Preaching at PCC

The following message was delivered at Pescadero Community Church by Jim Brigham on April 18, 2010.

Jim Brigham retired in 2004 after a 37 year career as a Licensed Clinical social Worker. His background includes both a Master's Degree in Social Work and Graduate studies in Psychospiritual integration. He has worked in the fields of corrections and mental health counseling, a private psychotherapy practice, and was an adjunct faculty member at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. He served at three Hospice programs in the Silicon Valley area, initially as a Social worker and Bereavement Coordinator and finally as the Manager of Spiritual Support Services for Pathways Hospice of the Bay Area. A long time resident of Pescadero, he and his wife, Genevieve, recently moved to Half Moon Bay.

Jim Brigham: "Spiritual, But Not Religious"

Sound Recording

34 minutes 36 seconds. Click above to play or click heretodownload the mp3 file (32.5MB)

Written Notes

My theme today is the relationship between Spirituality and Religion. I have subtitled it: “I’m spiritual but not religious,” a phrase that we hear more and more in our society. It appears increasingly in the public media and I’ve heard it used in dialogues I’ve had with members of this very congregation. I believe that this phrase speaks to a period of cultural transition we are in from the spiritual experience as solely the province of religious tradition to a much wider claiming of “spirituality” than ever while there are concurrent changes in people’s expressions of religious practice.

I’ll speak of this more in my message but it might be good to tell you something of my own background and life experience so that you know why I am even up here today talking about such profound matters (aside from my own “chutzpa,” of course.) So here is a brief spiritual/religious biography.

I was very much raised in the Roman Catholic tradition in the 1950’s. My mother was a Nebraska German Catholic, all her life very devout and taking seriously the responsibility to bring up her children in the Faith. I was an altar boy, of course, and, like many of my peers, considered the possibility of the vocation to the priesthood. I attended Catholic school for 16 years. Elementary school in the parish and then Jesuit high school and University.

As I look back I can see that this religious training and atmosphere, for me, inspired and supported a continued quest for spiritual Truth and a closer devotional relationship with the Divine. But because of much of the way that the doctrine was transmitted at the time it also fostered the feelings of guilt and insufficiency for which it has become “infamous.” The Church also was very insular so that it resisted openness and change. It was ( and in many ways still is) a Church of the Middle Ages.

As much as I am a religious child of the 50’s I am a spiritual child of the 60’s. In 1965 I began my MSW studies at Berkeley in the center of the cultural explosion that led to so many new ways of looking at everything--from economics, politics, and morality to the more profound questions of the deeper nature of our being. It ushered in the awareness and influence of Eastern philosophies and religious traditions alongside a new openness in Western religious thought.

It was a time in which I was an eager participant allowing myself to learn new perspectives from Hindu Masters and Buddhist teachers. It didn’t seem like I was abandoning my Faith so much as I was expanding my understanding. Through the practice of meditation I was not abandoning prayer but deepening my experience of union with the Divine in ways that I had only read about in the lives of the Christian mystics. So I became much less “Church going” and more a meditator and spiritual Truth seeker open to sources of guidance from many spiritual traditions as well as to the lessons of my own experience and this is how I continue to try to be.

My professional life as a Clinical Social Worker took a real change when I began working as a Counselor for Hospice programs in 1987 until my retirement six years ago. It is this experience that I drew upon for the wording, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” As many of you probably know Hospice programs have as their mission supporting patients with terminal illnesses and their families as they go through the process of completing this earthly life. My role as Counselor involved finding out how we could provide spiritual support as well as helping manage physical symptoms and emotional distress. I found this area of inquiry to be much more personal and delicate to deal with.

A certain number of people had a clear answer. They had long-held religious affiliations and felt that receiving support through their Church, Temple, Mosque or other affiliation was quite sufficient.

Another response was from people who responded with a clear NEGATIVE. “I’m an atheist” or “I just don’t think about that stuff and don’t want to start now” or When you’re dead you’re dead and that’s all there is to it.”

But a significant number of people would say some version of “I’m spiritual but not religious.” They saw themselves as spiritual beings or seekers, or at least open to exploration of deeper truth, but did not find more formal religious practice to be relevant to their situation. Further inquiry would usually show that they had never had much exposure to religious practice and felt no need to now OR, often, they had negative experiences that turned them off to what we often refer to as “organized religion.”

One other situation that I encountered were those people who as a result of the cultural changes I referred to earlier were very “eclectic” and drew guidance and support not from one specific religious faith or creed but drew from beliefs and practices with roots in both the East and West.

So…in my Hospice career I tried to develop a Spiritual Care Program that met the needs of this broad range of people in order to acknowledge and support their spiritual journey in the final phase of life whether or not they accepted formal visits from the Chaplaincy.

So, what do I mean when I use the terms “Spiritual” and “Spiritual life?”

Maybe this is a good time to refer back to last week when Detlef was quoting Albert Schweitzer as saying that in matters beyond the pragmatic and mundane you cannot really tell another person something they don’t already know. We can only, in our words and deeds, help bring forward in another the recognition of what they already know to be true.

That is my intention here… to speak of the “Spiritual” as I have come to understand it and hope that some of my words today may resonate with your own experience and acknowledge and affirm your own “Spiritual” being.

I’ll begin with the great difficulty in discussing the “Spiritual” because it is essentially not an IDEA but an EXPERIENCE. Talking of this profound matter at the level of ideas usually just leads to rational or philosophical debate and that it is not my interest this morning.

The matter is made more difficult because, by definition, it is an experience not of the physical, visible, measurable realm of our being but of the non-material realm of being. This is why rationality and science simply have no adequate language for it. Add to this that the experience of the Spiritual realm of our nature is UNIQUE to each of us at any given moment and we see why it is so challenging to articulate it.

It is for this reason that poetic and metaphoric language have traditionally best expressed this aspect of our being.

So rather than talk at the level of ideas I want to describe some of the experiences that we have that I am positing are direct experiences of our “Spiritual” nature.

---Perhaps the most common is the INTUITIVE REALIZATION of the existence of the Source or Power that underlies and keeps all things in existence. This experience is sometimes more impersonal and we find ourselves using such terms as “Higher Power;” “Something larger than ourselves;” “The Creator;” or “The Transcendent.” Sometimes the experience is more of a personal relationship and we use such terms as “The Divine” or “God” or terms specific to a religious tradition such as “The Goddess” or “Father God” or “Allah” or “The Lord” etc.

---A sense of all encompassing ORDER behind what may appear chaotic or random or beyond our personal control.We find ourselves or others using here such terms as “It was meant to be;” or “The way the Universe wants it;” “It’s all unfolding as it should” or a reference to “the Divine Plan.” Within a specific religious tradition the reference may be in terms of the Deity, eg. “It is God’s will” “It is the will of Allah.”

---GRATITUDE…a powerful overall sense of deep softly emotional gratitude, not for a specific desire acquired or received, but a kind of unconditional gratitude for all that is just as it is.

---LOVE…a term used so often in our everyday discourse that the true and deeper meaning is diluted. I refer here not to the simple expression of attraction to something or someone (eg. “I love Duarte’s pies” or “I love it when you look at me like that.”)

I am referring to the pervasive experience of non-conditional love that may begin with a feeling state toward another being that arises not because they do something for us or have a quality that we admire but simply because they exist and we experience our deep connection with them. We often have such experiences in the presence of a baby or young child or perhaps a pet. Sometimes the experience arises in the presence of a friend or family member but always in the context of non-conditionality and spontaneity. This experience often leads to an even wider and more expansive feeling of a loving communion with all that is.

“And the greatest of these is Love.” This Christian Scriptural quote is often used at weddings in reference to the personal love between two people but the reference is to a Greater Love, to the love of God for His Creation and, in response, the love of the Creation for the Creator and all that He has made. It is the experience of the underlying bond of of all things to one another. It is an essential experience of the Spiritual as the unity of all things which is felt in the moment as the deep affinity for and appreciation of another. In the words of the Beattles, “All you need is LOVE!”

---EQUANIMITY… or the experience of an acceptance of all things just as they are. This state is one of the aspirations of Buddhist and other Eastern tradition meditation- based practices. It is certainly not our ordinary relationship with our possessions or the events of our lives. We most often live from a position of wanting things to be other than they are in order to feel more satisfied or complete in life. The result, of course, is a chronic sense of dissatisfaction at best and periods of anxiety and depression at worst.

There are times, however, when because of our own intention through the practice of prayer or meditation or as a result of spontaneous experience that there is an overwhelming sense of calm acceptance of our circumstances and a kind of knowing that all is as it should be. I have in my Hospice work often had people relate experiences in their past where they were facing imminent death (such as an accident, near drowning, or combat injuries) and suddenly their fear and struggle for life were replaced with a calm sense of acceptance and well-being. Recalling this earlier event often helped them find a greater composure and faith as they once again faced their mortality.

We might say that this is the Deep “Peace that surpasses understanding.” It is also expressed as a sense that “all is just as it should be” even though our circumstances may not be what our smaller, individual self might desire for us.

---GRACE… Such a lovely word that conveys many different meanings to describe non-ordinary states.

One meaning is that of a state of alignment or connectedness with the Divine. Examples of this are being “in a state of Grace” or “full of Grace.”

Another meaning is that of an unearned bestowal of a Divine influence directly into our life such as the “Amazing Grace” of the famous hymn or being “touched by Grace” in a time of need.

Once again, the essence conveyed in the use of the term “Grace” is a relationship with That which is beyond our limited, separate sense of ourselves in a context that supports a Higher Good.

---SURRENDUR…certainly one of our less common experiences but a possibility nonetheless. In our usual mode we hold tightly to what we have: possessions, privacy, identity, life itself. Occasionally, however, we may experience ourselves “just letting go.” Suddenly our habit of clinging is replaced, if only for a moment, by a giving over to That which is in reality the Source of all that we cling to. This again is an experience that may be aspired to and cultivated through prayer or meditation or come as a spontaneous reaction to some life circumstance.

The ultimate Surrendur state is one that I have witnessed often in my Hospice work at the time of physical death. If as an observer at that profound moment one is paying attention beyond the bodily and emotional process it is possible, at least in my belief, to discern a releasing of this individual life into a more expansive field of Consciousness.

---UNITY…The essence of the “Spiritual” state, we could say, is the experience of the Oneness of all of the Creation and the experience of being One with all that exists.

We can have the Idea of this Unity…the modern Ecology movement and Gaia consciousness are examples.

But at times we may have a direct experience this so-called Unitive consciousness. We might describe it as an “awareness of being One with everything” or that “all things are interconnected in an inseparable Whole” or being “ part of the fabric of all things.”

This experience of what I am calling our Spirituality is most often, but not exclusively, generated out of being in the Natural realm. If we are fortunate enough to access a place of quiet observation of the beauty and inherent perfection of Nature this experience may descend on us. For this reason it is common for those who foreswear religious affiliation to declare as their alternative, “Nature is my Church.”

What I am calling the Unitive consciousness is that which is also referred to as the experience of Mystical Union as perceived by Mystics and Saints of all religious and Wisdom traditions throughout the ages. In today’s program I refer to a poem by Abbess Hildegard, a 13th Century Christian mystic.

I am the one whose praise echoes on high
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
That causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

These experiences that I am describing are, for most of us, both brief and spontaneous when they do occur at all. They come to us as “glimpses” of God, of Eternity, of the Larger Purpose, of the Peace which surpasses understanding.

Some of us are perhaps more or less aware of a deeper yearning within for a communion or closer relationship with what I am calling “the Spiritual.”

The final profound question is, “What part of our being seeks and has these experiences?”

I would suggest that this is what in the Judeo-Christian tradition we call the “Soul.” The deepest, truest sense of a Self that is beyond our ordinary consciousness of ourselves as separate but, rather, a seat of consciousness of the Mystical Union that endures even beyond our physical life. The “Divine spark within.”

The actual experience of ourselves as Soul is both fleeting and ungraspable.

To be identified as Soul is both grace bestowed and an intentional aspiration to live in such a way as to encourage that identification and grow in awareness of the Spiritual nature of our being. I refer to the quotation in the program from Sri Aurobindo, an Indian Saint and Sage, in which he describes this concept from the perspective of his Integral Yogic tradition.

If this is our birthright, indeed our true essential and unique purpose, as human beings to grow and evolve in Spiritual consciousness then where does religion come in?

Archeologists have found evidence of religious forms such as art and architecture since the first recorded findings of human civilization. In fact, it is now the theory that religion is not a result of civilization so much as the beginning roots of the move from small bands to what we think of as early civilization.

We could say that the religious instinct is uniquely inherent in our being in the sense that developing an awareness of and relationship with that which is beyond our ordinary consciousness is part of our very nature.

It is not religion per se that is the issue. It is the limitations of our ordinary human consciousness and personality in pursuing this religious instinct.

The direction of the religious impulse is toward the Divine but human frailties have historically undermined the forms that impulse has taken.

Instead of forms that are evolving, progressing and inclusive religion often has been shaped by power, greed, judgementalism, exclusivity, dogmatism, and ignorance.

Many people either because they have been harmed in some way or because they want to be more open both intellectually and spiritually reject conventional religion and it’s institutions. But they may well be more open than ever to developing and pursuing what I have called their Spiritual birthright.

Still others find that in spite of historical difficulties in religion that religious membership and practice are an essential vehicle to helping them transform themselves on the Spiritual path.

It is my optimistic view (shared by many thoughtful people) that we are, in fact, in transitional process from an older age of “religionism” to a new era much more conducive to true Spiritual growth that will involve an INTEGRATION of 1) traditional religious forms; 2)new experiments in less conventional religious practice; and 3) “spiritual but not religious” paths that working together will take humanity further toward a fuller realization of our true nature and destiny.

LET IT BE.

Jim Brigham, April 18, 2010
Posted on this website by permission of the author.
Sound recording by Detlef Matthies