The answer (is blowing in the wind)

When I taught at a medical school

I did a lot of work related to the interface of health and spirituality

 

Even wrote and published a book about it

 

All of us working on this issue at the time (1990’s)

Realized that it was important to allow people to bring their spiritual resources

to bear on their illness

 

that health was not just physical

but emotional, mental and spiritual

 

only if all facets of the person were engaged could a person

truly move from dis-ease to ease

 

one of the things we looked at was how to assess the importance of faith

to the patients

 

and one of the tools we use was HOPE

a series of four questions

 

“What are your sources of HOPE, strength, comfort, meaning and peace?”

“Is Organized religion important to you?

“Do you have Personal spiritual practices?” (Like meditation)

And

“How would you like your spirituality to Effect your healthcare?”

 

We also used FICA

“Do your have a Faith system”

“Is it Important to you?”

“Are you part of a faith Community?”

“How would you like your provider to Address these issues in your health care?”

 

 

I remember, during one of the presentations we made

someone suggested it was important that we ask people how

important their spiritual lives were to them

 

And then it hit me

Spiritual Lives?

What other kind of lives are there?

 

Which is of course why what we were doing was so important

We are spiritual beings.

 

As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously put it,

 

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience

 

we are spiritual beings

and all of life is spiritual

 

our personal lives

our work lives

our family / relational lives

our political lives

our outer lives

our inner lives

 

everything is spiritual

which means everything we do

everything we say

the way we do our jobs

the way we vote

the people and policies we support

are all spiritual practices

 

and everything we do or say

should flow out of our spirituality - which means they should all flow

out of our living connection with the Sacred

 

yeah

we are in the world

part of the dust and dirt

we just bones and flesh and blood

but we’ve been breathed into by the pneuma

the breath of the Sacred

 

we have been enlivened (Ezekiel)

 

and so everything we do is Sacred

everything

every breath we take

every word we speak

every vote we cast

every move we make

 

what does it mean in this time

to be spiritual?

What difference does it make in how we see ourselves?

In the choices we make?

In what is important to us?

 

I don’t think there is a clean answer

I think the answer is blowing in the wind

In the wind of the Spirit as it blows through us

 

the answer comes, moment by moment

as the Spirit moves in us, and through

as in each moment

as the Spirit prays for us

Informs us

and comforts us

 

for after all

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience

 

and when the Spirit

is blowing through our soul

newness happens

 

or as John O’Donohue suggests

“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn… 

 When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.”

(Anam Cara)