Several years ago, it may have been in 2010, my best friend sent me a link to a conversation between John O'Donohue and Krista Tippett. It is an amazing conversation. The essence of it reminded me so much of conversations I used to have with this very same friend as it revived me, replenished me, reenergised me.So I listened to more of Tippett's work, and it has been a wonderful experience. She approaches her work with an integrity and reverence that is so missing from the devoid-of-any-deliberation double speak that usually passes for journalism. But her real gift is to draw out echoes of a world I wish I lived in.
I recently had the joy of relistening to that conversation between O'Donohue and Tippett. For me, it is magical. And since that time, through my regular exposure to TIppett and her guests, I have been able to reclaim the infinite vastness in words like spirit, soul, and god again.
Prior to Tippett, I allowed these ideas to be hijacked by those who would hang overly simplistic definitions on them. Many of these hijackers are very loud and claim that their own very small, superficial, rigid and confining views are equivalent to god's. I used to believe the hijackers. But now, thanks to Tippett, I have the courage not only to realise that I can use my gifts of wit and reason to expose the hijackers as delusional people trying to wield power over others through the institution of religion but also to reclaim the language they have taken from me.We cannot allow the vastness of the potential for terms like god, soul, and spirit to be commandeered by the small minded who wish to wield power over others. To do so is to miss an opportunity to grow into the huge potential that is humanity. In the past, I was willing to cede these terms. In the past, I was uncomfortable in claiming these terms for fear of being lumped in with the power hungry people who tend to abuse them and wield them as weapons.
People who want to hold power over others conveniently fit god, spirit, and soul into inflexible models that can be defined within the limits of language and intellect. To allow these concepts to be larger than language and intellect would be to yield control. Control is all the power hungry are interested in: Follow only their rules. Believe only their interpretation. Take this sentence literally, but not that other sentence. This writing is god, and that writing is not. Taking liberties with something from O'Donohue's conversation: I can wholeheartedly reject the delusional people who think their ideas are equivalent to god's without discarding the wealth of human wisdom contained in our religious traditions.When religion becomes about separating 'us' from 'them', it becomes a bane on our humanity. When religion refuses to acknowledge verifiable fact, it becomes a perversion of our humanity. For me, Tippett's conversations search for the beauty of the human spirit often with religious wisdom as a conduit, which is ultimately more the point, I think. These conversations resonate with something that I feel like I already know deep inside me or maybe it is something that is deep in the social fabric that lies at the foundations of humanity. I cannot put words to it. Language is too confining to describe it. And this notion is one that exists within our religious traditions, a notion that is useful still, perhaps even more now than ever before.
Photo Credits (of stuff I saw on the way to other stuff)
Shrub: Me on the way back from church (Horsforth March 2015)
Hyde Park Treetops: Me on way back from work (Leeds March 2015)
Ice on windscreen: Me before scraping (Horsforth January 2015)
