What Is Spirituality? Part II: A Human(ist) Definition
In Relax, It’s Just God: How and Why to Talk to Your Kids About Religion When You’re Not Religious, Wendy Russell Thomas criticizes the notion that the ideas and history behind religion are toxic even if you don’t subscribe to them, as she doesn’t. More specifically, she disputes the assumption that ignoring religion is beneficial for children and cautions against the adverse side effects of doing so. I do recommend the book to parents, but I raise it for another reason. When I first read it, I homed in on a section where she offers a list of nonreligious alternative identities to atheism. This resonated so much because I find atheism silly - not the idea, but the identity. It is a reactive concept, meaning it exists in opposition to something else, rather than a constructive identifier. Not only does it center the god it disbelieves (atheism means “not-god-ism”) it plays religion’s game. It’s validating all of religion’s questions by answering them, despite offering alternative responses. I want to ask different questions. (We can talk later about how most atheists I know are really anti-Christian-imperialism and would have no problem with the view of god I hold. And yet another conversation about how atheists are more likely than religious people to believe in ghosts and cryptids and that’s amusing to me.)
Among the options Thomas enumerated was Humanism, the discovery of which made me feel seen. Google it now and you’ll find a wikipedia article in the category of philosophy and academia harkening to the Italian renaissance. Snooze. I may be a philosophy bro, such as I have been embarrassingly accused, but that’s not what I’m here for. Instead, humanism gave me constructive language for how I love humanity even as I don’t think we’re fundamentally different from other species in the grand scheme of things. I believe in our potential (and not inherent evil, as Church taught me) even as I lament our shortcomings. I mourn human suffering. And even though humanity isn’t the center of the universe, we only know anything through the human experience. A humanist-ish definition, then:
“Spirituality is:
• the practice and perspective of imbuing meaning in and deriving meaning from the human experience through embracing existence with awareness, intention, gratitude, and awe
• a posture of curiosity about the interconnectivity of reality
• the ceaseless inquiry into humanity’s relationship with the universe
• the celebration of beauty and joy in the mundane”
The first part of the definition contains the most crucial word: intention. Spirituality rejects anything rote, anything performed thoughtlessly or simply because that’s what you do. In this sense, one can be deeply religious by all external indicators but not spiritual. For example, a Christian may get baptized, but if she does so with no personal connection to or understanding of the symbolism behind the ritual, she veers away from spirituality. This is not to say that rote engagement in religious practice is wrong - it probably describes most rituals performed on a daily basis - but it is simply less spiritual.
Now, this same baptist may undergo the aquatic ritual because it’s important to her grandmother and helps her feel connected to her family and her community. That sense of purpose and connection steers her back toward spirituality. In a certain sense, then, spirituality concerns itself with the why more than the what. The spiritual are engaged human beings, paying close attention. You can be religious and spiritual or unspiritual. You can be materialist and spiritual or unspiritual. What matters is your intention, your curiosity, your awe.
In Part I of this series, I used a diagram where spirituality repels from science and religion. In another sense, spirituality bores through or encompasses science and religion, delighting in and criticizing all of their questions (Figure 2). Spirituality smooshes science and religion together, not by validating all of their conclusions, but by acknowledging they both swim in the same ocean of our collective human experience. Spirituality wonders about the questions that animate both.
THE SPIRIT PART
Where is “spirit” in spirituality? What makes intention and awe spiritual? Holy Spirit comes to mind for those raised in Church. Only one religion identifies with this conceptualization of divinity in the trinitarian sense, but the notion of divine spirit still endwells a humanist interpretation. Consider the usage of spirit in reference to the communal identity of a group, place, or event. When we say that the spirit of the National Health Care for the Homeless conference is warm and grounded, or that the spirit of the American Society of Association Executives conference is corporate and stale (forgive the real-life examples), we’re describing the impact on our hearts that defy “learning objectives.” We sense the invisible connective tissue that aligns social body parts to form a corpus.
Or take the individual: if the soul of a person is synonymous with spirit, it describes that which is me that’s distinct from my body; an amputee is still a whole person. Spirit, therefore, refers to the thing behind the thing. Spirit is the identity of a thing that transcends its physical components; spirituality is curious about all this. The spiritual are explorers in search of the beyond, knowing that what they pursue may not exist and that they don’t really want to capture it anyway.
So, when Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson describes the universe with such grandeur and mystery, when he constantly asks us to broaden our thinking to the limits of our imaginations, when he envisions a better way to be human because of how small we are in comparison, I think that’s spiritual because it isn’t settling for what we can know now, it’s deeply curious, and it’s after the stuff that makes up what is, which is my tl;dr definition of god.
DIVINE MUNDANE
Spirituality can see the sacred in anything much like a standup comedian can make any experience or observation a bit. What others take for granted or don’t even notice, the standup finds amusing, even if the punchline is the banality. Comedian Robby Hoffman, for example, describes in one story how she recently discovered dried apricots and downed 16-20 on a road trip, then wondered aloud to her partner how they’re made, hence learning that each piece is a whole apricot. “So I just had 16 apricots!?” she exclaims and proceeds to unpack why that’s too much fruit for one sitting. That’s it; that’s the joke. It’s the kind where you see the punchline coming from the beginning but it’s still hilarious when you get there; I scream-laughed when I first heard it and still giggle as I summarize it for you. Spirituality also delights in the mundane - comedy is arguably a spiritual practice itself - and can even enjoy misery and grief. This delight is not toxic positivity, though; rather, the spiritual simply feel their feelings on purpose, leaning into the fullness of whatever they experience, knowing the despair is just part of what is.
Under this logic, one might retort that washing dishes or binging HBO could be considered spiritual. Indeed. I mentioned earlier that getting baptized lacks any intrinsic meaning - its significance, rather, depends on the practitioner. So too with stuff you wouldn’t find in a Religious Studies textbook. I consider walking to be spiritual practice, for example, because it better connects me to my body and the world around me compared to driving. I feel more like myself, more present in the moment, and more appreciative of my life when walking. But nothing about pedestrian life is intrinsically spiritual; it’s about the meaning I place within it.
THIS IS ALL WE HAVE
A humanist understanding of spirituality includes the possibility of divinity or even a personified god, but that is ancillary to the topic. Spirituality recognizes that all so-called faith traditions and the ways in which we connect to the sacred are rooted in the human experience. While it connotes institutional power, as I described in Part I, even religion is only ever experienced by individuals’ and communities’ understanding of the world. Regardless of whether god exists apart from humanity itself, so to speak, we have no access to god apart from our own experiences.
This is not to say that humanity has unique access to the divine. A squirrel may embrace a spirituality that has nothing to do with humankind. But if we humans are to know of squirr-ituality, it would be through our own senses and experiences. Again, by humanism, I mean that notwithstanding the existence of a reality or being outside our perceptions, we only have our human senses, bodies, minds, and communities to know anything about it. Spirituality is just being honest about those limitations.
Consider this analogy: sometimes at home, you hear your name called from the other room. Often, someone is trying to get your attention, but sometimes no one is there. I can dispute whether there was someone in the house to call your name, or make a sound you mistook for your name, but I cannot argue whether you heard it. You had the experience of hearing your name regardless of whether someone called it. So it is with a humanist understanding of spirituality: in a certain sense, one’s understanding of god is more important than god’s actual qualities or existence because that’s all we can ever really experience. All there is is this, because if something else were true, it too would just be a part of this, of what is, of what’s happening, of being itself.
Up to this point, you may have a clearer understanding of what spirituality means compared to religion and materialism, and you have some language to describe a secularly safe standpoint on spirit, regardless of whether you agree with my assessment. But why might this understanding help? Who cares? Certainly my parents because they adore the author. But there is so much more at stake here, as I describe in Part III where I explore how a shared understanding might help the movements to which we belong, and how the absence of spirituality might hinder us.
