Spirituality or religion...

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”
Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Please note that the poem on the image below is my own, not the original Desiderata

Desiderata Redux

 http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/desiderata-redux-lianne-schneider.html

There's a lot of discussion - some of it angry and defensive - about religion these days. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians go head to head with self-professed atheists, both bringing their arguments into the "body politic." Muslim fundamentalists, too, speak of non-believers as "the great Satan" and justify jihad on the basis of the Koran. In the name of God, too many are at war with one another these days and the world wobbles on its axis as the battles rage and conversations become confrontations full of vitriol. 

I'm not here to advocate for or against any of those positions. After all, what good would it do...people hear and believe what they want to believe. Just take the recent debate between Bill Nye the "Science Guy" and Ken Ham of the Creation Museum of Kentucky. Who won? Well if  you went in believing in creationism as what should be taught in schools in place of evolution, you came out believing Ken Ham won. Those on the other side thought Nye took Ham to the mat over and over.  

Personally, in spite of my own Christian background and education, I think the solution is really very simple. Acknowledge that one does not need formal religious affiliation to share something we all have in common - that's spirituality. "Spirituality," says Dr. Brene Brown, "is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives." Spirituality is the force behind our sense of empathy for another, the motive for our immediate practical and sympathetic response to a natural disaster anywhere in the world, the explanation for our sadness when a particularly good person dies, even our devotion and attachment to animals. When I read this passage from Dr. Brown, I was reminded of my own attempt to write a spiritual rather than a religious guide for a good and decent life. I called it "Desiderata Redux" - a revisitation to a well-known work by Max Ehrmann but now including a recognition of that sense of spiritual connection that is so much a part of what I personally believe.

I don't think this kind of universal spirituality - this sense of universal connectedness - could be the ground for any kind of hatred, violence or discrimination. I hope and believe that when we recognize this quality in everyone, we can let go of all that divides us and embrace that which binds us - our common humanity. Perhaps that is a bit "Pollyanna" but I've always been an idealist. As my beloved teacher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote: 

  

Hope...has eyes

"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle

 Being Temperamental

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/being-temperamental-lianne-schneider.html

Words of despair seem to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’ visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon, however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000 years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly. That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience, compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”

HOPE BREAKS

Hope breaks…upon the rocks –

shattered into droplets,

dashing itself against the

unforgiving, immovable crags,

their remote faces rejecting

the pleading grasp of blown spume.

At the height of the tide,

in the fury of the winter storm,

it might almost seem as if

nothing could remain of hope.

Yet when that futile surge

of lost promise slips away,

rebuilding for a new onslaught,

there is a poignant sense of loss,

a bleak feeling of abandonment.

But then, close to despair, I recall

that it is those storm driven tides

which bring the gifts from the sea –

casting them like so much refuse

beyond the coastal drift line,

tossed atop the beveled berm,

treasures revealed only when

the wave draws out to sea again

exposing the blessings in the sand…

laying there amidst the seaweed,

with other trash the sea has swallowed,

are pearly shells, small and large,

the driftwood, the beautiful stones,

a piece of Kelly green sea glass,

perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,

each with its own story to tell

of the challenging voyage

that brought it finally to this shore. 

©Lianne Schneider