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FALL 2021 Faculty, Staff, & Alum Reflections
What Is Spirituality?
In the Fall 2021 arc of our Spiritual Care and Ethical Leadership for our Times series, members of the GTU community discussed the nature of spirituality: how it’s expressed, experienced, and explored from its variety of contexts in the world today, ranging from the environment to technology and beyond. As we begin, we invite you to explore some of our participants' responses to the question, “What is spirituality?” as you ponder that question for yourself.
“Spirituality is an extremely difficult term to define, and I want to embrace that. Anytime any of us tries to define a word like spirituality, we are showing our cards in some way. In my mind, spirituality is ultimately a matter of relations and connections —whether that’s a sort of attunement and presence in relation to other human beings, to the natural world, or perhaps even immaterial spiritual presences.”
—Sam Shonkoff
“Spirituality is about understanding or being in relationship with reality.
So, how do I be in a relationship with the reality of God, the natural world, and fellow human beings? All that is comprised under spirituality for me.
What I have been taught here is that my theology or my understanding of reality should not be confined within myself, but it should be used for the well-being of the world.”
—Chaitanya Motupalli “ When I think of spirituality, I think of spirituality of mission. And I define that spirituality of mission as the
Holy Spirit at work, in our hearts and in the world. The very nature of spirituality transcends any single religion. It’s bigger because religion represents our striving toward it.
And so, it’s not out of line to look for God in other religions and even beyond religions, even just in the world where, if we really believe that
God is the creator of all things and the author of all that’s good, then we should be keen to those things, even as we adhere to a particular tradition.”
—Rev. Al Tizon
“For me, I almost call it the spirituality of science to recognize that ancient
Christian traditions talk about two books of revelation, that God had two books of revelation. The first is the Earth and the second is scripture. And we’ve learned to read scripture, but most of us haven’t learned to read the Earth. And I was raised to value the humanities, not the sciences. So now I’m really looking at what the scientists are teaching us. The scientists are the ones who have learned to read the Earth. And so, what is science telling us about the vast systems of interconnectedness?”
—Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
—Lydia Webster “ We put up the artwork and you can’t tell what the viewer is going to say. Someone walking into the gallery is going to find a certain piece compelling and see the spiritual in it and maybe see a completely different kind of spirituality than the artist intended. The gallery is what it is because of the people who come there and the interpretations and the thinking that they attribute to the pieces and how they feel in the space.”
—Elizabeth S. Peña
“It’s difficult to have a single definition in part because spirituality itself,
I think, is a highly individual sort of pursuit in some ways. So if you were to ask me to say in an elevator pitch what I think spirituality is, it’s that reaching beyond the individual, transcending what it means to be human, reaching out towards what our purpose is in the universe, questions of meaning, of purpose, and of how we define flourishing for us, either collectively or individually, and how do we achieve that or tap into that?”
—Braden Molhoek
“So today we tend to think about spirituality having something to do with religion, and you’ll hear the phrase, ‘I’m spiritual, but not religious.’ And there’s a certain relevance to that. But if we remind ourselves that spirituality is more of an anthropological principle, then what we can understand about spirituality and its relationship to religion is that religion is a tool for developing the spiritual qualities of the human person. It’s a path, if you will, that can instruct or guide the human person to be the spiritual creature that in fact they are.”
—Christopher J. Renz, OP
“The spiritual is about communing with a reality larger than oneself in such a way that one is then able to live in such a way that one no longer lives for oneself alone but in order to inch the world and its inhabitants just a bit closer toward their flourishing.
The spiritual is no longer a retreat but an engagement, no longer about a realm beyond the world but a way of living in it, no longer about the self but the whole web of creation.”
—Scott MacDougall “ I like the conversation around what’s the difference between religion and spirituality. What’s important, for me at least, is to talk about how those are two sides of the same coin, in my opinion. Spirituality is what happens without you really trying. The stock thing is seeing the Grand Canyon or the sunset or falling in love or seeing your baby for the first time or playing with your cat, or whatever it is that like just pops that resistance away. I would say that spirituality is something that touches your spirit.
Religion is the end result of a lot of practices that attempt to get you to feel that more of the time.”
—Jhos Singer, Maggid
Spirituality x Daily Life
Reflecting on everyday spirituality, I could write about the importance of daily practice. I could emphasize that exercise is no less essential for souls than for biceps, how spiritual growth takes discipline, or how contemplative techniques open hearts, attune senses, and deepen wonder in the world. Sure, I believe all of that, more or less. But it’s not where my heart is pointing right now. I want to think, rather, about how daily practice can also mislead and muddle. Rituals can massage our egos, assure us that we’re checking the boxes of sacred living, and thereby smother the wildness of holiness.
Spirituality must be embodied, of course. But therein lies the tension. Sensory, somatic being is strangely elusive. Existence is in flow, dynamic, slipping through tentacles that try grasping too tightly. The ultimate question for a seeker, in my mind, is: Can I love? In other words, can I see beyond my own cerebral muck and petty games, can I belly laugh, can I cry, can I be moved and surprised? In part, this demands surrenders of control, which punctilious practice can help but also hinder. I like Walter Benjamin’s description of “that squandering of our own existence that we know in love,” which then paradoxically, “throws us, without hoping or expecting anything, in ample handfuls toward existence.” I write so many essays and lectures. But to express this spiritual abandon, I want to try another medium. Here’s a poem. Dr. Sam Shonkoff is the Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies.
BUCKETS
Sam Shonkoff
I stand knee deep in this river unfurling across forest floors, a voice saturating sound itself, whispering shhhhhhhhhh but I hear only the drum of what passes away.
I want to perceive this river with every cell of my self, to know and be known until I am filled and overflowing into the current, but
I am so finite damn it I grab buckets and contain what I can. White-knuckled,shallow breathed, buckets upon buckets litter the banks, exhibiting mute dusty water while river flows past, tickling granite, gurgling, softening ancestral trees to soil.
My knees unbuckle and I descend inside, dispersing like tea leaves, river washing over all sweat, streaming between fingers, between eyes, holding all earthly breath, streaming, streaming over me like over everything else.
Spirituality x Environment
Amidst the mountains of tasks before me each day, I find it re-orienting to step back now and then to ask: “Just WHAT am I doing?” This question also pertains to us as a body of people associated with the GTU. Just what is it that we are doing? At the GTU, we might agree that we are exploring and shaping theological education for the world of today and tomorrow.
If so, then it behooves us to ask anew, just what is the purpose of theological education in the early 2020s in the Western United States? From my perspective, it is to form people capable of hearing and heeding the sacred force, energy, or spirit that some call God, active in the world to bring us into our destiny—fullness of life for all in communion with the Sacred and with all of creation. The Black theologian, Willie James Jennings, puts it beautifully: theological education ought to be formation in the art of cultivating communion. “Communion,” he writes, “[is] what God wants.” Theological education ought to prepare people to call down, live into, and re-member the communion— both mystical and material—that God created and is creating. Let us re-imagine this communion by giving thanks.
Slow down, breathe deep.
Notice: you are breathing and alive.
You would not be alive and breathing without a magnificent communion. The wild raucous communion of creatures within our bodies—trillions of them!— too tiny to see, scurrying about to keep us alive and well. Give thanks for it and for the communion beyond our skin:
• The thousands of organisms in a square foot of soil that grew the wheat, the oranges, and the coffee that I ate for breakfast to feed the trillions of organisms in my body.
• The communion of water molecules, including in our bodies, recycling themselves throughout time. (Are we not about 60 percent water by weight?)
• The trees of the Amazon serving as our external lungs.
Dr. John Chelladurai, Director of the India Peace Center in Nagpur, illumines as he writes:
The oxygen we consumed just now was released a while before by a plant close to us. Before it was released, that oxygen was part of the plant’s body. Now it is part of my body . . . Every day when we bathe, we remove a thin layer of our body—epithelial cells that are flushed out down the gutter. The cell that was ‘I’ travels through the gutter and reaches a canal or a pond in the outskirts, settles in the tank bed, disintegrates into aminoacids and sucrose, glucose, etc. Now ‘I’ am absorbed by the grass that grows on the banks, and the grass is now eaten by a cow, now the milk of that cow is sold in our neighborhood . . . This way there is a definite passage of our individual body into different bodies around us . . . We do not know how much of our body parts are exchanged with our neighbor with whom we are ill at ease.
Einstein said as much. “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the universe . . . He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”
Recently, one biblical text flooded me with wonder. “Ever since the creation of the world,” Paul writes to followers in Rome, “God has been understood and seen through the things God has made.”
What? God has been understood and seen for billions of years before our late-arriving species appeared on the scene? Who or what was understanding and seeing God then? This startling text suggests that the elements of this View the accompanying video reflection at gtu.edu/scel/cynthia-moe-lobeda
earth, which existed eons before plants and animals came into being, have been “seeing and understanding” God.
What a staggering claim! Implications abound. For one, would it not be wise to listen and learn from the creatures and elements about what they have seen and understood of God? Might we glimpse more fully just who or what the Sacred lifeforce is that some call God?
For centuries Christians claimed that God provided two books of revelation: Creation itself and the Scriptures. How is it that we learn Greek and Hebrew to read the second book of revelation, but not how to exegete trees or waterways in order to read the first?
Lately, I have been giving it a try. Trees, some scientists say, talk with each other by forming a vast system of underground fungi, connecting their roots to one another. Through these fungal highways, tress exchange nutrients. A Douglas Fir may share excess sugars with a neighboring birch in the spring and fall, for example, and in return the birch sends sugar to the Doug Fir in the summer. This underground fungal network is a way to communicate, like the internet or telephone lines. One article calls it the “Wood Wide Web.” The chemicals coursing through this underground network are the same as human neural transmitters. Canadian biologist, David Suzuki, writes of a “vast story of cooperation and quest for communion that enabled life to emerge on earth and then to evolve into more complex forms.” This account of nature’s cooperation and quest for communion resonates with Dr. Jennings’ claim: the purpose of theological education is to form people along the contours of God’s hunger for communion.
Further reason to hear the sacred in the other-than-human parts of creation emerges in the claim—present in some ancient streams of Christianity and the Judaism from which it grew—that God dwells within and among earth’s creatures and elements; within the mountains, winds, and waters, the holy Mystery speaks, acts, guides, teaches. If one sees the Sacred as not only the fundamental creating energy of life, but also the healing and liberating energy at work in the cosmos, then the winds, waters, trees, and their kin are healing and liberating as well as creating and revealing. Therefore, a question of spirituality becomes: How are we to learn from God “flowing and pouring through all things?” (Martin Luther’s words.)
We humans are masters of avoidance and denial. We deny and avoid truth about the role that many of us are playing in this communion of life. Perhaps that is why the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and so many others have insisted on truth-telling—about what we are doing to obscure or block the communion, thwarting life in its fullness for all.
The truth is that we are racing madly in a deadly direction. The extractive, profit-maximizing, and fossil fuel-based economy that we have accepted as normal is threatening the holy communion through climate change and its corollaries. This direction demands “sacrifice zones,” areas in which economically impoverished people and people of color are “sacrificed” for the sake of profit. Assumptions of white supremacy weave inextricably through the climate catastrophe.
We have terrifyingly few years to change direction. Doing so—and there is no surety that we will—requires unearthing spiritual resources we did not know we had. Religions are a wellspring of spiritual resources for radical and rapid reorientation of how we live on earth. So, too, is the earth.
What an astounding gift it is to be alive at this moment in time, when human decisions and actions will determine the fate of life for centuries, if not millennia, to come. Today, the world needs religion to foment in human creatures a holy passion and power to join the winds, waters, trees, and heavens in reaching toward holy communion, building beloved community for all in the earth’s marvelous and mysterious web of life. Those of us working in theological education have the great gift of guiding the formation of leaders for that role. May we do so with fear and trembling, and in companionship. May this give us joy and hope.
Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda is Professor of Theological and Social Ethics, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary of California Lutheran University and Church Divinity School of the Pacific.
Spirituality x Ritual
Life unfolds. A creature is born, it struggles and plays, it rests and strives, it grows and shrivels, and eventually dies. That’s the drill. But every drill exists to hone a skill, a capacity, or to heighten awareness. Human beings invented rituals to put a glinting polish on those sharpened edges.
Many rituals arise out of a spiritual need to mark a moment—birth, coming of age, confirming an identity or relationship, and death. We hit one of those nodes and there is an incredible urge to stop, notice, acknowledge, and celebrate. The formality of saying the same words of one's forebearers who also stood in one of those crossroads provides a sense of continuity, a connection across the generations. It’s a way of time traveling. To drink from the same wedding cup as your great, great, grandparents is to feel with your own flesh what their flesh felt at the same moment in their lives. And that same wedding cup holds you in its memory for your great, great grandchildren on their own wedding day. We tend to those ritual items with care and diligence, because through the simple ritual of drinking from that particular cup, we transcend time, space, and death, elevating the mundane to a level of holiness that defies ordinary boundaries.
I remember that exact moment at my own wedding. I was marrying into a Jewish family who had been well off in Germany before the rise of the ThirdReich. As the situation was undeniably deteriorating for them in the late 1930s, they made the difficult decision to leave. Like Abraham before them, they left their land, their city, and their father’s house. Just as the scripture puts the leaving in the wrong order— certainly one cannot leave their land and city without first leaving their family home—so, too, did my new relations shed much of their national and regional identity. But they brought along with them remnants, objects, reminders of their father’s house, including the wedding cups that have been in the family for at least two centuries. As I stood under our chuppah (wedding canopy) looking at my bride, holding that cup in my hands, listening to the same blessing that had been intoned under every chuppah in the family for hundreds of years, I was being sworn into a moment of connection with people long dead. That ritual changed my story, altered my destiny, put a new stitch into the tapestry of humanity. No other sip of wine could do that. Those cups are never used except in the context of a wedding. That is rarified ritual space— potent, powerful, and protected.
Other rituals ground daily life—a moment of gratitude upon waking, a blessing said before eating, the way we sign off on a phone call with our kids or parents—they spark brief moments of awareness, appreciation, and acknowledgement that we are walking in grace. Like peak ritual moments, the everyday blessings and sacred rites we observe afford us the chance to elevate the ordinary. It slows us down. We see more clearly. It is the perfect seasoning to sprinkle on this life’s feast.
Jhos Singer, Maggid, is a visiting faculty member at the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies.
Spirituality x Organizations
As a missiologist, I am not asked very often to reflect on spirituality. It is not inaccurate to understand missiology as activist in nature, but it is (or should be) activism grounded in love for God and God’s diverse world.
As a Christian, I have a particular perspective on what spirituality means. That said, spirituality goes beyond any single religious tradition. For much of my spiritual journey, I was counted among the Pentecostals and Charismatics. In fact, I did my undergraduate and masters level education at what is now called Vanguard University of Southern California, a four-year, Christian, liberal arts college and graduate school in the classical Pentecostal tradition. One of the things I’ve learned from that branch of Christianity is the boundless, unpredictable, and positively wild side of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.
The personality of God who is the Holy Spirit blows where she wills and will not be bound by religious traditions, even the Christian one. There are markers of the Spirit at work, however, in all religions—a passionate pursuit of God, unconditional love for all, inclusivity, gender-ethnic-and-class diversity, advocacy of peace and justice. In the Christian tradition, all of these are embodied in the person of Jesus. As a Christian, and, furthermore, as a missiologist, I define spirituality as the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts and in the world; it is the power that enables the church both to experience God and to engage in the mission of God; it serves as the basis of holistic transformation; and it conveys the joy that sustains us in the suffering of mission.
Spirituality enables any organization to transcend the business, the corporation, the ministry machine, or the religious system that it can so easily become. When pragmatism, efficiency, financial stability, and preservation drive an organization, then we know that the Spirit has left the building.
Institutions have a bad habit over time of thinking they’re all that, that they need to be fed and served. Healthy spirituality will keep the institutional nature of an organization in check, constantly reminding it of its place as a servant of others, of a cause greater than itself.
In the global mission organization I recently left, we started each day in prayer together as a staff. We prayed daily for our global personnel, the international ministries, and global partners. We prayed daily for crises that arise in our community, nation, and world. We prayed for our church, and we prayed for each other. Beyond that, we cultivated friendships amongst ourselves. We sought to practice God’s mission as true friends, beyond being mere professionals working on a task together, as we sought to bear witness to God’s peace, justice, and salvation in the world. It’s so much more fun to “change the world” together as friends! These are just some examples of how we practiced spirituality as a team.
There is a handful of spirituality questions that has guided my leadership experience through the decades. If fellow leaders will find them, then it will have been worth sharing:
• Are the vision and goals bigger than I am? They should be! Do they represent an agenda that transcends human agendas? Spirituality enables me to dream beyond myself, beyond reality.
• How do I view my team members and staff? They are more than employees or co-workers, more than business or ministry associates. They are friends, family even, sisters, and brothers, made in the image of God, called of God to do their part in our shared work.
• Is the organization remaining true to its original purpose to serve? As I said, spirituality enables us to know the organization’s place: it exists to serve others.
• Do people want to be a part of this organization? I want everyone, including myself, to want to come to work, because we can all find fulfillment and joy in our work. Is it characterized by deep conversations, fellowship, genuine caring, and laughter?
• Does the organization bear witness to the love, peace, justice, and righteousness of God? Does it point to and work toward a better world for all to see and experience?
Rev. Dr. Al Tizon (PhD '05) is the Affiliate Associate Professor of Missional and Global Leadership at North Park Seminary in Chicago. He was named the 2021 GTU Alum of the Year.
Spirituality x Art
The Center for the Arts & Religion’s Doug Adams Gallery is currently closed and will re-open in its new location in Fall 2023. This hiatus provides us with time to reflect on some of our past exhibitions and think about how our visitors infused their own spiritualities into the gallery, giving new meaning to the art. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, considering that our focus is on art and spirituality, but we have continually been amazed by the depth of transformative experience felt by visitors.
The Doug Adams Gallery has been our very own sacred space, a space apart, where students and faculty can let their minds and spirits wander. This idea is not new: the museum has long been conceptualized in this country as the new cathedral, occupying a third space in our society that can offer us solace, community, and the opportunity for spiritual learning.
“The museum setting, almost by definition, displays ritual objects out of context,” says Joan Branham, “thereby stripping them of circumstance and purging them of original function and significance.” And yet, when we reflect on the very first exhibition we as a team put on (Summer 2017), “Sacred Garments: Orthodox Christian garments from around the world,” an exhibition of finely embroidered clerical vestments acquired by Metropolitan Nikitas Lulias (former Director of the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute) during his years of service around the globe, we were struck by how many Orthodox believers approached the garments with awe. They had seen the garments and ritual objects from a distance in church, but getting close to the items in the gallery allowed them to experience sacrality in a museum space. The tinkling of the vestments’ many bells was a giveaway, as we listened from our nearby office, that someone had been unable to resist the powerful urge to touch the beautiful robe hanging on the gallery wall.
In Spring 2018, with “Religion and Resistance,” we pivoted to a more politically engaged perspective, compelled by the recent election to reinforce the connection between faith, art, and social change. Protest posters, both contemporary and from the archives, showed how religion and spirituality have worked in the public sphere for decades, and how believers have used tenets of their faith to try to make the world a better place. While the objects on display would not be considered sacred, treating protest signs as art, and placing a protest T-shirt in a museum case contribute to a feeling that these objects, too, carry a kind of sacrality. In the Doug Adams Gallery, we wanted to provide View the accompanying video reflection at gtu.edu/scel/elizabeth-pena-lydia-webster
Art Window exhibition featuring Breonna Taylor Was Murdered by Police (2020), Tahirah Rasheed and Meryl Pataky.
a place to seek solace and to demonstrate the role of faith-based activism in the ongoing struggle for social justice. With the brutal exposure of institutional racism in the summer of 2020, we realized that while COVID prevented us from inviting people into the Gallery to have critical conversations, we could still “invite people out.” In “Art Window,” artists of color from our Bay Area community displayed their work in our street-facing window. Passersby could engage with these art installations, which considered topics from the senseless murder of Breonna Taylor to the landscapes traversed by migrants on their perilous journeys in search of a better life. The quasi-sacred aura of the Gallery was transposed to the outside.
This trip down memory lane has helped us to recognize the ability of the Doug Adams Gallery to act as a space for learning, reflection, and inspiration for our GTU community. As we look toward the next couple of years online, we must wrestle with the question of how to provide this sacred space in a virtual environment. There is no going back to our “ordinary lives,” but what’s next? In our new gallery space, we’ll work to integrate lessons learned from our online exhibitions with the power of “in-real-life” shows. There are so many ways to approach spirituality in the gallery; we look forward to exploring and learning more.
Dr. Elizabeth S. Peña is the Director of the Center for the Arts & Religion (CARe) and the Doug Adams Gallery. Lydia Webster is the Assistant Curator for the Center for the Arts & Religion (CARe) and the Doug Adams Gallery.
Spirituality x Technology
There is disagreement between scholars as to how to define spirituality, but I see it as a reaching out beyond individual and collective experience, to find that which transcends our place in the universe. Spirituality deals with questions of purpose, it is a search for how we define what flourishing means for our lives. If we think of spirituality this way, it should not be a surprise that technology interacts with spirituality because technology itself is also a form of humans reaching out to the world. Technology is just an extension of human tool making; a tool can be as simple as a branch to ward off predators, or it can be a predator drone. Both spirituality and technology come from our nature as humans: we are beings capable of self-transcendence who seek out meaning and purpose. Ethicist Brian Patrick Green, in comparing the work of cognitive scientists and Aristotle’s understanding of purpose (telos or teleology), eloquently states that “teleology is deeply natural to us and prized by us, and that teleology is active in both practical and theoretical aspects of human thought.” Technology is one way in which humans explore purpose in a practical sense, whereas spirituality is a theoretical exploration of purpose.
It should also not be a surprise, then, that there are attempts to use technology to further explore our spirituality. Again, this happens in practical ways, such as applications that remind us to put down our devices and be more mindful of the moment, or even to use these devices to help us be more aware of our heartrate and to assist in guided breathing or meditation. There are theoretical methods of help as well, such as providing people access to information, beliefs, and traditions they were not previously aware of but that can play a role in their journey.
Sociologically speaking, science, religion, and spirituality all play a role in what Berger and Luckmann refer to as “universe maintenance.” Universe maintenance is needed when there are strains or cracks in the symbolic universe of society, when the view of life presented is no longer taken for granted as reality. This happens because socialization is never complete; mechanisms of universe maintenance help shore up the symbolic universe. I would argue that, for some, religion contributes to the breakdown of the symbolic universe, because people do not believe in the systematization of symbols it presents, or because of its failing as a human institution. Spirituality, which is inherently more individualistic, does a better job of maintaining the universe for these individuals because it allows them to create their own set of symbols that help explain and give meaning to life.
A big question the last two years have highlighted is whether technological connection is as meaningful as in-person connection. Online interactions have provided a greater sense of community during the pandemic than many believed possible, but there is still a general view that it is not a full substitute for face-to-face interaction. As a social species, humans experience loneliness and reach out to others and to the universe in a variety of ways, some of which are technological. It is my hope that we remember that part of our purpose is to acknowledge and respond lovingly to this reaching out from others as we do the same ourselves.
Dr. Braden Molhoek is a lecturer in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the GTU and incoming Director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
Spirituality x Beauty
In the worldview of Greek classical philosophy, there would be no concept of “spirituality” as we think of it today. Instead, there was the idea of “soul,” though, too, not understood as today. The ‘soul’ of an animate being makes the thing “be what it is.” Thus, the concept of “dog soul” or “horse soul.” Humans are unique because we have a “rational soul,” with powers for discursive thinking and self-reflection. We can “think about thinking,” we can imagine things that don’t yet exist, and we can think “forever.” This capacity for imaginative and creative thinking places humans in the particular category of “spiritual beings” because it allows us to transcend the physical limitations of time and space.
The engagement of our imagination to create useful things—like a boat—sets us apart from most other animals. While there are a few other species that use tools, only humans enhance tools to a level that renders them either impractical or useless. Consider a functional boat versus a “miniature boat in a bottle.” In this classic distinction between craft (making a boat that floats) and fine art (the making of a beautiful boat), the person elevates a skill beyond practicality. This type of creativity belongs to the “liberal arts,” not because of a political alignment, but because in its exercise the artist becomes “liberated from” the physical and practical limitations of the craft. Thus liberated, the artist is now free to engage the powers of the rational soul to a “higher” terminus, the Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, whose attainment requires the life-long habituation to certain behaviors and ways of thinking—virtues. The person who is a practitioner of liberal (fine) arts must develop not only technical skills related to the craft, but also the intellectual skills required to recognize and behold Beauty. If they achieve the capacity to consistently create beautiful things, this artist is called a virtuoso, someone habituated to a virtuous life focused on the cultivation and expression of Beauty.
In contrast to our contemporary use of this term, the virtuoso is capable of expressing the very essence of what it means to be human through a relentless and loving pursuit of Beauty. As the twentieth-century philosopher Jacques Maritain noted, “left to its own devices the [human] soul strives to engender in beauty.” We do this because the striving leads to a profound self-awareness: we long for beautiful encounters (whether it is natural or created beauty) because there we realize our own inherent beauty.
In contemporary cognitive science, encounters by test subjects with beauty induce an experience of awe, an “aesthetic emotion.” A complex emotion, awe engages both the body (physical feelings) and the mind (wonder), which together draw the subject into a deeper awareness: of their own subjectivity (the “small self”) and the need to accommodate their worldview. Put another way, experiences of awe induced by beauty activate the “spiritual self” and the possibility to admit that “the world is not as I thought it to be.”
Through this lens, to speak of “spirituality in art” is to encourage people to cultivate a life that is “free” (liberal) enough to see beyond the confines of a spatio-temporal existence toward a world inhabited by Beauty. For those skilled at a particular craft (visual art, music, writing, architecture, dance, etc.), this habituation will be driven by Beauty, producing not simply “objective creations” (the piece of beautiful art) but also “invitations” for spiritual encounters between persons—a shared experience of awe and wonder that invites a revelation of a new way of being human.
Dr. Christopher J. Renz, OP, is Professor of Liturgical Studies and Science & Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology.
Reflection: “Spirituality x Activism”
People often understand “spirituality” as a personal discipline focused on the cultivation of the interior life. Commonly, but not always, this inner life is formed with some reference to a reality that transcends the self, a larger reality within which one’s life takes on a significance and meaning that might otherwise go unnoticed. To be spiritual, according to this understanding of the term, typically entails adopting particular practices of prayer or contemplation. Such actions align the self with that larger and more ultimate horizon. They calm the thoughts and appetites of the practitioner, whose focus is redirected away from them, from the self and the everyday world, toward what is understood to be far more important.
Contemporary Western ideas of spirituality, even those that are deeply secularized, arise largely from notions that are common currency in popular Christianity, especially the view that there is a division between each person’s “spirit” and their body. The spirit, of course, is the prized element and the body is that which needs to be subordinated to it. Added to this residue of cultural Christianity to create our most typical ideas of spirituality are two other elements: first, the potent Platonic notion that the truly real is found only by ascending the levels of being, escaping from base materiality to the highest realm where all things, released from their material prison, are spiritually one; and second, the line of dualistic thinking generally associated with René Descartes that maps rationality and thought to the spirit and a base, strictly biological carnality to the material body. Stemming from this mix of ideas, Western spirituality often becomes a highly individualized concentration on raising the self to higher levels of reality by seeking to enrich the inner life and to leave the cares of the workaday world behind as far less important, certainly a distraction, and possibly even an illusion.
The social and political quietism to which this version of spirituality can lead, however, is not the only one on offer.
Instead of understanding the spiritual and the material as two opposing principles that compose an ontological dualism, one can see the spiritual and the material as two thoroughly interpenetrating aspects of reality forming a single, integrated whole. One can consider the spiritual to be a transpersonal source of orientation for navigating the specificities of one’s material reality as one lives within it. Here, the spiritual is not about inner self-improvement. The spiritual is about communing with a reality larger than oneself in such a way that one is then able to live in such a way that one no longer lives for oneself alone but in order to inch the world and its inhabitants just a bit closer toward their flourishing. The spiritual is no longer a retreat but an engagement, no longer about a realm beyond the world but a way of living in it, no longer about the self but the whole web of creation. In this way, spirituality can provide a pathway to actively working to better the world.
Scott MacDougall is Associate Professor of Theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP).
Spirituality x Global Community
Every once in a while we are called upon to set our differences aside and come together to address an issue so grave that not addressing it would threaten the existence of the entire planet. The global climate crisis is one such problem of our times. Reacting to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, António Guterres, the General Secretary of United Nations, called it “code red for humanity.” Even as the terror of the COVID-19 pandemic is tapering away, it is time to refocus and address the atrocious violations caused by global climate change.
Scientifically speaking, we are in this predicament due to the astronomical rise in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially Carbon dioxide, which has the potential to remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. While it is true that science can help us understand the complexities of climate change, religion also plays an essential role in shedding light on the issue from a moral and spiritual standpoint. In fact, at the root of it, climate change is a spiritual problem, as it is about how we relate to the earth and its environment. Instead of having a sense of respect and producing what is needed without destruction, we have alienated ourselves from the intricate web of life to usurp the earth’s precious resources to fulfill our greed.
Spirituality, which is concerned with how we relate and respond to reality— the Sacred, ourselves and our fellow beings, the natural world, etc.—can help us reconnect with the earth, reorient ourselves, and mend our broken relationships. For someone spiritual but not religious, such reorientation may be driven by core values and attitudes, whereas for those of us who are rooted in religious traditions, religions can provide the needed language and narratives to understand ourselves and our relationships with nature and fellow beings. Of course, that happens when we reexamine religions in light of the current realities of the environmental crises and climate trauma. Such reexamination can happen by rereading the scriptures with a particular focus on the earth and the elements of nature that have long been relegated to the margins as a backdrop for the stories of human actors and the divine. Further, our reorientation can happen through spiritual exercises such as prayer, as we attempt to widen our sphere of concern to those on the margins, including the earth.
Given the alarming impacts of climate change, however, the change in our orientation cannot be confined to private spaces and to merely reinterpreting the scriptures and spiritual exercises. Instead, it needs to be manifested in the public sphere to inspire every earthling to care for its common home. It could be a small gesture, such as standing on a street corner with a placard, as a few GTU students, along with members of the Berkeley Presbyterian Mission Homes, did on October 17, 2021. It could also be writing to the members of Congress to put pressure on the government to act on climate policies, or writing an op-ed piece elucidating the dangers of the inevitable and irreversible changes of the earth’s climate. Whichever way we choose to live out our spirituality in the public sphere, it is critical to respond to the tragic reality of anthropogenic climate change. In the words of Christian Ethicist Daniel Maguire, “If current trends continue, we will not.”
Dr. Chaitanya Motupalli is the Director of Student Life and Liaison for International Students & Scholars.
Abundant Pathways. Intersecting Perspectives. Transformative Impact.
You Belong Here.
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