There is a group currently meeting in Houston that calls its members “spiritual naturalists”. They are, for the most part, people who do not believe in doctrinal claims of any religious sort, but who have noticed that the act of everyday living seems to demand something more from them. So they get together twice a week to converse on philosophical ideas and to participate in various “rituals” gleaned from other religious traditions.
Over the past decades, the liberal church has shrunk dramatically in size. Statistics about The United Church of Canada suggest that we close a church every week. Certainly the numbers in the area in which I have led a congregation for the past eighteen years, have dwindled visibly, some congregations simply closing their doors and turning their property over to the wider church; others sell their building and take the financial windfall down the street to a neighbouring church to shore it up for another few years. The liberal church is in crisis and it knows it.
At West Hill, we’ve transitioned beyond traditional doctrine because we recognized that doctrine was a huge barrier for many who might otherwise have little access to the “off label” benefits of religion – a sense of community; rituals that, when shared, make people feel safe and part of something bigger than themselves; the serotonin boost that can be experienced when people know your name and value your presence; the neurological benefits of meditation, silence, and prayer. Church has provided all these things in the past. When society loses church, social cohesion is also compromised as individual well-being loses the significant benefit that participation (not belief) in religious communities has provided.
Within our services at West Hill, we try to capture those “off-label” benefits. We stand up as a group and sing together (I don’t know of a stronger bonding experience than singing a song together. Religions around the world know this whether intuitively or otherwise). We have a time of greeting where people walk all over the hall hugging one another, shaking hands with newcomers. For some people, it’s the most stressful part of the gathering; for others, it’s the only time in a week that anyone touches them at all. We have interesting discussions on a variety of topics that have to do with creating meaning, living up to a set of ideals we choose for ourselves, speaking about and acknowledging that “bigger than me” human experience that transcends our own personal and limited lives. We feel ourselves in the middle of a bigger picture and we explore it from that perspective, always open to the variety of the many perspectives that gather in our little space.
But West Hill still has barriers to participation. It has not yet significantly moved beyond what I call the “stand up, sit down, pass the plate” rituals of Sunday morning gatherings except for a still-small experimental satellite in Mississauga, the city to the west of Toronto and across the metropolis from our home church. There, like the community in Houston, we discuss the topics of life, relationship, and the challenge of defining and creating meaning. And we have initiated a few rituals that open and close our gatherings. We share the intimacy of a meal. We share the burdens of our hearts. It’s a mix of Bono’s “We get to carry each other” and the Irish term “the shelter of each other,” an image that I often use when speaking of what we can be for one another – sometimes we’re shelter; sometimes we’re sheltered.
There are unlimited religious practices out there that are worthy of redirecting toward the ideals of love, justice, compassion, beauty, goodness, truth …. As meaning-making communities like the liberal church dwindle, our resources are often strained. Gleaning practices that have, for millennia, provided inspiration and strengthened us, seems a wise option; indeed, they have been re-articulated by Deepak Chopra (Hinduism), Eckhart Tolle (Buddhism) and Don Miguel Ruis (Toltec wisdom) and become very popular. Still, there is a growing need for the rituals that bring us back to one another, a direction that I do not find foundational in the new interpretations of these traditions; I find they focus more on personal enlightenment and fulfillment and than on social cohesion and civic engagement. It is in these latter areas that I believe our greater work is yet to be done.
Not everyone eschews traditional Sunday morning church. Not everyone finds meditation helpful. Not everyone wants to participate in rituals, particularly if they hold some wahoo meaning that no one is quite able to articulate. Not everyone wants to walk a labyrinth (my husband gets hives just parking on the labyrinth in West Hill’s back parking lot), light candles, spend time on their knees, or dip their fingertips in water and touch their foreheads. Not everyone wants to sing with other people unless they are at that Bono concert, singing “One”. Our communities, towns, and cities, are made up of people with diverse interests and needs, and a variety of personalities, each of which has distinct likes and dislikes. But everyone needs human touch, the inspiration that comes from the meaning created in our lives, an experience of being trusted and forgiven, a person who will, when needed, provide shelter for a wounded heart or carry us when we forget our own strengths. Our churches could be the places where such connections are made. They could be. The question is, will they be?
When the Re-Imagining conference took place over twenty years ago, the greatest outcries against it were for its “syncretism,” the blending of different traditions into Christianity, a practice that was considered heretical and dangerous. But Christianity is an amalgam of many different realities that presented the church as it grew and developed. Gleaned spiritual practices can provide renewed engagement, particularly if they are repackaged to meet the needs of a growing segment of society that is critical of religious dogma. Of course, there are practices that should remain in the historical record – hair shirts, self-flagellation, ritual sacrifice, probably even liturgical vestments – but there many that we could use to create places of inspiration and transformation. Not only for ourselves, but for the communities in which we live, work, and love.