LENT AS SPIRITUALLY RELIGIOUS [PALM SUN, 3-24-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—LENT AS SPIRITUALLY RELIGIOUS [PALM SUN, 3-24-24]

 

According to a Pew research study, about 10% of Americans are religious but not spiritual. They like religious stuff, but not God stuff. They like chanting liturgies and putting water on babies. They like wearing yarmulkas and crosses and hijabs and turbans. They enjoy religious music. They like kneeling in the right way at the right times.

But they don’t care about prayer and heaven and hell and eternal life and that soul stuff. They don’t need a relationship with God to enjoy talk and activities about God. They are in the religion, but not of the religion. Who needs a “higher power?” Well, alcoholics, but that’s different.

This, of course, is the opposite of the tiresome, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is mostly what people use to excuse their absence from church or synagogue or temple. Until they want said venues for a wedding or funeral. Free, of course.

Despite my snarkiness, I understand why people want to be spiritual without being religious, and also why they want to be religious without being spiritual. I suspect most people live in one or the other of those categories a lot of the time, often without knowing it.

I see this especially in retired clergy colleagues. Some drop out of the church altogether. They’ve handled holy things too long. They’ve learned that most Christians aren’t. They wonder why they ever bothered with being religious. Or being spiritual.

Others, of the conservative or evangelical variety, become Episcopalians, or even Catholics. They’ve trusted in feelings, getting worked up, and those feelings wane with overuse. Now they’re tired. Now they feel more comfortable if they hold a prayer book that is responsible for producing the prayers and words and auras.

Psychologists tell us that as we age, we become more like ourselves. Which is why old people are often described as “set in our ways.” As I age, I find myself being the same as I have always been spiritually, but less religious. By that, I mean that I have always known the Presence of God in the same way that I do now, but I am less reliant upon the traditional forms for acknowledging that Presence.

I’m a bit reluctant to say that, because it reminds me of the old man giving his testimony in church and saying, “When I was just a boy, the Lord filled my cup to the brim, and He hasn’t taken a drop out or put a drop in since then.” Some boy in the pews said, “It must have wiggletails in it by now, then.”

I have become less religious, meaning I don’t use the tokens of religion as much as I used to. I still like them—the liturgies and books and candles—but I feel no loss without them. God is always present, in all of life, not just in churchly appurtenances.

Lent is the perfect time for those who are religious without being spiritual; there is a lot of outward stuff to do for Lent—forehead ashes, giving something up, lighting candles, etc. And Lent is the perfect time for those who are spiritual without being religious; there is a lot of inward stuff to do that does not depend upon ashes or candles.

I suspect that the right blend for old age is both—being religious without being spiritual, and being religious without being spiritual.

John Robert McFarland