Why spirituality? After all, it is not an obvious topic in a blog about community development online.
One obvious, prosaic reason is one of my markets is churches and faith groups. However, this sequence is not solely for the religious.
Spirituality has, for better or worse, become a word used beyond the confines of established religious institutions. Perhaps as more people became estranged from formal religion, they found meaning in spiritual experience.
So, allow me to set out my stall before you decide whether to follow this sequence.
What is spirituality?
My definition in two words is: paying attention. In one word it is: awareness. As well as their advantage in terms of memorability, these definitions are remarkable because these three words
- do not confirm or deny God’s existence. Whilst most major world religions recognise them as viable, if not the entirety of religious truth, they make sense to people with no religious affiliation too.
- imply and I would argue, insist spirituality is essentially material. It is about paying attention to the world.
- do not imply any sort of spirit world beyond what we perceive through our senses. They do not deny any such world although maybe imply what cannot be perceived is outside the realm of spirituality.
- ask: what can be perceived? Spirituality does not begin with this question, its stance is to pay attention to whatever presents itself. If you see visions or dream dreams, pay attention to them, take notes. Mostly these things are ephemeral, without meaning but occasionally they have meaning and visions form the basis of many spiritual classics. These are rare and will not occupy much space in this sequence of posts.
- do not prevent the telling of stories and indeed stories often illuminate what we see. We find expressing our experiences of the world is almost impossible in the language of theory; much easier in the language of story.
- imply interpretation of what is perceived. Everyone interprets the world as they perceive it. The problem is the way we interpret our perceptions determines what we perceive. Most religious traditions struggle with this tension between perception and interpretation.
My Spirituality Sequence
I’m planning to cover three main spirituality topics over the next few months. (The link takes you to a cornerstone page, listing the posts in this sequence.) I shall:
- begin with my own roots and share a few topics I find helpful and show how they relate to other themes in this blog. I shall cover topics such as incarnation, prayer and sanctification. I can’t think of three topics more likely to turn off my readers. But allow me to develop these themes and perhaps you’ll see things in a different way.
- build on a theme I shared a few weeks ago in a post where I reviewed a book about Asset Based Community Development. If you look at that post you will find a list of six asset types available to local communities. I’m planning to explore each of these in-depth.
- Explore some aspects of working online and how it relates to real life. How do you pay attention in the information-rich online world; a world in some respects far poorer than the real world?
This is a basic outline; I’ve no idea where it will take me because that is the nature of spirituality. So, whatever your religious tradition, keep an eye on what I’m writing in this sequence, you never know what I might stumble upon!
