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SPIRITUALITY - BEYOND THE ORDINARY

 

Fr Douglas Robertson

 

Spirituality points, always, beyond: beyond the ordinary, beyond possession, beyond the narrow confines of the self, and - above all - beyond expectation. Because “the spiritual” is beyond our control, it is never exactly what we expect.

 

The word spiritual originally meant what the most obvious synonyms of spirit - breath, wind - signify: something that cannot be seen but that we nevertheless experience.

 

Although the wind is very powerful and you can feel its presence, in and of itself it cannot be seen. You know it is there by its effect on others. The great trees, the grasses and waves on the sea bend with its force. If you are aware of your surroundings, you know it is there long before you feel it. So it is with the ineffable.

 

In calling to mind a “picture” of the wind - an everyday reality that is beyond our visual grasp and control - we come closer to an understanding of the spiritual. Spirituality involves, first, an awareness - “if you are aware of your surroundings” - that comes not through the eyes, the ears, the hands, or any specific sense but through a larger openness, a general opening-up to life’s experiences. And that awareness implies a sensitivity to others: We first discover that spirituality is there, in the world, because we notice its effects not in ourselves but on others. As the trees and the grasses bend with the force of the wind, so do human beings move within the force and power of the spirit, “in-spired” by it no matter how hard we try to take charge, no matter how adamantly we claim to be in control.

 

For spirituality is, always, beyond control. We can’t hold it in our hands and touch it, manipulate it, or destroy it. Because it is beyond control, it is also beyond possession: We can’t own it, lock it up, divide it among ourselves, or take it away from others.

 

Spirituality is discovered beyond immediate perceptions. Thus founded in a contrast with immediate perceptions, spirituality always involves both an affirmation - “Yes, there is something here” - and a rejection - “But there is more to it than meets the eye”.

 

Socrates believed that the wise person would instinctively lead a frugal life, and he even went so far as to refuse to wear shoes. Yet he constantly fell under the spell of the marketplace and would go there often to look at the great variety and magnificence of the wares on display.

A friend once asked him why he was so intrigued with the allures of the market. “I love to go there,” Socrates replied, “to discover how many things I am perfectly happy without.”

 

Material possessions are not “bad” in and of themselves, but as Socrates knew, the material realities that we possess tend also to possess us. The more we have, the more we want; and the more we want, the more we are possessed by our possessions. Spiritual reality, however, cannot be “possessed”, any more than it can be said that we possess the wind or that we possess love, or wisdom. Spiritual and material realities differ in another fundamental way. Unlike material reality, spirituality is not inherently limited; one person having more spirituality does not mean that others will necessarily have less. Spirituality is instead the kind of reality that multiples even as it is divided.

 

Spiritual realities are never commodities; they cannot be bought or sold. But while “spirituality” is other-than-material, it would be an error to think of spiritual realities as involving only such things as “virtue” or “goodness” or “love”. We speak of spirit in many senses: School spirit, team spirit, and “morale” are all spiritual realities that do not decrease as more participate in them. Indeed, in some sense it is true that the more who participate, the greater the enjoyment of each participant. Who would want to be the only person in the stands for a home-game? Do parents love one child less after another is born?

 

Greek thinkers, Hebrew prophets, Eastern sages, and Christian saints agree that the “problem” is not material realities but our attachment to material possessions - the attachment that hinders us from seeing and seeking our own good, the “goods” proper to us because they fit the spiritual reality into which we “fit”. Material realities tend to stunt spirituality because as we possess them, they possess us. Possessions can lead to obsessions; consumers become consumed with getting things, keeping them, safeguarding them, adding to their hoard. Obsession with possessions crowds out the spiritual.

 

The overwhelming attractiveness of Saint Francis of Assisi stems in large part from how well he epitomises this understanding of spirituality. The son of a reasonably prosperous merchant, Francis was a happy, well-liked young man who enjoyed spending his father’s money. His parents were concerned about Francis’s extravagance, not so much because he liked to buy expensive clothing but because he then turned around and gave his new possessions to the poor. After a series of mystical experiences that moved him to take the admonitions of the Christian Gospel very literally, Francis embraced poverty with a completeness that may strike the modern mind as weird. It wasn’t that the Poverello (Francis’s nickname, which means “little poor man”) believed material possessions to be “evil”; he loved the whole of creation too much to reject any part of it. Francis asked his followers to live in poverty because he believed that such a life-style would release them from self-centred demands for control. “Living without property,” Francis once explained, “means never getting upset by anything that anybody does.”

 

In Saint Francis’s understanding, material poverty creates an emptiness that may then be filled by spiritual reality. In renouncing our claim to possessions, we open ourselves to spirituality because we are also (and this is the more significant act) renouncing our self-will. Francis honoured “Lady Poverty” because he believed that being without possessions makes it much less likely that we will insist on our own will . . . the wilfulness that becomes the claim to be “God”. Completely unprotected, we discover a new way of seeing: Rather than looking for what we don’t have, we truly see what we do have. We learn to discern God’s gift in everything that happens to us.

 

“Beyond the ordinary” - beyond material, beyond possession, beyond the confines of the self. Spirituality transcends the ordinary; and yet, paradoxically, it can be found only in the ordinary. Spirituality is beyond us, and yet it is in everything we do. It is extraordinary and yet it is extraordinarily simple.

 

Simple. The word is important, for “beyond the ordinary” is not meant to suggest something complicated, difficult, or self-consciously “special”. Nothing is so simple (or so out of the ordinary for most of us) than “attending to the present,” the focus on this day suggested by all spiritual approaches.

 

Spirituality does not connote spectacular. Saint Nicholas, an inspiration for our modern figure of Santa Claus, has the distinction in the history of spirituality of being one of the first individuals to be venerated as a saint without first being a martyr. Virtually every saint before Nicholas performed the “miracle” of great heroism in the face of torture, imprisonment, and death. In the fourth century, with peace, finally, between the Roman state and the community of Christians, believers searched for new models for their saints. They found one in Nicholas, who impressed them as someone ready to help others anonymously and for no personal advantage. His “miracle” was that of constant and singularly unselfish kindness in everyday life.

 

Spirituality is not spectacular, but spectacularly simple, and that is precisely why we find it so difficult to define or describe. The profoundly simple is simply ineffable: It literally cannot be spoken. The Hebrew Bible portrays Moses and Jeremiah as protesting, when called by God, that they “cannot speak”, a claim that has been interpreted by some scholars as evidence that these prophets laboured under some kind of speech defect. This interpretation suggest two ideas: First, God chooses the least likely individuals to be divine spokespersons, and second, through this choice, God signals the ineffability - the literal “un-speakability” - of spiritual wisdom. The spiritual is simply beyond words.

 

The paradox of “beyond the ordinary yet not spectacular” reflects a central spiritual truth: the importance of avoiding the dichotomising, dividing-into-two approach that is the bane of all spirituality. We tend to like our reality divided into neat and distinct parts, seeing it as either one or the other; either black or white, good or bad, answer or question, problem or solution. But the vision offered by the spirituality of imperfection cautions against that tendency, pointing out that the demand for an absolutely certain truth - the quest for a single, unalterable answer to our spiritual questions - involves the kind of “playing God” that denies and ultimately destroys our human reality. Precisely because we are not either-or, not one-or-the-other, paradox and ambiguity reside at the heart of the human condition and therefore at the heart of all spirituality. For we are both: both saint and sinner, both “good” and “bad”, both less and more than “merely” human. In some strange (and not-so-strange) ways, our failures are our successes, our suffering is our joy, and our imperfections prove to be the very source of our longing for perfection.

 

Because paradox is at our very core, the spirituality of imperfection suggests that only by embracing the "dark side” of our ambiguous natures can we ever come to know “the light”. We find ourselves only by giving up ourselves; we gain freedom by submitting to the will of others, we attain autonomy by not insisting on our own rights, we gain independence by being dependent on God. Sages and saints throughout the centuries have maintained that it is in this willingness to give up the self and give in to others that the road to human wholeness can be found. And for those who would give up “self”, the first step is to give up certainty.

 

“Beyond the ordinary” . . . spirituality is that which allows us to get beyond the narrow confines of self. But another paradox lurks here, for our human task, as countless sages have suggested, is to get beyond ourselves without trying to escape ourselves. To get beyond the self to a place of interior peace where we are not obsessed with thoughts of material possessions, to get beyond the immediate concerns that dissipate us, we must first learn to put up with - to accept - our selfish, impatient, often recalcitrant human nature.

 

How to grapple with this anomaly? How to come to terms with our own paradox? “Rejoice every time you discover a new imperfection,” suggested the eighteenth-century Jesuit spiritual director Jean-Pierre Causade. If we find ourselves getting impatient, Caussade counselled, we can try to bear our impatience patiently. If we lose our tranquillity, we can endure that loss tranquilly. If we get angry, we ought not get angry with ourselves for getting angry. If we are not content, we can try to be content with our discontent. Caussade, the great Western apostle of an almost Zen-like “detachment”, insisted above all that we must be detached from everything, even from detachment. The caution “Don’t fuss too much about yourself” sums up Caussade’s ultimate spiritual counsel.

 

And above all, don’t fight the truth of yourself. The self “comes clean” when it is most exposed, most vulnerable to its own imperfections. In words written over two hundred years ago Caussade offered this paradoxically consoling vision of the experience that would come to be called “hitting bottom”.

 

The time will come when the sight of this wretchedness, which horrifies you now, will fill you with joy and keep you in delightful peace. It is only when we have reached the bottom of the abyss of our nothingness and are firmly established there that we can “walk before God in justice and truth.” . . . The fruit of grace must, for the moment, remain hidden, buried as it were in the abyss of your wretchedness underneath the most lively awareness of your weakness.

 

In weakness, strength is discovered; in wretchedness, joy; in the “abyss of nothingness,” “the fruit of grace.” And so we need not escape ourselves to find peace or joy, for while spirituality is always beyond, it is discovered first within.

 

A man of piety complained to his spiritual director, saying: “I have laboured hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet I have received no improvement. I am still an ordinary and ignorant person.”

His director answered: “You have gained the realisation that you are ordinary and ignorant, and this in itself is a worth accomplishment.”