity. So if one seeks eternal spirituality it must be a continual process of
the here and now. One Zen saying is, “after the ecstasy, the laundry.”
Rev. Scott Alexander, minister of
the River Road Church in Bethesda, MD, related a fantastic example of this frame
of reference in a sermon he has delivered several times entitled NDY. On a
dreary, cold rainy New England day he encountered a surly sales clerk who
grumbled, “What a miserable day!” to which he spontaneously and cheerfully
responded, “Yea, but it sure beats being dead.” NDY by the way means Not
Dead Yet. The point of his sermon is that life itself is holy and there is
simple joy to be found in being alive in this world. (Rzepka 2001, 153, 157)
So now we have an integrated and
personal sense of the sacred as our next quality of mature spirituality. This is
the direct opposite of compartmentalizing our lives. Nothing is divided between
the sacred and the secular. We honor our spirituality in our every word and
action. We don’t adopt a spiritual attitude when we walk through this door, we
had it in the car on the way here, when we made breakfast this morning and when
we go to work, school or anywhere else on Monday morning. We tap into the
spiritual nature of not only a bird’s twittering on a cool crisp day but in
the wailing of a baby and the honking of a car horn.
The next quality comes almost
naturally to Unitarian Universalists and most, if not all of us, have very
little difficulty with the notion of questioning. Mature spirituality is not
adopting a philosophy or blindly following a teacher. Instead we recognize that
we must see and experience for ourselves. We sustain a willingness to discover
what is so without imitation. Yes, of course we turn to a living tradition for
inspiration but we do not shy away from questioning the relevance and validity
of any aspect of the sources of our faith.
This predisposition to questioning
doesn’t automatically guarantee possession of the next aspect of mature
spirituality, flexibility. Flexibility in this respect refers to responding to
our world with compassion and understanding, recognizing the changing
environment around us. Mature spirituality allows us to recognize when to stay
present and when to let go. Flexibility is joyful and restful. It allows us to
let go of strife and gives us the wisdom to know when to hold on and when to
move on.
My favorite aspect of mature
spirituality is the idea of embracing opposites. It's my favorite because the
Yin Yang symbol holds special appeal to me. This particular aspect is very
different from nonidealism and kindness which are more childlike. The ability to
embrace opposites is decidedly unchildlike. It is the ability to recognize that
a single person is not all bad or all good but can choose to behave either way
at different times. Someone who is angry is not angry all of the time. As we
mature we become more comfortable with paradox, life’s ambiguities. Utter
duality seems a rather naïve and simplistic world view. A person who embraces
opposites can truly appreciate irony, metaphor and humor. Humor being an aspect
I might be inclined to add to Kornfield’s list in its own right.
Kornfield’s ninth quality of
mature spirituality has to do with the concept of relationship or relatedness.
We are always in relationship to something. We may have little control over what
happens in our life but we can choose how to relate to our experiences. The
mature spiritualist possesses a willingness to relate to all things. Although at
times we may be sorely tested and tempted to withdraw from the world around us
we can maintain such isolationism. We exist in relationship to the people in our
lives, the food we consume, the air we breathe, and the ground we walk on.
Remind anyone of our affirmation to respect the interdependent web of all
existence?
All of these qualities lead
invariably to the tenth quality of ordinariness. This is a simple presence in
the moment that allows the mystery of life to show itself. We cannot do that
without nonidealism, kindness, patience, immediacy, integrated sacredness,
questioning, flexibility, embracing opposites and a willingness to relate. This
quality is finding a balance between what was and what will be, which is the
here and now. As I mentioned earlier, Joseph Campbell refers to this moment as
the true definition of infinity. Infinity isn’t the endlessness of time,
it’s the illusiveness of the present moment. Once I have considered whether or
not I am in the here and now, that moment is gone. The ordinariness of spiritual
life comes from a heart that has learned trust and from a gratitude for the gift
of human life.
One thing immediately jumped out at me when I first read Kornfield’s ten qualities of mature spirituality. It was an unfulfilled expectation actually. There is a quality that is the Unitarian Universalism’s greatest strength, a source of constant struggle and a convenient avenue of criticism from our detractors. I had every expectation of seeing the world tolerance appear on the list. I was surprised it wasn’t there until I realized it is an assumption underlying all the other qualities.
Unitarian Universalists are tolerant, but too often we don’t fully grasp what it means to be tolerant. Our critics, and sometimes we too, confuse it with the extremist position of moral relativism. Total relativism accepts that every belief and every value is just as good as every other (differences are simply a matter of historical timer period, geography or culture) and then there is the polar opposite, dogmatism, which espouses a set of beliefs and values as the only valid ethical system. (Mesle 1993)
Female genital mutilation, torture and genocide are put into practice by one extreme and the other has no basis for objecting. I don’t think so!
Robert Mesle uses the phrase, committed relativism. It is the conviction that it is possible to make legitimate value judgments within and between different lifestyles, cultures and religions without claiming that there is only one absolute right and wrong, only one absolutely best action, lifestyle, culture or religion.
Committed relativists acknowledge that some actions are immoral, some lifestyles unhealthy and some cultures self-destructive. But just as important, they acknowledge that moral actions, healthy lifestyles and constructive cultures comprise a vast spectrum of positive options from which individuals and societies can choose.
The same goes for the tolerance of
religious beliefs, a subject in Unitarian Universalism that is fraught. I’m
going to use a very specific example right now because I believe it to be the
one we struggle with most. We live in a society in which Christianity is
embedded in our culture as the majority religion whether or not actual numbers
still stand up to that claim. As a consequence, most of us in this room are
probably more familiar with Christianity than another other world religion.
Indeed, many of us were raised in Christian households. More importantly, many
people become Unitarian Universalists because they were at some point wounded by
one or more attributes of Christianity. And aside from the personal experiences,
the highly visible and vocal Christian far right are shoving their unique brand
of Christianity down people’s throats via the political arena.
Is it any wonder some of our
congregants wince if a minister mentions Jesus in the pulpit and stay away in
droves if a church creates a Bible study program? It’s picking at a very raw
scab and who wants to do that?
So guess what? We’re accused of intolerance.
“Wait a minute! Aren’t you the religion that is supposed to respect everyone? Well see there you have it, you’re a bunch of snobbish, self-righteous hypocrites. You say you respect all religions but you sneer at Christianity while proudly quoting Buddhist texts, celebrating Chinese New Year and making sure your kids know about the Hindu pantheon.”
Like all critics they have a point. I have personally been approached by UUs who self-identify as Christian UUs. Several have compared their religious beliefs to being a homosexual who has yet to come out of the closet. They genuinely fear the reaction if they were to admit their true beliefs. One relayed a story to me in which he felt run out of a UU congregation once he did confide his Christianity in a discussion group. Tolerance is something we struggle with and there are times we could certainly be more respectful and more tolerant. Espousing tolerance means we must open ourselves to identifying good even if it takes more effort on our part.
However, it does not mean we must accept every religious belief as healthy and worthy of our respect. A religious doctrine that insists upon the oppression of women does not affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. A religious doctrine that instructs us to support a president simply because he’s the president does not accept the right of conscience. A religious doctrine that ridicules its internal critics does not promote free and responsible search for truth and meaning
Sadly, there are elements of Christianity, particularly relevant with the political overreaching of the far right that understandably arouse our contempt. To the point where we forget it is entirely possible to live a life in Jesus’ footsteps worshipping him as God in keeping with the seven principles. Does it really matter if someone believes Jesus is God incarnate if he also accepts that there are other paths to salvation? If he puts his beliefs into practice to help others rather than to condemn? I personally know more Christians like this than like Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and ilk.
We’re already admitted cherry pickers. Just look at the claims we make regarding our living tradition. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that provided we go about the business of picking our cherries fairly, by applying the yard stick of the seven principles to the abundance of religious and spiritual wisdom found in our living tradition. There remains plenty to nourish mature spirituality in any tradition, including Christianity, or none of them.
I’d like to close with a quote from James Luther Adams, twentieth century UU theologian.
A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably also a protection for a hidden idolatory of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny. It is not the faith of the free. The faith of free persons must tangibly make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice. (Beach 1998, 41)
I
think his last sentence is key. The faith of free persons must tangibly
make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice. As
Unitarian Universalists, we must be mindful that we are specifically called to
move from mature spirituality (an attitude of appreciation for the world) into
the realm of social action (a way of being in the world).
Copyright © 2006
Ann Fuller, March 2006
Resources
Beach, George Kimmich ed. The
Essential James Luther Adams, Skinner House Books, Boston, 1998.
Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, Bantam Books, New York, 1993.
Mesle, Robert C. and John B. Cobb, Process Theology: A Basic Introduction, Chalice Press, 1993.
Rzepka, Jane Ranney and Kenneth Sawyer, Thematic Preaching: An Introduction, Chalice Press, 2001.