Volume 4, Issue 1, October 1995

HUNGER FOR SPIRITUALITY GROWING

Today a paradigm shift is taking place between institutional religion and personal spirituality. The new paradigm is all about wholeness, mysticism, creativity, compassion, cosmology, creation-centred spirituality. Many people feel the churches have lost the capacity to lead them to the kind of self-transcendence or wholeness they feel a need for.

Because a majority of people today in our society don't find an organized religion an effective means of expressing spirituality they are abandoning the churches. More are meeting in groups to seek and celebrate their spirituality. There is a renewed interest in mystics and mysticism. There is the beginning of a sharing of spirituality between various religious and ethnic groups throughout the world.

There is a growing interest and vitality in spirituality as people seek identity and purpose in an increasingly secular world, states Jesuit priest, Douglas McCarthy, writing in the summer issue of the Jesuit magazine Compass.

The writer of the New Testament gospel known as the Gospel of St. John, found in Jesus' teaching a strong spiritual meaning, and so he attributed to Jesus the words: "But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth .... God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth". (John 4:23f).

One of our problems is our understanding of the word spirit.
Often we think of the spirit as an ethereal quality which is irrelevant to our practical, everyday lives. The biblical concept of our humanness as being made up of body, mind and spirit is more realistic.

According to the Old Testament creation myth of the Hebrews "God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being".

This is spirit - the breath of life, which when received brings to life an otherwise powerless body. Hence, although spirit is described by the analogy of "breath", it is a living force which comes with visible effect upon an individual or a people.

When God is understood as spirit then God becomes a force, a strength, an energy. God is inextricably bound up with humanity. The mystical experience of God is a subjective experience that involves an inner journey using the image-making part of the mind.

Ours is not a spiritually healthy society. Life is losing meaning and some are looking for a new focus of meaning in spirituality.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.