What is Theology and can one ever get it wrong?

Richard Dawkins whether wonders Theology is a subject at all, and a friend asks whether someone doing theology can ever get it wrong.
So what is theology? The first thing to say is that Theology is not doctrine/dogma. Doctrine and it development over the centuries is one of the objects of study within the academic discipline of theology, but it is not theology.
As an under graduate I studied the core areas as well as the options around that core. The core subjects with the academic discipline of theology are doctrine and its development, the critical study the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures, the philosophy of religion, the history of the religion of Israel and the history of Christianity. Within the latter history the first five centuries are a key area of study within the subject of theology. In all these areas the same critical rigour one finds in any other of the liberal arts subject is taught.
That is certainly how theology is taught in British Universities.
I wonder sometimes why Richard Dawkins doesn’t know this, he only need visit the faculty web pages of his own University to find out.
For me Theology is the critical study of religion, religious beliefs and practices, the development of belief and belief in contemporary society. To study theology one must learn how to be an historian and anthropologist, a philosopher and linguist but most of all one must learn to be critical of one’s own beliefs and the beliefs of others. The first essay I given as an undergraduate was titled, ‘Old Testament Study demands a combination of faith and reason. Discuss.’ The readings set for the essay were in themselves an introduction the critical thinking.
So that’s what academic theology is all about, but what of my friends question Can someone doing theology get it wrong? In the academy as with any other subject it is possible to get it wrong, any one saying Nestorius was a monophysite, has got the wrong answer.
I sense however that that is not what my friend means. You see to Athanasius, Arius was wrong because he denied the divinity of Christ whereas to Arius, Athanasius was wrong because Athanasius proclaimed Christ’s divinity. But these are just religious opinions of which we can ask; ‘What would it take to disconfirm this opinion?’ If the answer is, ‘Nothing’ they can be treated as what they are opinion and no more. Yet even here logic and reason are not redundant. Opinions even when un-falsifiable must be consistent with one another. So whilst both Nestorius and Cyril agreed with Athanasius, Nestorius got it wrong because he would not accept the logical correlate of Christ’s divinity, namely the doctrine that Mary was the theotokos, the bearer or mother of God. If Mary is not the God bearer, then who is Christ? One can’t accept one opinion without accepting the other. These are still opinions, but they form part of a logically consistent set of opinions. Can you do theology and get it wrong? Sort of.
When we do theology in the church we are reflecting upon all what has been believed in the past and reflecting also on what has changed in our understanding of the world today. From those reflections the church continues to create a meaningful narrative by which it can live its life of faith. But the theological narrative should never be a fixed narrative. It is narrative that is still in the process of formation and as such is never the final word. Whilst this narrative theology can never be wholly right, its very falsifiablility should ensure its continued place at the heart of the community of faith and doubt (the Church).
To finish then two statements on the dangers of theology, both of which have been addressed to me by religious conservatives.
‘Don’t go and study theology, theology will lead you away cross.’
‘The problem with the study of theology is that people who start it begin with a simple faith and end up with complex doubts.’
If that is true, then the friends of reason have nothing to fear and everything to applaud in the study of Theology.

Jesus advises John to look at the evidence,

Matthew 11:2-11 NRSV
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

The theme for the third Sunday in Advent is the forerunner of Jesus: John the Baptist.
The first thing to note is that John, now in prison, may be having doubts about his understanding of who Jesus is, for he sends a message to Jesus saying “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Here we see John doubting his own conviction. This should not disturb us.
To quote Joan Chittister ‎"Doubt is what leaves us open to truth, wherever it is, however difficult it may be to accept. Without doubt, life would simply be a series of packaged assumptions, none of them tested, none of them sure, and all of them belonging not to us, but to someone else whose truth we have made our own."
John, here, is asking a question. So should we. Jesus, in turn, responds by saying “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” In other words, he says look at the evidence. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk… and so on.
So, in this first paragraph, we have a paradigm, an example of how we might proceed. Doubt elicits a question, and the response to the question is to demand that we look at the evidence. Notwithstanding the nature of the evidence which some in the modern world will find difficult to receive, never the less there is a clear critical approach here. Doubt creates questions which require evidence in order to be satisfied. So much for the first paragraph.
In the second paragraph, Jesus asks the question about John:
“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes?”
The implication is of course neither. People were not coming into the desert to look at the desert nor to find princes in their fine robes. No, they had gone to find a prophet, which is no more than somebody who speaks truth to a situation. Prophetes means ‘the one who appears on behalf of.’ and the Hebrew word ‘Nabi’ is ‘the one inspired to speak’. Both speak into contemporary situations. Prophesy is not primarily about prediction.
The message of John and Jesus is very simple: Repent. Change the way you look at the world. It seems to me that this repentance, this change, is a continuous process, because change in thinking will always follow changes in understanding. And changes in understanding will often be the result of some new piece of information, some previously unknown evidence.
What is it you hear? What is it you see? How does that change the way you understand the world?

The gold is out there, we are just not listening.

It is Advent and my thoughts are turning towards Christmas.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

Just reading these words from the famous Christmas carol makes me feel quite excited that Christmas is coming. But this third verse from O Little Town of Bethlehem contains a secret that easily missed at Christmas:
Silently.
Silence is very much in vogue at the moment. It began, I think, with an endurance of a film called Into Great Silence. This three hour documentary with no commentary or incidental music observes the silent lives of Carthusian monks for six months. Then there was Sarah Maitland’s Book of Silence. Recently, on BBC 2, three programmes entitled The Big Silence followed five not particularly religious people through eight silent days in a Jesuit Retreat House. They discovered in that silence something that was life-changing. Also, this year the Royal British Legion released a silent single for Remembrance.
So what is it about silence that’s so important?. It has been said that silence is not the absence of sound but the beginning of listening. John O Donohue wrote that “Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits."
I do not think that silence leads us to anything supernatural. Rather, it leads us to the deeper natural, the parts of existence to which we pay little attention because we never stop to listen for long enough. I believe there is a deep human need for that deeper-natural that we find in silence. So where has this silence gone?
Between the years 1066 and 1800 England’s population grew from about 1 million to 8 million. In the two hundred years since, the population grew to just over 49 million. So for every person alive in 1801 there are now another 5 people. That’s a lot more chatter! The great growth in population coincided with industrialisation in this country. I want to argue here that for the greater part of human existence, the world has been a much quieter place, fewer people and no mechanical noise. The loudest thing most people heard before the industrial revolution was the odd clap of thunder.
Quietness, like trees and clean seas is just another part of our environment that we have lost through the process of industrialisation. We cannot turn the clocks back, and neither should we, for industrialisation has brought great benefits too. But just like other parts of our endangered habitat, silence should perhaps be sought out and conserved. Making time for this is difficult. I have suggested in the past buying an egg timer, turning it over and spending three minutes looking at the sands and just listening. That’s one way. Perhaps, also, we need to look for the natural silences, for instance, the tiny pause at the top of each breath. The silence that can be found in the midst of a busy supermarket, surrounded by people – yes, even this can be a place of inner silence in the midst of a busy Christmas. I think we urgently need to find silence as much as we need clean air and clean water.
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
There is a gift to be found in silence, but this gift is one of which we cannot speak, we can but listen, look and silently behold.

Hazlenuts and Farmers

I have in my hand a little hazelnut which I picked up on a walk between Almeley Parish Church and the Friends Meeting House. As I picked it up during the Harvest Festival Season it became the basis of my thoughts for Harvest, which we have now completed.
Human beings in their present form came into being some 200,000 years ago. If you were to compress the whole of this length of time into a 24 hour day, then the last Ice Age finished around an hour before midnight. In all the 23 hours prior to that point there was no agriculture. People lived by hunting animals and gathering berries, roots and nuts like the hazelnut I have in my hand. It is around that point we find the beginnings of Agriculture at the start of the New Stone Age.
This revolution did not reach these islands until some 6000 years before present. It was during this time that our ancestors were able to develop the skills and technology to build the Megalithic tombs such as West Kennet Long Barrow and Arthur’s Stone. It is Agriculture that made this possible. No-one who spends most of their time hunting and gathering will have the leisure to organise society in such a way that these things can begin to happen.
Of course, our technology has moved on. I am writing this on a computer; my third! Something I would not have dreamed of, even in my young adulthood. None of this, however, would be possible without the thing that made the first technology possible. Our very lives still depend on Agriculture; on farmers taking the risks with their resources, sowing their crops, not knowing what the weather will be doing during the Harvest season.
All our human activities are wonderful things. But the sustaining energy for them all is provided by agriculture. So the next time you are passing a farm, take a moment to give thanks for our farmers.

Is Accommodationism so bad?

Accommodation is the new dirty word. That is strange given what the word means. It means adapt myself to others with whom I share this planet especially those I oppose and who oppose me. I suppose I must ask myself the question 'How must, and to what extent should I adapt myself in order that I may live in peace with my opponent?' And whilst what I oppose may well be a thing, (i.e. religion, political ideology, builders of roads, whatever), my opponent will nearly always be another person or set of persons.
Of course there are things that I will not adapt to, but does that ever include people?

Shouldn't accommodationism be given the benefit of the doubt?

Changing People, Changing Earth

During the summer, whilst on a visit to my parents in Wiltshire, I visited West Kennet Long Barrow. It is a chambered tomb dating from round about 3600 B.C.E. At the eastern end there is a set of stone chambers which open out towards the east. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, during its time of use, the light of the rising sun would have shone directly into the back of the tomb. Elsewhere in the British Isles, such as Orkney, similar tombs face the rising sun at the beginning of February. It is possible that these were significant times of the year for our ancestors. Certainly at Stonehenge the main orientation of the monument is towards the rising of the sun at mid-winter.
One of the great gifts to us from the pre-Christian people of ancient Europe is a set of festivals which mark the turning of the seasons. There are eight of these in total: Mid-Winter and Mid Summer, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes as well as at the beginning of February, May, August and November. Although no one particular religion celebrated all of these days, they were all marked at least somewhere in pre-Christian Europe. It was left to the universal nature of Christianity to bring all eight festivals under one religious roof, so that now you will find Christian festivals overlying all of these days, beginning with Christmas, Candlemas, Lady Day, May Day, Saint John’s Day, Lammas Day, Michaelmas and finally All Saints and All Souls.
Although these festivals were primarily used by Christians to commemorate the story of Christ in different ways, in recent years they have returned to their perhaps original use. The modern Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) is among many contemporary pagan groups to use the “eight seasonal celebrations to help us attune to the natural cycle, and help us to structure our lives through the year, and to develop a sense of community with all living beings.”
I love the festivals of Harvest, Easter and Christmas. At these times the outside comes inside, by way of decorations garnered from the natural world. I have one very vivid small child’s memory of going out to collect holly in the forest with my father. Everywhere was washed out brown fern and grey bark, with cold almost white skies. These celebrations and others are still special to me because they remember in me that child’s joy in the natural world.
It seems to me, whether we are Christian, Pagan or of no religion at all, these eight festivals help us to pay attention to and mark the changing year.
Who knows what the builders of the tombs and stone circles thought or believed? What we can know is that they were keenly aware of the seasons and how both land and sky changed throughout the year. For them it was important enough to mark these events in stone; using the first great technology. In so doing, they have left us with a gift that we should not ignore. They were a listening people who heard a speaking earth. Perhaps like them we can use the festivals of our year to learn to listen again. Who knows what, or whom we might hear?

Wells not walls

The story is told of an English farmer who went to visit a sheep farm in Australia. The farm was immense, stretching in all directions as far as the stretch of the sky.
“You must need an awful lot of barbed-wire,” the English farmer observed.
“Not at all, we don’t use any, we just dig wells, and there the sheep stay.”
We humans also gather around wells. In fact many early Christian settlements were founded near sources of water. They provided all that was needed for drinking and washing and baptisms too. One of the ironies of history is that the building of St. David’ s Cathedral completely destroyed the reason for David settling there in the first place: for in order to construct the foundations of this massive statement of ecclesiastical power, the wells and water-courses had to be drained and diverted.
Where are today’s spiritual wells, where do the thirsty come for drink and the heavy laden find rest?
The wells are still here, but are all too often enclosed, hidden by walls and fences of ambition and fear. They are walls that imprison, and fences that say, ‘this is mine’.
It is time to brake down those walls and cut through those fences.
For many are thirsty, and others still are in need of rest.

Liberality

I must confess to being an old-fashioned liberal (note small l ). What does that mean, and what connections might it have with the Christian faith?
The word liberal is often connected with a similar word liberty, which of course is about freedom. When liberals read the bible, they should be able to do so in a way that is free from dogmatic and apologetic concerns. Put in other words: There is no need to defend the Christian faith from important questions. I’ll give you an example: If we consider the different accounts of the resurrection of Jesus we find anomalies. In Mark’s gospel the women go to the tomb when the sun had risen, whilst Matthew and Luke place the visit at early dawn. John’s gospel, however, insists that it was still dark. Whilst that might possibly harmonise with Matthew and Luke, it cannot possibly be dark when the sun had risen. It seems to me that we need to be at liberty to ask the question which gospel has it right? Or do any of them?
This is the heart of what it means to be liberal when reading and interpreting the bible. For the liberal there can be no orthodoxy, no truth which is not the result of questions freely asked and freely investigated; with the proviso, of course, that any answers that we find are, in and of themselves, still provisional; they may have to change in the light of further evidence. Until the Christian Church as a whole is able to fully embrace this liberality, it remains able to speak only to itself and to those who require certainty, whether or nor that certainty is true.
Liberality has another connotation. I was a guest recently and was blessed by the liberality of my host whose generosity was remarkable.
Liberality, generosity; they mean the same thing. He might have said be free with all that is mine. Liberality, to my mind, ought to be at the heart of Christianity. When asked how many times should we forgive another, Jesus replies seventy times seven. This is a piece of rabbinic overstatement, didactic exaggeration to drive home a point. A generous, liberal attitude is requisite for those who seek to follow Jesus. For God is liberal, big-hearted as the writer of Ephesians reminds us
“but God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
What we see here is a generous God who liberally distributes his mercy.
In the words of a former Bishop of Ludlow, John Saxbee: We serve a Christ-like God who calls us to be Christ-like so that we might win others to the likeness of Christ.
Put another way, we serve a generous God, a loving God, who calls us to be generous and loving with one another, so that through that generosity, that liberality of spirit, others are won to the way of .
Whether you believe in God or not, you can practice in liberality and grace, for in their practice perhaps the world becomes a little kinder.

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

I have just returned from a large international and ecumenical church event in Munich. To give you an example of the scale of it, the exhibition area, where many of the lectures and seminars, as well as exhibitions, took place, is made up of twelve huge buildings each the size of a football pitch. These were filled with people for five days.
On Friday evening, in the Odeon Platz, there was an Orthodox Vespers entitled Service of a thousand tables, where blessed bread would be shared after the service. There were indeed a thousand tables, each with around ten people on them, and more people standing where there were no tables. The service was an hour and a half long, and it was bitterly cold.
That’s over ten thousand people, patiently working their way through a very unfamiliar kind of service and breaking bread with one another. There was more than enough bread, even for those who were standing, in fact the baskets were filled with left-overs. These were people of all Christian denominations (and, I suspect, some of none) coming together to share food. I sat with people I did not know, could barely converse with, and would never see again. It’s interesting to note that the word “company” means “with bread”, and we were indeed a great company.
My accommodation for the conference was with a family who had been instructed that they only needed to provide me with breakfast. Breakfast was rolls, bacon and eggs, all kinds of wonderful foods and a lovely pot of tea made especially for me. Well beyond their call of duty, I was feasted liberally every evening with a wonderful meal and good Bavarian beer besides.
The theme of the conference was “That you may have hope”. The world’s religions offer much in the way of hope on the packaging, but perhaps fall short, as we all humanly do. But it is in the kindness of strangers that hope is really to be found, and it is something that I find all over the place, sometimes where you least expect it. Kindness, of course, means treating others as if they were kin. I have found that it is more readily available than its opposite numbers cruelty and mean-mindedness.
On a recent television programme, the Reverend Peter Owen Jones existed for two weeks on the kindness of others. He noted that “If you are reliant on the goodness in others, that’s what you will find – the goodness in others. But that means making yourself vulnerable, which is not easy.” I didn’t need to go to his extremes to find the kindness of strangers but in their hospitality, I found the real truth in the theme of the conference. For it is in that generosity of the human spirit that you may have hope.

Germany, Britain, Two wars, Rememberence and living with a shared history.

What follows is the text my address to seminar looking at, Britain and Germany: Our Shared History, it will take place in Munich in May.

Firstly a little bit about myself, because in offering this reflection on Remembrance it is important to acknowledge certain things about me and what I bring to Remembrance. 

 I was born in February 1967 towards the end of the twenty-second year after the end of the second world war. To the boy who grew up in the 1970s that might have seemed like a long time. To the middle-aged man of 43, 22 years ago seems like yesterday. A bit more context: Both my parents were born in 1943; both of them war babies. My mother was born in Tilsit, now in the Russian Federation, then part of East Prussia. As a two-year-old she was one of the thousands of refugees fleeing the Red Army as they moved west through an eastern winter. By contrast, my father was born on a farm in rural Kent.  
 As a child I was a member of uniformed organisations like the Scouts and the Air Training Corps, which my German cousins would have been horrified by, I think. As a young man I served in both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Yeomanry (a regiment of part-time soldiers).So you can see that upon almost my entire life, the shadow of the second world war has lain.
 In Britain Remembrance Sunday is about Remembrance and Thanksgiving. Remembering the dead and giving thanks for the freedoms their sacrifice has achieved. It is both a civic and military spectacle. Although black is very much the order of the day, this is broken up by the glimmer of medals, the colours of flags and of course the ubiquitous red of the poppies. Despite all of its sad associations it is a day that we Brits look forward to with pride. 
A pride that is easy when your cause was won and your purpose was righteous. It is a pride that I have never been fully able to own. Because, you see, half the combatants in my family were on the losing and unrighteous side also, it seems.
 A few years ago I was in a town in the north-east of Germany and I noticed a small memorial with words in Hebrew and German. “Zur erinnerung und mahnug” These words translated are “To remember and give warning” The memorial marked the site of the synagogue.
 I have to say that I share the same ambivalence to Remembrance Sunday. We are asked to remember the glorious dead, but surely we should also ask why they are dead. Every year we sing “O valiant hearts” written by a local grandee, Sir john Arkwright, and I quote from this hymn 
“Proudly you gathered, rank on rank, to war,
As who had heard God’s message from afar;
All you had hoped for, all you had you gave,
To save mankind yourselves you scorned to save.

These were his servants, in his steps they trod,
Following through death the martyred son of God:
Victor he rose; victorious too shall rise
They who have drunk his cup of sacrifice”.

Clearly here the sacrifice on the Somme is equated with the sacrifice on Calvary. Not only that, but it seems from this hymn, that the victorious dead have won their salvation through fighting for the right side. I have to say nothing could be further from Christian truth than this. I wouldn’t dream of saying it on Remembrance Sunday.
In the final verse of the hymn we find these lines:
“In glorious hope, their proud and sorrowing land
Commits her children to thy gracious hand.”

To me that says it all. The reason I dislike this hymn so much is not its lack of Christian truth but those final words are a sop to thousands of working class men who lost their lives; thousands more whose lives were ruined by injury, thousands of parents, wives and children whose loss all was due to a confidence trick perpetrated by the military industrial complexes of both nations.
The hymn is a way of pacifying what anger there might have been into a ritual of sorrow and pride.
 Could the same be said of Remembrance Sunday itself?
 In recent years the focus has begun to shift away from the two World Wars of the last century. My country has become involved in one very dubious war in Iraq, and in my opinion, a far more justifiable conflict in Afghanistan. On several occasions in most months of the year service personnel killed in action are brought back with great solemnity through the town of Wootton Bassett, and each occasion is a Remembrance Sunday. What I note about this is that we are still proud of our soldiers. We continue to wear our poppies on these occasions with pride. We give our soldiers our support. But many of us, including the most loyal, question our government about the nature and reason for those conflicts. We do so on behalf of our soldiers, sailors and Air-force personnel.
 A few years ago on Remembrance Sunday I asked the question What shall I tell my children about the wars – second and first? It is question that lays right at the heart of our shared history, My response is that I shall tell them about their great-grandfathers: Franz Teubler and John Fell, both of whom fought on the Somme. They may even have fought each other. They came back and my children are their descendents. But I will also tell them of Uncle George and Uncle Werner who remained uncles with no descendents because they did not come back.
 Remembrance Sunday can be about pride and thanksgiving, but we all may have something to learn from those words on the German memorial. Remembrance is also a warning. 
I will finish with a better poem than “O valiant hearts”:
 This is poem, written by Wilfred Owen, a man who knew only too well the reality and pity of war. It is soldier’s poem and perhaps a pastor’s too.
One ever hangs where shelled roads part. 
In this war He too lost a limb, 
But His disciples hide apart; 
And now the Soldiers bear with Him. 

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest, 
And in their faces there is pride 
That they were flesh-marked by the Beast 
By whom the gentle Christ's denied 

The scribes on all the people shove 
And bawl allegiance to the state, 
But they who love the greater love 
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

How many anglicans does it take to change a light bulb? Change!

It is pollarded oaks that live the longest. For up to 1000 years, every Autumn they sew the seeds of their own successes. By contrast, their un-pollarded cousins are short-lived. What lesson here then, is there for the Church of England?

In the village of Ramsbury, near to where I grew up, there was an ancient tree, standing resplendent in the market-place. It was the symbol of the Ramsbury Building Society, and my childhood money –box from the same Society had a picture of the tree upon it. Like our own Great Oak, it was hollow. By the time I was a teenager, the tree had begun to die. Everything was done to preserve it, but eventually the decision was made to cut it down. This, of course, created a bit of an uproar. How could this symbol of the village be allowed to die? The fact was it was already dead. Its branches had gone, and all that was left was a hollowed-out trunk. In its place a sapling was planted. – one that still continues to grow to the stature of its predecessor.
I think there is a message that may be hard to listen to, but never-the-less needs to be heard. There is no point in trying to preserve something that has become a hollowed-out husk of its former self. Pruning and pollarding perhaps postpone that hollowed-out fate.
I don’t know whether the Church of England has yet reached the stage of being a hollowed-out husk, but it seems to me that it is in great danger of becoming just that. It is over 500 years old and it can no longer touch lives in the way that it formerly did.
When I was training for Ministry I was asked when had I decided to go into the church? I answered somewhat pedantically that I had been in the church since 20th August 1967, the date of my baptism. In the end old trees cannot be preserved, and they go the way of things. No amount of preservation can preserve something that is both out of time and out of place. What’s needed is the renewal of new life, and that renewal can only come when the minister, that servant within ourselves. When we receive a service from anyone, we are receiving something from that which is good.
Trees come and go. So too do institutions. Let us not weep over the demise of old trees and tired institutions. Rather, let us continue to rejoice in the life that is within us, and the service to which each life is called. These are the green shoots of May, and these are the things worth nurturing.
Nobody likes change. That’s tough. The impermanence of all things is an unchanging reality. Not even the stones live for ever. Living things change by continuing to grow. Whereas dead things change only through decay.

Spiritual but not religious

“It seems that many people like to describe themselves as "spiritual," but, if pressed to define the word as it applies to them/explain what they mean by it, I imagine that they wouldn't be able to and/or wouldn't want to. That's incredibly frustrating.”
 These are the words of an atheist blogger and college lecturer, Miranda Celeste Hale. She voices a typical frustration felt by many atheists at the word “spiritual” and the similar word “spirituality”.
 So what do these words mean? The word “spirit” from which they both come, is usually taken to mean a non-material part of our personal existence and/or existence in general. In terms of its origin, it just means “breath”. Neither of these really helps us understand the words spiritual or spirituality. And, although these words look similar, they are speaking about different things. 
 I often hear people say “I’m not religious but I am spiritual.” Perhaps they mean that although they have religious feelings, and perhaps a belief in God and life after death, they don’t sign up to belonging to a particular religion or set of religious beliefs. So, saying “I am spiritual but not religious” is a less clumsy way of saying “I am religious, but I don’t believe in any particular religion”.
 So, if that is “spiritual” what is “spirituality”?
 If “spiritual” describes the person, then “spirituality” is a word that describes our way of being spiritual or religious. For instance, one might talk about a Cistercian spirituality, Cistercians were the monks that built the Abbeys at Tintern, Fountains and Dore. Cistercians live lives of silence, simplicity and solitude. They live their lives in silence. They spend a lot of time on their own. Their churches are very simple in design and even their clothes are made of un-dyed wool. In these three things they find their royal route to God.  
 Franciscans also live in simplicity and at the heart of their spirituality is a life of poverty combined with the service to others. That is their way of being Christian. 
 Of course spirituality is not limited to Christianity or even, some would argue, to Religion. There is even a little Atheist book of spirituality by a French philosopher. 
 So, spirituality is a way of being spiritual or religious or even non-religious. But I think it is also a way of living with reference to the big questions: Who are we? What are we? Why are we? and How shall we live?
 You might call it applying big answers to big questions in everyday living. Lent continues during this month (Ash Wednesday was 17th February). It’s as good a time as any, to reflect on those questions, and to apply our answers to our everyday lives.

Why Wilderness?

What often strikes me about the stories told in the Bible is the landscape, the wilderness in which they often take place. We are told about encounters with God in the wilderness. Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness to the promised land. He received the Ten Commandments in the wilderness.
John appeared in the wilderness to prepare the way for Jesus.
Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. And during his ministry on earth he would spend time alone with God in the wilderness. It has been said that the God of Israel is a God of the wilderness.
In the wilderness you often find large skies and perfect silences. Such places speak of the infinity of the divine, of a God beyond description who cannot be placed into a neat and tidy dogmatic box.
We don’t need the desert to find the wilderness, any wild place is a wilderness, and any place we go to be alone can be a wilderness. It seems to me that we can find God in the wild places simply because God can be more easily found in places beyond human contrivance and preference. In the wilderness things are simply what they are, revealing something of the God who is what God is.
In the wilderness there is space, though not emptiness, this is a space like a baby’s mind, open to all the possibilities that God and or the universe have to offer.