My Search For A True Spirituality
Lay Speaker Turner Stokes
Jnauary 29, 2006

A couple or three years ago, I ran across an article on spirituality in a secular humanist magazine – it was either Free Inquiry or The Humanist. The gist of the article was that spirituality does not necessarily depend on the assumption that there is anything other than a natural universe – nothing supernatural – no gods – no angels – no devil – just a neutral universe – one that doesn’t care one way or another what happens to you or me or the other fellow. Up until the time I read the article, I hadn’t given much thought to the subject of spirituality. I left it pretty much to the traditional religionists – where belief in a supernatural world seems to be required.

I can't say that I had a sudden “spiritual awakening” at that time but looking back I have to say that's where this spiritual journey began. Sometime after that I discovered this church, which was under construction at that time, while I was driving north on route 15 – on my way to a secular humanist meeting at the Frederick Public Library.

The original title for this presentation was “My Search For The True Spirituality”. Please note that I originally used the word “the” – not the word “a”. When I really thought this through I realized that implied an ultimate, universal truth but this search is truly a personal one and it would be arrogant of me to claim this search would satisfy everyone else or even anyone else; there is no “one size fits all” meaning of spirituality. Thus the words “The True Spirituality” were replaced by the words “A True Spirituality.”

Margot Adler, priestess of Wicca, quotes fellow priestess, Alison Harlow in Margot's book Drawing Down the Moon. Alison, who seems to share my sentiments, writes, "To some people, it seems like a contradiction to say that I have a certain subjective truth...And yet I do not believe that I have the one, true, right and only way...

Many people cannot understand how I find... my reality and accept the fact that your reality might be something else. But for me, this in no way is a contradiction, because I am aware that my reality and my conclusions are a result of my unique genetic structure, my life experience and my subjective feelings; and you are a different person, whose same experience of whatever may or may not be out there will be translated in your nervous system into something different. And I can learn from that.

I can extend my own reality by sharing that and grow. This recognition that everyone has different experiences is a fundamental keystone ... it's the fundamental premise that whatever is going on out there is infinitely more complex than I can ever understand.”

I couldn’t have said it better. As I’ve already stated, my viewpoint is a secular one – I don’t look at spirituality in a supernatural sense but am more “what you see is what you get”. You may well have an entirely different viewpoint. So be it.

I'm your webmaster here, so as you might expect, my search began on the Internet and at the most obvious places, that is to say at domains named "spirituality". My first stop was at spirituality dot org, Spirituality dot org turned out to be a Catholic interactive online magazine. Not a good start, at least for me. My next stop was at spirituality dot com - the official site of The Christian Science Publishing Society. I clicked on their Spirituality link and was greeted with articles such as "Timeless Healing", "A prayer of awareness" and "Love's labor's found", all of which referred specifically to Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. A blind alley, at least in my opinion.

I made four more stops before I gave up and began a Google search. I tried spirituality dot net but it took me to that same Christian Science web site. Spirituality dot biz is registered to them also but they don't use it. Spirituality dot info is registered to Norwalk Seventh-day Adventist Church in California but they don't use IT either. So here we have five of the most important domains representing spirituality either used or owned by three religious denominations. Why should these folks have an Internet monopoly on the most important spirituality domains? It doesn’t seem quite fair.

Have YOU tried googling spirituality? When I first did, I came up with well over twenty million hits [that was last year]. And yesterday I googled it again and came up with over 33 million hits. There seems to be a rapidly growing body of information about spirituality out there.

In addition to the millions of hits came the sidebar suggestion that I might want to know the definition of spirituality at answer dot com. Well, why not? At answer dot com we can learn how to pronounce it but we already know that, and the dictionary definition there is useless, take my word for it.

The Wikipedia entry there - did you know that there is an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia and that the wiki in Wikipedia means quick in native Hawaiian? A quick access encyclopedia.

The Wikipedia entry tells us, among other things that, " Some proponents of spirituality believe that the goal of 'being spiritual' is to simultaneously improve one's wisdom, willpower and communion with God/universe". Well, it’s hard to argue with that.

The next stop on my google search using the keyword "spirituality" was at urban4est dot com, a new age web site devoted to the "holistic development of mind, body and spirit within the environment".

They say, "If we do not live in harmony with nature and set out preserving the well being of the earth and all of its creatures, our rule on this planet will be very short lived.” They also say “If we do not promote peace and harmony between all people our rule will be short lived." Although I was not really turned on by the bulk of their new age web pages, their use of the keywords "earthlings" and the “spirit of all earthlings” versus what I perceive as the dominating human spirit that seems to me pervasive in the world today seemed spiritually ennobling.

My next visit, believe it or not, was to the web site of the Institute for Management Excellence. They also have seven principles, Creativity, Communication, Respect, Vision, Partnership, Energy and Flexibility. Their principles have a somewhat UU ring to them. They say they “recognize that each person has their own beliefs.” They “respect each individual's belief and their right to hold their beliefs sacred and private. Spirituality – as” they “define it - has no religious component or preference”. Their take on the matter seemed quite reasonable but on to another web site.

The next web site* of interest was entitled “Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose”, a research project sponsored by UCLA, which seeks to track the spiritual growth of college students beginning with their freshman years. If you go to their frequently asked questions page, you will find a very good definition of spirituality, which I'm going to quote as follows: “What is Spirituality? Spirituality points to our interiors and our subjective life, as contrasted to the objective domain of material events and objects. Our spirituality is reflected in the values and ideals that we hold most dear, our sense of who we are and where we come from, our beliefs about why we are here—the meaning and purpose we see in our lives—and our connectedness to each other and to the world around us.

Spirituality also captures those aspects of our experience that are not easy to define or talk about, such as inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, and the mystical. Within this very broad perspective, we believe spirituality is a universal impulse and reality.”

At this point, after digesting these thought provoking words, I broke off my Internet search, which could have been almost endless, especially considering that the original twenty million or so hits now exceed 34 million.

It’s now time to turn to the print media. Several weeks ago Reverend Roberta Finkelstein offered a short course using the UUA publication Engaging Our Theological Diversity, one of a series of reports issued by The Commission on Appraisal of the UUA. Our own Reverend Roberta is a former member of that Commission. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend that session but I have since then read the publication. There is much there about the history and makeup of the UU World that is meaningful to me and, I respectfully suggest, could mean much to you also. You’ll find the UUA summary of this report in your Order of Service and I have placed links on the UUCF Worship web page to both this same summary and to a UUA web page that contains further information, including a link to a PDF file containing the text of the complete document. Apparently the bound publication is out of stock at the UUA online bookstore at this time.

After reading Engaging Our Theological Diversity, I must say that I now better understand what my future might be within our UU world and where my spiritual journey might take me. For instance under the heading of “What Are Our Spiritual Paths?” Marilyn Sewell, a minister in Portland, Oregon, writes, “Only one kind of religion counts today, and that is the kind which is radical enough to engage in the world's basic troubles. If it cannot do that, then it can do nothing which merits our concern or the world's respect... Transformation will occur when we dare to stop talking about social concerns and actually move to alleviate real human pain.”

I could go on and on with respect to the other books I have encountered during my search so far, such as Spirituality for Dummies, Wicca and Witchcraft for Dummies, Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk but that could be for another time, so —

Stay Tuned!

*www.spirituality.ucla.edu/