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Reflection from our Co-Pastors
Thursday, October 20, 2022
“Transformation or Self-Inflation: The Challenge of Spirituality Today”
by Ilia Delio, Center for Christogenesis
Spirituality has exploded in the twenty-first century and spiritual paths are everywhere. Contemplative practices, spirituality groups, Eastern and Western paths of mysticism, all abound across the infinite terrain of cyberspace. Basically, one can find whatever group that fits one’s spirit: “We have the spirituality for you!” If there was a shopping mall dedicated to spirituality, it would be packed with seekers and spirituality stuff.
With so much spirituality around, one wonders why we have such a divided world. Surely, there is enough spiritual energy at hand to ignite a spaceship. How do we make sense of the abundance of spirituality and the depletion of world resources? An abundance of spirituality and global warming? An abundance of spirituality and homeless people? Something is not quite right.
We have built ourselves a very complex world, so complex that our overworked brains can no longer comprehend what we are reading. The daily overload of information depletes our spirits, and we are in need each day of soul nourishment. Spirituality seems to be a matter of survival. Without soul nourishment, we feel we will perish. But spirituality was never intended to be a therapeutic approach to self-maintenance or survival.
In fact, the great spiritual traditions are all centered around the transformation of the human person, not maintenance of the human person. We are not neutral with regard to the world: we either help make the world a better place or we unravel it. The transformation of self is the transformation of world.
While there is a lot of spirituality permeating the human net, there is too much ego for spirituality to really be effective. Everyone wants to be a star. Everyone wants to shine out, to be important. Social media can be notoriously ego-building. We profile ourselves so others will notice: “Isn’t she wonderful!” “What a great idea!” “You are really special!” Teachers know the difficulty of educating students today. God forbid a teacher should give a student a “B,” even worse, a “C.” They will likely hear from the parents and the administration. We can no longer effectively criticize another’s work or suggest that it needs improvement. Everyone wants to be accepted as they are; every student wants an “A,” even if the work is mediocre.
We can no longer distinguish between what is truly excellent and what is average, whether in education or spirituality. It is all lumped together as “super smart” or “really great,” a “superstar in the making” when, in fact, what is being produced is neither smart nor great. It is acceptable—ok—nothing more.
The internet has compounded our lack of excellence, whether it is spiritual excellence, mental excellence or physical excellence. Everyone seems to be copying from everyone else, especially if they think the “other” might have a head’s up or a lead in the competition we have imagined for ourselves. Everything is a game, and everyone wants to be on the winning side. In this respect, spirituality has become mundane, prosaic. One can find fifty different ways of practicing contemplation on the web, as if being fitted for a dress: “I like this method because it fits me.” Spirituality abounds but the truth is, there are very few real spiritual people.
The truly spiritual person never defines oneself as “spiritual,” no less “deeply spiritual,” because the truly spiritual are truly other-centered. This morning I gave a talk on Francis of Assisi. Every time I recount his life, I am in awe at his spiritual genius. He described himself as a “simple and ignorant” (or illiterate) person. “What a person is before God,” he said, “that is what he or she is and nothing more.” What? Nothing more? Francis, like many saints, had a one-track mind focused entirely on God. The goal of his life was to fall in love with God completely and to become like Christ. Francis did not want to become just a good person; he wanted a Godly life, one where Christ shone through every cell of his body, every word and gesture of his life. Thomas of Celano, the earliest biographer of Francis, said that Jesus was “always on his lips and in his heart” and he described Francis’s intense Christ focus this way:
He was always with Jesus:
Jesus in his heart,
Jesus in his mouth,
Jesus in his ears,
Jesus in his eyes,
Jesus in his hands,
he bore Jesus always
in his whole body.
(Thomas of Celano 1:283)
Elsewhere he writes, “walking, sitting, eating, drinking, he was focused on prayer.” In other words,........(continue reading here)
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