My Dear SBNR Friend (continued),
I have one more question, perhaps a better question than the one with which I started.
I began by asking if I believed there is anything I believe you might gain from affiliating with an established religious institution.
But, what if I turn the question around? What might religious institutions learn from you?
Here are four things I believe you have to teach me in my spiritual life:
1. The importance of spiritual practice.
There have been times in my spiritual journey when I have found myself tangled up in doctrine. Spirituality seemed to be all about getting my beliefs right. I wanted to nail down my dogmas and get all my theological ducks in a row. Right belief seemed to matter more than healthy life-giving spiritual discipline.
You are much less concerned with getting your intellectual arguments all lined up like tidy little soldiers to do battle with the enemies of orthodoxy. Your attention is focused on living the spiritual life and developing those practices that support a healthy open attitude towards your life as it unfolds.
2. The value of openness and flexibility.
You are hard to pigeon-hole. You seek truth wherever you can find it and will not be fenced in by any prescribed path or doctrine.
It has at times been challenging for me to peak outside the walls of my own tradition. You have taught me that I do not need to be afraid. There is a vast richness of spiritual wisdom and truth in many spiritual teachings and teachers.
You have challenged me to venture out from the safe and familiar shores of my own path to encounter the truth that is carried in different vessels. I have been enriched by this journey and hope that it has made me more open to you and more accepting of the rich diversity that is present in the world.
As I have explored paths beyond my own familiar spiritual world, I have returned to my own tradition and discovered that many of the truths and practices I found elsewhere are also present in my own home.
3. The essential discipline of a listening heart.
You follow the teachings you do, not because someone tells you they are true or because they are authorized by some authority on high. You follow your spiritual path because it speaks to your heart. It resonates with the truth you find inside yourself and you honour that truth by following wherever it may lead.
Too often I have looked for the authorized route, ignoring or even denying the truth I know intuitively in an attempt to conform to the pattern I believed was the only right way to go. You have modelled for me a life of freedom in which the goal is to live authentically in tune with the truth that I experience as true.
As I have sought to follow the call of my heart, I have not left the path of my tradition. I have found myself moving more deeply into the truth and light that are carried in the vessel that might once have been a prison but is now a window opening into great light and space.
4. The importance of space.
I always thought I was accepting of differences and valued diversity. But, you have taught me to be vastly more open of the complexities of the world we share and to value deeply the homogeneity of life.
In the space you have pointed me to, I see now that, difference and division are not in fact the final reality about life. The truth I have seen in you is that we are all one. We are joined in that bond of fellowship and love that is the energy-force of the universe. We are eternally and deeply connected to all people. I pray that I may more deeply embody this reality in my life.
So, my SBNR Friend, I thank you for all you have taught me, for the wisdom you have modeled in my life and for the faithfulness of your journey. I hope we can benefit each other and honour the different paths that have brought us to a common place.
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Christopher Page is the rector of St. Philip Anglican Church in Oak Bay, and the Archdeacon of Tolmie in the Anglican Diocese of B.C. He writes regularly on his blog www.inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com
You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking HERE
