Chapter One: My Spiritual Journey (May 15)

At salon last night, we talked about our  spiritual journeys. Some of us are "recovering Catholics;" some are steeped in the 12-Step traditions; all nine of us are spiritual mutts--a little of this, a little of that.

We talked about the differences between religion and spirituality.  Both are paths to understanding "whatever is bigger" than we are. Religions include credos that members share; spirituality is more loosey goosey, more individual.

Religions have rituals, hierarchies and vocabularies.  If you grow up in a particular religious tradition, you may look across the fence at the others and think them peculiar--and vice versa.  The tighter the box ("People who don't believe like we do are going to Hell" for example) the more likely that the people on one side of the fence will dislike people on the other. At salon, the word "mystery" kept coming up when we talked about our spiritual journeys.

When I was a little girl, we sang "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" in Sunday School.  We also sang "Jesus loves the little children/ All the children of the world/red and yellow, black and white...."
Since Jesus was the man in the songs and the stained glass windows and not one of the people I knew around town, those two songs were mysterious: Someone I couldn't even see loved everybody.

In the segregated South, black people and white people lived in two separate worlds.  Jesus might love 'em both, but they didn't seem to love each other all that much--if you judge by their actions.  Colored People had their own churches, water fountains, and schools; White people had theirs.

It wasn't a perfect world.  Some people said one thing and did another--just like they do now, just like we all do sometime.  Prejudice and Hypocrisy, you name it--it was all there, right up beside the Golden Rule and Goodness.

Toni Morrison--one of my favorite writers--said something to this effect: The best gift from parents to children is "their faces lighting up" when their children enter a room. (http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/Does-Your-Face-Light-Up-Video)

Belief in religious principles and stories was its own good thing.  Belief was like gravity holding everything together.  But what meant more than belief, what sustained me when pieces started flying off the ground when tornadoes came out of nowhere, was love.  My parents' faces lit up when I walked into the room--as did the faces of certain luminous teachers and grown ups and friends.

We could have sung  "Pine trees love me this I know" (or stones or ice cream or pumpkins or marigolds) and I'd have believed it.  But what mattered more than belief to me, what formed chapter one of my spiritual journey, was the deep well of feeling loved and heard and seen (imperfect as I was)  in the world, imperfect as it was.