Growing Spiritually

 

When I was in my 20s and heading off to seminary, I had this idea that the spiritual journey was like climbing a mountain to enlightenment. I knew very few people were said to reach enlightenment, but this was the goal. Thinking back on it now it seems like a sort of like the Olympics of spirituality. Many would compete, few would get to the top.

Eventually I remembered that I’m a universalist. Why would a loving God set up a survivor style obstacle between humans and the divine? And while it does seem that some unique people like St. Francis or St Clare or Desmond Tutu or the Dali Lama do come to a special spiritual wisdom, I postulated that a God who loves everyone would also have something like those lovely paved paths at a good state park that is accessible to everyone. A loving God would make a way for everyone.

In our church mission statement, we talk about “growing spiritually.” What I like about this phrase is that we all grow -- it’s something that happens naturally without us thinking too hard about it. Sometimes we have growing pains, sometimes it’s disorienting, but growth is the most natural thing in the world. What does it mean to grow spiritually, and what does it mean to grow spiritually as a UU? I used to think the goal was to grow into someone else, someone better, but in midlife I finally understand the goal is to grow into ourselves, to be the only person we can be, to serve the web of life with our unique gifts and capacities.

A yoga teacher in a big studio I visited out in California once said “keep practicing and eventually you’ll be pain free.” It was a good class, I was enjoying it, but that made me pause- To me being pain free is not really a spiritual goal. It’s a desire for probably every living being, but I’m very skeptical of any teacher or practice that promises the goal is to be pain free. I had studied Buddhism in seminary with a real Theravada monk, saffron robes and all, and he introduced me to the Buddhist teaching that pain is inevitable, it’s part of being alive. But how we interact with the pain, how we approach the pain, the choices we make- concerns much of Buddhist philosophy.

Sadly, we are in a time right now when there is a lot of pain in the world, and in our own lives. If we believed that the goal of spiritual growth was to become pain free, I for one would be failing right now.

Consider the story of St. Francis we heard last week, he was a veteran and a POW, and never fully healed physically from that time, but that experience was a wake up call for him, a catalyst that began a tremendous period of spiritual growth. For Francis spiritual growth looked like a desire to follow God more closely, specifically following the example of Jesus. There was no one else around him on the path he felt called to, so he had to forge a new path in his Catholic tradition. For him it that growth started with prayer and wondering and deep listening, and leaving material things behind.

Or consider the poet Mary Oliver, whose poems have inspired so many of us. She felt called to spend a lot of time in nature, noticing carefully, listening, until she began to feel a sense of mutuality among the living things. In this way she began to heal her childhood trauma.

I think of spiritual growth not as one path we all need to follow to a common goal, but more like how a plant grows. Compare the white cedar tree that grows only a few inches a year, with the goal of becoming straight and strong and tall, with the pumpkin vine growing across my friend’s front yard, which I swear grows inches a day sometimes. Zebras have kind of a dangerous childhood, so they are ready to walk a few minutes after birth. For humans it can take a year or longer. Fish of course never walk at all. Well, most fish…Unitarian Universalists honor the diversity of nature, and the diversity of humans. Pluralism is one of our 7 values. Each spiritual journey is as unique as the humans who make them.

In general plants of all species grow towards the sun, and in general we humans row in relationship -- to the divine, to ourselves, to the web of life which includes our human communities. This is the definition I would offer you today- spiritual growth is growing in relationship to the divine, to ourselves, to the web of life. And while we are always growing, by setting our intention and being mindful we can guide that growth toward whatever is sacred, towards what is larger than ourself, and towards our own deepest truest self.

In our poem today, Molly Remer says:

Be too awake
for there are lakes of longing
within you
and you know how to swim.

When I was being trained as a spiritual director our teacher often suggested we “let desire lead” – which kind of blew my mind. This kind of blew my mind, but it has turned out to be good advice. I believe there is something in us, like the desire of the zebra to get up and walk so soon after being born, there is something innate in us that points the way towards spiritual growth. Or as the Buddha says in our story [The Party, traditional retold by Sarah Conover] ”is there not a jewel within that you should attend to?”

So there’s a kind of growth that is part of our innate nature, but there is also the way we grow in response to the world around us.

Plants offer such wonderful images of that. In my back yard there is limited sun, and so all the plants lean and stretch and bend towards it. Clover in a yard that is regularly mowed will bloom at a shorter height than clover in a meadow. We grow one way in response to the presence of a caring, loving friend or community, we grow another way in response to a toxic workplace or the loss of a friend.

I think of the events in my own life that have helped me grow more loving, for example. The kind loving people who taught me something new about love by their example. Or the hard things that broke my spirit, and were healed by love. Of the experiences in my own life that taught me sometimes I could even be that loving presence to someone else who was hurting or broken.

This kind of learning lasts our whole lives. I can’t believe I had never known until last week that throughout our lives our bones deconstruct themselves so they can reconstruct themselves. So even once you stop getting taller, your bones continue to remodel themselves your whole life.[i] According to the Cleveland clinic website: “… if a bone is cracked, damaged or broken, osteocytes trigger a reaction that attracts osteoclasts to dissolve the area around the break (to resorb damaged bone tissue) and osteoblasts to lay down new bone tissue, so it can begin to heal.” I think spiritual growth can be like that too. Life wears us down, sometimes with little microscopic damages, other times bigger blows to body or spirit. Both body and spirit grow to repair and heal us. Not all new growth happens in response to damage, sometimes it’s because you started weightlifting, or walking or dancing more, and the bones grow harder to support you. Some practices we choose make body and or spirit stronger! This is just to say, you are never done growing spiritually -- your spirit, your soul continues to grow in response to what you meet and what you do and what you experience in life.

Both poems I chose for today are expressions of the poets attending the jewel within. Both describe a solitary journey, an individual journey. But one important thing about the spiritual journey is that we don’t have to do it alone. In fact, if we are growing in relationship we CAN'T do it alone- relationship requires the participation of another. I remember being little and making the visit to Gramma and Grampa. How happy she was to see us! Sometimes she would burst into tears she was so happy (we lived a long way away) I love this as an image of the divine, not like a remote God who lives on a mountain top that only the elite can climb, but one who loves us and is glad for time we spend coming closer.

Or I think of my 2 little dogs at he end of the day when I come home from being out, or stand up from my desk after a long day of work -- how delighted they are to have my attention, to just sit on the sofa together and get their ears scritchled. This is a natural response when we turn our attention towards those we care about, who know us deeply. As we spend time on our relationship to the divine, to our self, to the web of life, the relationship blooms and grows.

I think this is why so many folks experience a sense of connection to the sacred in nature. Because looking out over that meadow, or mountain or lake, we see the aliveness of everything, we feel our connectedness to the web of life. And the more time we spend tending that relationship, whether it is sitting on the front porch watching the bird feeder, or picking trash out of the creek, or harvesting the first pumpkin of the year, the web of life meets us, reminds us that it is there all the time holding and feeding us, and being fed by us.

The poet Danush Lameris writes:

Now, all I know is that I want
to get closer to it—to the rocky slope, the orange petals
of the nasturtium adorning the fence, the wind’s sudden breath.
Close enough that I can almost feel, at night, the slight pressure
of the stars against my skin.

One has to set aside “elaborate plots, its complicated pleasures” not to cut ourselves off from the web of life, but to listen more carefully, to get closer to, that which holds us in a much larger embrace.

As Unitarian Universalists we tend to believe that much of spiritual growth is driven by our innate longing coming awake, our inner sense of integrity, our conscience, our sense of connection, of beauty and delight, of compassion, of love. Part of growing spiritually is learning to develop our capacity to listen, and to discern.

But I want to assure you there are guides and teachers, with guidance a bit more clear and specific than the wind, or the stars. As UUs in modern times we have tended to focus on living lives of integrity, of serving justice and growing love. These are good nourishment for our spirits, as we hone that inner sense of integrity, as we notice where we are uniquely called to help, to nurture, to speak up, to protect, to care, to build. And in the acting and the doing, in the discerning, we are held by community, and we learn from community. Just as how on a mountain top we might glimpse a view that brings us awe and wonder and a sense of coming home to ourselves, sometimes in community we feel love grow, we feel compassion and tenderness, we feel truth being spoken, and this too nourishes our spirit and helps us grow, and sometimes this too brings us awe and wonder. So congregational life helps us on this outward, extroverted path of spiritual growth.

There is also a more introverted path, attention to the jewel within. Part of the reason I became a spiritual director was because I felt a desire for more intention and more guidance on my inward journey. My own spiritual directors never drew me a map, but helped me notice how I was growing, especially when some big disorienting change was happening in my life and in my spirit. They have helped me listen for that inward guidance telling me which way to grow, discerning if I was growing towards the sun, towards love, towards spirit, towards connection. Since we are all unique, it can often help to have some individual guidance or companionship. If you ever have a question about your own spiritual path, your own spiritual growth, as your minister I’m here to talk with you about that, or to help you find the right teachers and guides that are the best fit for you. Your community can be one of those guides. In the Buddhist tradition the Sangha, the religious community, is an invaluable jewel. A community supports us when we feel lost, and provides collective wisdom and encouragement when we go astray.

Now if all of that feels kind of a lot, I guess it is. One of the hard things about being a UU is that supporting a diversity of paths, a diversity of beliefs is complex. So, in closing I’ll make it simple:

You are already growing spiritually, have been growing spiritually your whole life. And in fact that’s a great question to ponder, or maybe discuss with a friend- how have you already grown?

We are all growing to become who we uniquely are in service to life.

We are growing in connection to the divine, to ourselves and to the web of life.

We don’t do it alone, we have many guides and teachers, sometimes in unexpected places.

And if you ever get confused and lose your way, head towards love.




[i] https://www.osteoporosis.foundation/health-professionals/about-osteoporosis/bone-biology