Spirituality and Everyday Life
3 Apr 2008
When I was a Christian, I didn’t think of everyday life as having intrinsic spirituality. Rather the opposite – everyday life was an unspiritual problem I hoped spirituality would resolve for me.
I tried to import spirituality into my everyday life so I could draw on it as a resource. I would get topped up with spirituality at church or Bible study. Or by spending time alone reading the Bible and praying to God. Then I would re-enter everyday life bringing my renewed supply of spirituality. Hoping it would be right there next time I needed it.
But that never worked very well. Somehow it seemed that spirituality was not a resource I could collect one place and use in another.
A few years ago I lost faith in church and Bible studies and prayer. All I had left was everyday life. I reconciled myself to this new reality and began to engage with everyday life instead of running away from it, mentally or geographically. I was pleasantly surprised to find at what I found when I opened myself up to all everyday life had to offer.
I didn’t abandon having values: instead I returned to the values I’d always believed in even before I was a Christian such as kindness and respect. I found myself appreciating all my relationships and conversations, not just those with Christians. I discovered there are amazing and special moments and opportunities in everyday life, waiting to be noticed by me.
I’d stopped thinking about spirituality because to me it meant separation from everyday life in a way I wasn’t interested in and couldn’t even relate to, anymore.
A couple of years ago when I first ran across Off The Map, I noticed they think of spirituality differently. They describe ordinary (everyday) attempts to ‘serve others’ as inherently spiritual. I was used to spirituality being narrowly defined and definitely something I had turned my back on. Now I’d found some people who thought I was spiritual just because I attempted to show kindness and respect in my everyday life.
Recently Beth Patterson e-mailed Off The Map to let us know about her site Virtual Treehouse. I was pleased to see that same idea in her site tagline: everyday life can be inherently spiritual. I picked up from Beth and the site the belief that as we connect with others in ways that bring out the best of our humanity, something spiritual is taking place whether we are using overtly spiritual language or not.
These days I think of myself as ‘almost an atheist’. I’m very comfortable not talking about spirituality at all. I know there are lots of people who react negatively to the concept – just as I did when I realized how much better it was to fully engage with everyday life than run from it. I’m also happy to hang with people who do talk about spirituality. As long as they don’t do it in a way which labels my way of living everyday life as ‘unspiritual’ and ‘wrong’.
I’m very pleased to have found people with whom I can talk of ‘living my everyday life’ and they talk of ‘being spiritual’ and we’re all referring to the same experience.
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Comment by Jason Reid
11.03 am on 3 Apr 2008
Helen, your candour is welcome; and I would happily agree that everything is spiritual in some sense because there is part of us as humans that is spiritual. We just can’t run away from it. I’m interested in your statement about being ‘almost an atheist,’ what do you mean by that? Are you waiting for a defining argument or are you happy to live with the dialectic of God/non God producing the synthesis of sprituality? If so I would feel somewhat vulnerable in your shoes.
Comment by Helen
11.58 am on 3 Apr 2008
Thanks for your comment, Jason.
‘Almost an atheist’ means I’m unsure whether God exists and prefer to live my life without attempting to be in communication with a possibly non-existent person. For much the same reasons as: I wouldn’t want to be married to someone who was often gone at night and gave no explanation; I wouldn’t continue to hire an employee who didn’t show up; and I wouldn’t work for an employer who didn’t pay me some months and gave no explanation. I can’t live that way.
I am open to defining arguments but am not putting my life on hold waiting for them; I spent about five years re-examining the intellectual, evidential, emotional and experiential basis of my faith which brought me to where I am.
When I was a Christian I was fairly well versed in apologetics and I pretty much knew what was out there in that realm. When those apologetics ceased to be convincing to me I was open to something I hadn’t come across showing up (I still am) but didn’t expect that to happen since I probably would have found it as a Christian interested in apologetics already. And so far it hasn’t happened.
My reasons for not being a Christian at present are extensive – I am not a closed-minded person but rather a person who is realistic about the likelihood of something being out there I missed in almost 20 years of being a Christian who liked to read and was very serious about my spiritual formation and relationship with God.
It’s ironic (no offense intended) that you say you’d feel vulnerable – it was because I felt so vulnerable that I had to do something different. As I alluded to earlier, nothing in my life has made me feel so vulnerable as when I became unsure the One I was depending on and had been doing my best to center my life around might not even exist.
I don’t feel vulnerable because I believe that if God is as loving and fair and merciful and just as the Bible claims, I have nothing to fear from him if he does exist. I have not defied God; I am simply living the only way it is possible for me to live, given my heart, mind, soul, strength and experience. And if anyone knows and understands that, it’s God (Jesus).
Comment by Jim Henderson
7.10 pm on 3 Apr 2008
Jason – Help me understand your intent…
Is this comment
” If so I would feel somewhat vulnerable in your shoes.”
a threat a warning or as Helen has graciously interpreted it – a personal confession
Comment by Jason Reid
8.28 am on 4 Apr 2008
Jim
If I was in Helen’s place I would feel vulnerable. Life is scarey enough working out my salvation with fear and trembling. But to be a father of five, a husband, an engineer and then be on the precipice of atheism as Helen is, would geniunely concern me.
Definately no threat intended, enjoy grace…
Comment by Jonny
10.05 am on 7 Apr 2008
thank you so much for this Helen. It is very timely for me, to read your thoughts. I’m also trying to learn to recognize the specialness of the ‘everyday’ – and can I say ’sacredness of the everyday’?
Peterson’s book: ‘christ plays in ten thousand places’ is jiggling up my thinking on this at the moment. Also my wife and I and a couple of friends have been eating together – and trying to encourage each other in this, to live ordinarily in love and service and recognizing the inherent spirituality [in the way you describe it].
Your thoughts have been encouraging. Thank you.
Comment by Helen
4.39 pm on 7 Apr 2008
Thanks Jonny – I’m glad it encouraged you.
I volunteer for Off The Map: you might also like Off The Map’s Doable Evangelism site, which is all about how evangelism can be part of everyday life. The tagline is “What if evangelism meant just being yourself?”
Comment by Lance Mac
6.51 am on 10 Apr 2008
Hi Helen. I appreciate your post since I can empathise with your dilemma when you were a Christian. I am wondering, since in your previous attempt to follow Jesus you didn’t think of everyday life as having intrinsic spirituality, whether you were really following Jesus?
Comment by Helen
1.41 am on 12 Apr 2008
Hi Lance, that’s a very reasonable question to ask.
Pingback by Explaining “almost an atheist” :: Love is the most excellent way
4.04 pm on 13 Apr 2008
[...] I posted something I wrote, Spirituality and Everyday Life on Jason Clark’s blog. One of the commenters asked me to define “almost an [...]
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