The "spirit" is something real in all human beings--what the Bible calls "ruah" and Plato calls "thymos."
It's what allows us to be angry and sad, to want things and to strive for truth and to be loyal and connected to our family and nation and to stand in awe before God.
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It's what allows us to be angry and sad, to want things and to strive for truth and to be loyal and connected to our family and nation and to stand in awe before God.
/1
But it means little to "be spiritual." Human beings are all, by nature, "spiritual."
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The question is what we do with this spirit that is inside us:
Do we use it to accomplish important and good things, or evil? Do we use it puff ourselves full of vanity, or to reach beyond ourselves and become part of a larger family, congregation, and nation?
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Do we use it to accomplish important and good things, or evil? Do we use it puff ourselves full of vanity, or to reach beyond ourselves and become part of a larger family, congregation, and nation?
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Do we allow our spirit to become bound to the idols that are the works of human hands, or to stand in humility before God, who is creator of heaven and earth?
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"Established religion" refers to a variety of traditions--Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu--that propose ways of grasping reality and our place in it; and ways of disciplining our actions so that we are likely to learn what is true and achieve what is good.
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Human individuals are rarely any good at examining these questions by themselves. They need traditional proposals to work with--traditions that have been tested over time and shown to have something substantial to offer.
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When individual men and women spurn all of the traditional proposals, they become desperate and vulnerable to giving themselves over to new inventions designed by people looking to exploit them--personality cults, drug cults, political cults.
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Of course, traditional religious institutions can be corrupt and corrupting too.
But you can be sure that a religion that's survived for many centuries has something substantial to offer as a proposal for how to think and how to live. If you're patient, you'll find it.
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But you can be sure that a religion that's survived for many centuries has something substantial to offer as a proposal for how to think and how to live. If you're patient, you'll find it.
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Finding the healthy and redeeming part of any religion is not a matter of looking it up on wikipedia. You need to find a congregation--a community of people you can learn from, people you can be a part of and who can become a part of you.
That's really the only way we learn.
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That's really the only way we learn.
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When I say a congregation, I don't mean a bunch of young singles, although that can have its place.
I mean an assembly of families that are bound to one another, whose purpose is to inherit traditions of thought, learning and behavior, and to pass them to new generations.
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I mean an assembly of families that are bound to one another, whose purpose is to inherit traditions of thought, learning and behavior, and to pass them to new generations.
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Such a congregation is the environment in which human beings naturally learn things of importance to them.
It is the way in which human beings become "spiritual" in a way that is healthy, productive, redemptive, and good.
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It is the way in which human beings become "spiritual" in a way that is healthy, productive, redemptive, and good.
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"Established religion" is always an attempt to make the life of the congregation more consistent, intelligent, thorough, clear, and reliable.
Sometimes it works brilliantly and sometimes it is just unimpressive or shallow or hypocritical.
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Sometimes it works brilliantly and sometimes it is just unimpressive or shallow or hypocritical.
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But "established religion," when brought down to reality in the life of a real congregation, is always *trying* to do something that is more useful and profound and helpful than what the unattached individual can do--trying to be "spiritual" by himself or by herself.
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When you meet some representative of "established religion" that isn't much good at it--like a shallow or arrogant religious professional, or a showy or cliquish congregation--the answer is not to turn away from established religion.
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The answer is to find a better congregation, a better teacher, a better tradition that can win your love and passion. That is capable of proposing a way of thinking and living that really does help you orient your spirit, turning you toward what is real and right.
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I'm sorry that there aren't any shortcuts here. You have to reject a lot of foolish and empty things before you can find "rest for your soul" (as Jeremiah puts it).
But you can be sure that you won't find it trying to be "spiritual" on your own.
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But you can be sure that you won't find it trying to be "spiritual" on your own.
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And you can be sure that it is out there in a religious tradition and congregation that is waiting for you to find it.
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The time now is "Elul zman," the time of rethinking and repentance leading up to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
It's the end of summer and a natural time for personal renewal for all of us.
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It's the end of summer and a natural time for personal renewal for all of us.
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Make just one decision this year in this time of rethinking and repentance:
Decide that this will be the year that you find a tradition and a congregation that have what you need.
/end
Decide that this will be the year that you find a tradition and a congregation that have what you need.
/end
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