June 28, 2011
What is spirituality?
Is it about believing in God?
Is it what leads us to the love of our lives after decades of searching?
Is it what makes it possible for a 43-year-old woman to have a healthy baby?
Is it what helps us heal from loss?
Is it what connects strangers to each other week after week in churches, mosques, synagogues, mandirs, and Buddhist shrines?
Is it what gives writers the skill to make others cry, laugh, and wonder?
Is it what gives musicians the courage to express each note with passion?
Is it what gives artists the imagination to paint a work as ethereal as a Monet?
Is it something that can be taught?
Photo by Linda K. Wertheimer
Is it what gives us peace as we paddle on a pristine river and a heron flies overhead?
Is it found in even the youngest children?
Is it this definition from the Collins English dictionary? “Spirituality: The state or quality of being dedicated to God, religion, or spiritual things or values, especially as contrasted with material or temporal ones.”
Or, is it the explanation for things we cannot explain?
Good thoughts, Linda.
Here’s another one to add to what could be an endless list of questions on the topic:
Is it a calm, clean room?
Thanks, Jessica. Agreed. I love your image of a calm, clean room. The term spirituality brings so many images to mind. After I wrote this post, I also thought of all of these encounters with wildlife I’ve had over the years and how magical they were. These occurrences, too, seemed connected to spirituality, whether it was seeing ibex just appear while I was biking in Israel or seeing deer sipping the water in a creek in our backyard. The creek only appears when there is rain.
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This post captures well our attempts to understand spirituality in a world that is often so skeptical. I also especially love the photo. I wrote a poem about a death using the image of a heron in my poetry blog, Dreaming Poetry .
Thanks for sharing these images.
Lydia,
Thanks so much for your thoughts. I used to be quite a skeptic regarding religion. I still would not consider myself ultra-religious. Yet, I do believe in the power of spirituality or the ability to feel something spiritual. Took a long time in coming.
Linda
…… or perhaps is it the ability to look at the ebony night sky and see not definite, white, sparkling lights, but rather holes in the darkness through which our loved ones are communicating with us and we with them?
I love this story. It originates from the arctic inuit people who lived with 6 months of darkness before the following 6 months of light.
Linda
Linda,
Thanks for sharing that story. It’s beautiful. I love that image of holes in the darkness.
Linda
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