On Thursday night, I went to a dance party benefit for Puerto Rico with friends. The event raised $7,000 for hurricane relief, and we had a blast. When it was over, my friend and I inched our way out of the bar with the crowd, which was moving slowly, and some guy we didn’t know started talking to us.
“I am following you,” he said. “I have no idea where I’m going.”
We glanced at each other and each raised an eyebrow. But it turned out he wasn’t joking: He followed us all the way downstairs, around the corner, and outside. He seemed hopeful that we might invite him to join us for whatever would come next. As the conversation continued, we noticed he was unpredictable and a little bit drunk, so when the opportunity presented itself, I could not resist surprising him.
“What do you study?” the guy asked. We paused.
“God” I answered, in my slowest, most serious tone. Confused wrinkles spread across his forehead.
“What?” the guy responded. “That’s impossible! No one comes to Yale to study god.” He slowed the word way down like I had, emphasizing how preposterous that seemed. My friend and I raised our eyebrows again. We each caught a glimmer in the other’s eye.
“Well, we did,” I answered. “But probably not like you think.” The lines of his forehead squished together even more.
“Yeah, we don’t use the word sinner,” my friend said, and I laughed. We had been talking about our misgivings with the word sinner all week.
“We’re into inclusive god-concepts,” I added, still laughing.
“Exactly,” my friend said to the guy. “Do you think god could be a woman?” At that, his eyes almost popped out of his head.
The guy responded with something offensive about gender, and told us we sucked, which was our cue to walk away.
“Yikes!” we said to each other as we fled the scene. To be fair, he probably felt the same way about us.
*****
Standing outside a bar at midnight might seem like the last place you would expect to encounter your spirituality. Those of us at the party, after all, had just drenched a dance floor with all the moving, shaking realities of embodied human life. And we humans like to separate matters of mind, body, and spirit as much as possible.
Culturally, our habit is to wrap any engagement with our spirits up and push it into a box, which often includes specific doctrines and church walls and meetings on Sunday mornings. That is the expectation, and anything beyond it is widely considered too new age to be taken seriously. Yet the spirituality that interests me flows beyond those constraints.
When I arrived at divinity school, there was a period in which every conversation included little get-to-know-you speeches. At orientation, new students described their interests to each other, seeking connection and forming relationships, and in the first days of class, we were often asked to share what brought us to this program and what we hope to accomplish after leaving with the group.
As I answered that question again and again — why are you here? — it was difficult to summarize all the magical unfolding that brought me to this moment. But I found myself saying a few things on repeat.
My early life was shaped by an evangelical homeschool community in South Carolina that was a very difficult place for young women. When I got to college, I fled the church completely. Yet my spiritual life remained rich.
As a result, today I am interested in ways people find spiritual meaning and connection beyond church walls. Most importantly, I wonder how that connection might help us heal fractures in communities and make meaning of the chaos we experience every single day.
It is fascinating to realize that every person I engage in conversation about “spiritual connection beyond church walls” has their own interpretation of what that means. Some jump immediately to their own faith tradition and assume I am into some flexible, unchurched version of a similar belief system. Others bypass religion completely and lean towards art, nature, and contemplative practice, prioritizing anything that has helped them make sense of life as we know it.
It may seem that these interpretive fluctuations imply difference. Some people find meaning in the story of Christ, and some don’t. Some transcend struggle in the woods, and others have never hiked. Some insist they do not feel any spiritual connection at all. Despite this variation in experience, what I see in this equation goes beyond difference. It recognizes something within us all that is the same.
*****
Oxford defines spirituality as the quality of being connected with religion or the human spirit. Being “connected with religion” is easy enough to understand, but I wonder what it means to be “connected with the human spirit.” This, too, can be translated in countless ways depending on your inclination.
The human spirit, again according to Oxford, is the part of a person that includes their mind, feelings, and character rather than their body. And last time I checked, we all have a mind, feelings, and character. Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about them. Put another way, we all have a spirit and relate to it in one way or another, whether or not we pursue that relationship consciously.
That means there is no way around this truth: We are all spiritual creatures.
If we all possess a spirit, then it stands to reason that we all have habits, whether we define them as spiritual or not, that are meant to engage that spirit. Our mind, feelings, and character are essential to shaping our experience in the world, which implies that caring for them is vital to our wellbeing. From this understanding, spirit care, or spiritual care, becomes essential.
One way we engage in vital spiritual care is through spiritual practice. But what does that mean, and where does it take place?
Rachel Wheeler’s book Ecospirituality: An Introduction explores ways in which religious and spiritual practice can help restore human connection with nature. Wheeler defines spiritual practice as “activities a person undertakes in order to be intentional about being the person they want to be or understand themselves to really be.” It involves an attempt, she says, “to employ the virtues or values [people] most want to practice embodying…in relation to an ultimate value of some kind.”
She admits this definition of spiritual practice is broad, and even vague, and offers in response that “spiritual practices can be anything that contributes to the formation of a person’s being and the sustenance of that person’s well-being.”
Wheeler’s idea that spiritual practice is “anything that contributes to the formation of a person’s being” works for me; its breadth leaves space for us to find spiritual connection beyond church walls — perhaps even on the dance floor. And why wouldn’t we?
The thing we are talking about lives and breathes in regular moments. It is always present. The Spirit, that is. Your Spirit.
The spirit relates to prana in yogic philosophy; universal energy in reiki; qi in Chinese philosophy; and the Holy Spirit in Christianity, to name a few examples. If you think of spirit as life force, which is one English translation for the Sanskrit word prana, its place on the dance floor starts to make more sense. You may even encounter it at midnight on the sidewalk after leaving a bar.
The way I see it, our spirits are the animating factor in every moment of our lives, and they need our attention.
Despite that belief, I am not here to tell you that one spiritual practice is better than another. I am only here to offer that spiritual care, in whatever shape makes sense, is critical to our wellbeing. Our mind, feelings, and character need a support system, especially in these chaotic times.
Responding to this need for spiritual care, we can each benefit from asking three questions.
What contributes to the formation of your being?
What helps you intentionally become the person you want to be?
What sustains your sense of harmony as a human in the world?
Making sense of our spirit — our mind, feelings, and character — is making sense of life. As we figure out how to form cohesive stories about the places where our inner worlds merge with the outer ones, we begin to find meaning in our experience. This is spirituality.
Whatever answers you receive in response to these questions are likely, as the Bible puts it in Psalm 19, “sweeter than honey” and “more precious than gold.” They might serve as the pillars of your spiritual practice already or hold that potential going forward. If you give them attention, they will help you navigate the good times, and the hard ones, and if you are lucky, they might make your heart sing.
Between you and me—
“Remember” by Joy Harjo came into my orbit twice this week, which meant I could not ignore that it caught my attention. I heard it presented aloud in one class and then used liturgically in chapel the next day.
If you are not sure what spiritual practice means, or how it could possibly relate to you, you might try reading this poem aloud. When you read aloud, try to slow down and savor the poem’s words and rhythm. Afterwards, see if you “remember the dance language, that life is.” See if you “remember you are this universe and this universe is you.”
Our spirit (or mind, feelings, and character if those words are more relatable) may often feel disconnected from our bodies and experience, but all we have to do — in Harjo’s world, and mine, and maybe yours — is remember.
In other news, fall in New England is as lovely as everyone says; I had my first pumpkin latte yesterday — the only flavored lattes I can stand — and have spent as much time walking in the trees as possible. I am still overwhelmed, but I am overwhelmed in company so marvelous it astounds me. John and Herbie continue to offer otherworldly depths of love and support as I try to figure out how to hold all the moving pieces of our lives, and my gratitude abounds.
I’ll see you on October 15! I wish you — and your spirits — abiding peace and joy. Take care out there.
The audio version of WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is available on Spotify, Apple, Substack, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE is written by Lauren Maxwell. Can you help us grow? Send this to a friend and ask them to subscribe. Share it on Instagram and tag @lauren_only. If you enjoy this work become a sponsor, which makes this publication possible and keeps it free for all. Thank you so much for your contributions!
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