Slant on Religion

I have a feeling I am going to upset a great number of people by adding this section to my page, but that has never really stopped me in the past. Who knows, maybe I will touch a few gentle souls out there. As a quick background, I am active within the Episcopal church, especially its young adult ministry. I have been a leader in UCSB's Episcopal Campus Ministry (also called the Canterbury group). However, near the end of college I was disillusioned with the local church but not my spirituality. Being an avid backpacker and rock climber, my spirituality has a strong link to nature and the outdoors. During my time in the church, and especially my time away from the church, here is what I have been able to decide: Christ and God are but names, labels people use to try and define the spirituality beyond our understanding. I happen to use those terms within my understanding, but that does not invalidate others who use terms like Allah, Shiva, Osirus, Gaia, the goddess, and whatever other terms are out there. There are many people in my age group that do not buy into the ideas of organized religions but understand that something is out there. They may not have put a label or name on the spirituality in their lives, but does that mean it is any less there or that it is weaker? I feel in some it may be stronger. It is a scary thing to believe in something you can not name or label. Spirituality exists outside our realm of understanding, and any who say they understand truly can never understand. By giving it a name and a label, we attempt to bring it within our realm of understanding, or at least fool ourselves that we can eventually understand. I look upon the spiritual journey as a process of trying to let go of the need for labels.

To help describe this journey, let me include a metaphore that a close friend of mine and I came up with. We call it the Box Metaphore. The way our minds work, we are always striving to understand what is around us. To help this understanding, we use names or labels for ideas and objects. These lables define the dimensions of an object. When I mention the word apple, it conjours up an image and expectation of an object. These are the dimensions of that object that are defined by that label. God and spirituality in general are things that do not have dimensions, they are without boundaries. Yet, by attaching labels we try to define boundaries and put these things in boxes so that we may understand them. If you can imagine yourself in a box, this is the spiritual journey. We walk around in these boxes, looking for a door and a key to that door. When we find them we step out of the box and into a slightly larger box. We continue this until we step from the last box and no longer have the need for labels. That last box may never be reachable, at least in this life, but that is what I strive for on my journey. The keys and the doors? These are things that cannot be found alone. Sometimes they are extreme experiences, like a life threatening car accident, or something much more subtle, like a brief conversation over a beer. Whatever they are, they end up altering your view on life. Sometimes you may not recognize them until long after the change has happened, and sometimes you can see them a mile away. Either way, keep your eyes and ears open and experience life in a mindful manner. I have a few keys here with me, maybe the fit one of your doors. Do you happen to have a key for me? Does that make sense?

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