Four Ways to Pay Attention to the Relational Part of Spirituality

Rabbi Hanokh loved to tell this story: "For a whole year I felt a longing to go to my master Rabbi Bunam and talk with him.  But every time I entered the house, I felt I wasn't man enough.  Once though, when I was walking across a field and weeping, I knew that I must run to the rabbi without delay.  He asked, 'Why are you weeping?'

"I answered:  'I am after all alive in this world, a being created with all the senses and all the limbs, but I do not know what it is I was created for and what I am good for in this world.'

"'Little fool,' he replied, 'that's the same question I have carried around with me all my life.  You will come and eat the evening meal with me today.'"

What a beautiful depiction of the deeply relational aspect of the spiritual journey.  Here are several observations.

One, spirituality (the process of discovering your unique place in the world) is nurtured in community. 

The master rabbi knew this---the other rabbi's existential angst was an echo of his own search.  So he invited him into his home to share that hunger.

Spirituality in community blossoms from a oneness with others that blooms from "shared vision and shared goal, shared memory and shared hope."

As one author puts it,

"While spirituality can be discovered in solitude, it can be fulfilled only in community."

Two, spirituality is experienced and developed in mutuality.  A recognition and embrace of mutual hungers.

The master rabbi recognized his colleague's personal angst in himself, and responded to it from his own desire to pay attention to that search.  So he invited him into his home to share that mutual hunger.

Personal growth by nature must take place in an environment of mutuality---where we can relate to others who in turn can also relate to us; where we share with each other; where we are vulnerable with each other; where we encourage and support each other.  And in this context, we can grow together and allow each other to help expand our own hearts, minds, and spirits.

Three, spirituality is grown by listening to people's stories.

The master rabbi listened to his colleague's story of personal angst.  And then, after he invited him into his home for a meal (that symbol of intimate mutuality and relationship), they both could listen to each other express their mutual hunger and longing.

Noticing others who are echoing your own desires and longings, listening to them tell their own stories, and then choosing to connect with them more deeply, is a necessary part of spiritual growth.  Others' individual life experiences are powerful tools of hope and growth and wisdom for our own journeys.

Four, spirituality is shaped in healthy ways by being a nonanxious presence in each other's lives.

Though the master rabbi's name calling ("little fool") might seem perjorative toward his colleague, it wasn't a judgment against him.  It was simply an observation about his worldview and lack of understanding---"Don't you realize that we all have this hunger for finding our unique place in the world?  Why would you think I wouldn't understand this?  I, too, am searching for ultimate meaning and purpose in the world, just like you.  We're in this together!"

We're in this together!  Powerful words to hear from each other.  "I hold no judgment over you.  I too am in this same boat.  So let's row together.  Let's search for our unique places in the world together.  We'll hold the space for each other as each of us questions, doubts, wonders, explores, discovers, identifies, and walks (and even stumbles along) the road one step at a time.  Together."

Blinking or Winking Spirituality

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who studies manifestations of spirituality, uses the helpful distinction between a wink and a blink.  The wink and the blink have in common certain physiological characteristics---they look alike.  But a blink is unintended, automatic, its purpose self-contained:  to lubricate the eye.

A wink, on the other hand, has a different kind of purpose:  it conveys an intention---it is necessarily directed at another.  Why?  because the wink can succeed only as a wink if it is perceived by the other person as a wink and not a blink.  Right?

Dr. Geertz summarizes:

"Our most human behavior is fundamentally intentional, and intentionality becomes actualized only as effective co-intentionality:  which means simply that it takes two to make a wink; we cannot be humanly in isolation from others."

Healthy spirituality can be developed with "blinking."  It is a recognition of that sometimes automatic response we have to life--a sense of awe, gratitude, appreciation.  It's a "lubricating" of the eye of our hearts and minds and souls.

But a deeper kind of spirituality is developed and grown with "winking."  It's intentional, mutual, done in community, and signifies a sense of being in relationship with others in a pleasing, nonanxious way, being able to both see and embrace the wisdom of others.

We can't ignore the "blinking" spirituality.  But we need to especially pay attention to the "winking" aspect.

Matina Horner reminds us,

"To 'feel less alone' is without doubt an ultimate quest of all of life, yet perhaps never before has loneliness been so widespread as it is today."

We need more winking.  Don't you think?

Freeing the Unique Song in Our Souls

Twentieth century Afrikaner author and political advisor Laurens Van der Post tells the story of two brothers who lived in South Africa.  The older brother was strong, tall, handsome, intelligent, an excellent athlete.  His parents sent him away to an exclusive private school where he soon became an admired leader of the student body. His younger brother, six years younger, was neither good looking nor capable, and was also a hunchback.  But he had one great gift.  He had a magnificent singing voice.

Eventually the younger brother joined the older at the same boarding school.  They were so different from each other no one knew they were related.  One day in a cruel outbreak of mob psychology, a group of students ganged up on the younger brother, started making fun of him, tore off his shirt to reveal his hunchback, and then taunted, jeered and laughed at him.

The older brother, as it turns out, was in the chemistry lab trying to complete an assignment when he heard the commotion outside and went to the window to see what was happening.  He saw the ugly scene with his brother in the middle of the gang being humiliated by those sadistic students.  He made a painful decision – afraid of losing his popularity with the student body, he chose to not go out and face the crowd and acknowledge that the strange hunchback was his brother to put an end to the whole sorry mess.  Staying in the lab and going back to his assignment, he left his brother to the mob and out of fear betrayed him by what he failed to do.

The younger brother was never the same again.  He returned home to his parents’ farm where he kept to himself and refused to sing, his humiliation and embarrassment locking the song in his soul .  After graduating, the older brother became a soldier in WWII, stationed in Palestine where every night his painful betrayal ate away at his heart.

One night, lying outdoors in the middle of Palestine in the midst of the war, and gazing up into the starlit sky, the older brother thought about his younger brother, how defeated and pained he had been when he went back home, and how he had refused to sing again – his heart and soul had been betrayed.  The older brother lay there night after night imagining the pain and suffering of his brother that he had caused.  He began to feel that hurt keenly.  And his heart told him that he would never have peace until he went home and asked his brother’s forgiveness.  And so he made the incredibly difficult, dangerous wartime journey from Palestine to South Africa.

The brothers talked long into the night, the older one confessing his guilt and remorse.  They cried together, embraced, and the breach between them began to heal.

Late that night, after the older brother had fallen asleep, he was startled awake by a sound.  He went to the window, and there out on the open lawn was his brother, face lifted toward the stars, singing again, the beautiful song soaring into the night sky.  An act of compassion had set the song in his younger brother’s soul free again and had unlocked his own soul, too.

Spirituality is the journey of being set free - free to sing the God-given, unique and personalized song that is often trapped in our souls, free to learn how to truly sing that song again unabashedly, shamelessly, courageously, truthfully, authentically.

And what tragic consequences, as the story reminds us, when we live in fear or judgment of others.  The song we have always been meant to sing to the world becomes trapped inside.

It continues to amaze me how much influence you and I have over each other in our journeys, for good or for ill, for freedom or for bondage, for expression or for suppression.  I'm in awe of the power of compassion, forgiveness, acceptance to free our songs.  It impresses me how people in my life have related to me in a way that has empowered me to sing my song in a way that's truly me and in a way that no one else on earth can sing just like me.  It hasn't been their criticism and judgment of me that has set my song free.  It has been their tender compassion, acceptance, and encouragement that have made the difference.  It has been their nonanxious presence to hold space for me in a spirit of unconditional support.  It has been their undying belief in me as a worthy human being and their confidence in my calling and purpose in the world.  These gifts have set my song free again and again.  And I've been empowered to sing with joy, courage, and more and more abandon.  And when I sing my song authentically, others are empowered and emboldened to sing their song, too.  The cycle of life.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.