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Anthony de Mello says: ‘Religion is not necessarily connected to spirituality.’ Yet, is one’s own conflict with religion the catalyst for spiritual growth?

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Early this year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found:

 ‘People who are spiritual are more likely than atheists or those who are religious to be mentally unwell’…and, among other things to experience anxiety.

From quite early in my adult life I claimed to be spiritual rather than religious.  Here at St Mary’s I am surrounded by people who’ve shared their stories of spirituality in homilies.

My special spiritual time is dawn – a time of peace when I feel most creative and inspired to reflect, meditate, to practise yoga, write or just solve life’s problems.  It’s in that pre-dawn snapshot when the world is still … you can hear a cricket chirrup, the first lonely call of a currawong, in the distance the soft hum of traffic, occasionally a goods train rumbling by. Sometimes I open my window to look towards the city’s last blink of lights and there will be a damp cool smell of rain. So often I’ve drawn breath at the wonder of breaking dawn.

It is a time of peace.

But, it wasn’t always so. I recall a time long ago when I could identify with the findings of that survey as being mentally unwell. I woke each day with tears already in my eyes, struggling to pull the blanket over my head so I didn’t have to face the reality of morning and a blinding depressive headache.  In the dark of night, I’d listened as every car turned the corner …waiting, hoping it would slow down, turn in my driveway, and still my beating heart, my churning stomach…or that the car would go away and remove the dark shadow of argument inevitably arising if the pay-packet to feed our family had been spent at the race track or a croupier’s table.

It was a time of turmoil. I felt unloved, locked in a lifestyle I’d never have contemplated, powerless and with nothing to look forward to. It was hard to imagine the dark cloud would ever roll away. In my situation, I found no connection to the God I’d known, no refuge in what I perceived as a judgmental Church… I was in a spiritual vacuum.

When Peter invited me to do today’s homily, and suggested spirituality as a topic, I was challenged. I am no expert, no theologian. For many years I was a ‘lapsed’ Catholic, reconnecting gradually before finding a comfortable spiritual home at St Mary’s 15 years ago. I had to ask myself:

What is spirituality? How does it fit with my perspective of God? How does it intersect with my relationship in the community of St Mary’s?

Anthony de Mello suggests in his book Awareness that: ‘Religion is not necessarily connected to spirituality’.

But is it possible that one’s own conflict with religion may well be the catalyst for spiritual growth and contribute to the stability of mental wellbeing?

Today, I reflect on this by sharing my own spiritual journey.

My Story

Out of the mouths of babes come the most profound questions….

The first time I realised who God was in my view, was the day one of my children asked:

‘Who is God? Where does God live? Do you believe in God?’

My response surprised me. At that time I wasn’t sure who I was, let alone who was God. I was confident our very existence relied on a supernatural power…what that power was, and how I related to it was indeed a mystery.

Beginnings

I was raised in a Catholic family  - loving and secure - without fear of God and where questions were okay. My childhood memories include Mass on Sundays, rituals, and occasionally evening Benediction.

My four brothers were altar servers, I was a flower strewer during processions like on the Feast of Christ the King.  I had sufficient belief to pray to Mary mother of Jesus for a sister after four brothers and when she was born, of course she was called…Mary.

As children, we made altars for our favourite saints on feast days, gave up lollies for Lent and filled Project Compassion boxes to support the missions.

On Fridays we ate fish and for nine consecutive first Fridays of the month, I ran down the hill to Mass and Holy Communion on my own to ensure a guaranteed place in heaven.

Despite this upbringing and apparent faith, I silently questioned:

-      Why would a kind God let children go to Limbo because they’d not been baptised?

-      Would God the Father who watched over us and planned our lives ahead allow us to make mistakes then condemn us forever for misdemeanours?

As I entered teens, I found others who also queried established beliefs - my brothers, friends I made outside school and later colleagues at work.

Approaching my twenties, I met and eventually married a young man - articulate, intelligent, passionate in his own beliefs. While he was also Catholic, his critique was shaped through his experience in the wake of his parents’ displacement as refugees from World War II and their subsequent dependency on State and Church in a new country.

For him ritual was irrelevant other than to subscribe to accepted social practice … to be part of the crowd. In contrast to my enjoyment of ceremony, he experienced religious overload in a Catholic college where his mother was employed in domestic work. He was also critical of those in work and social settings who professed to be religious, yet contradicted Christian values every day.

For him, spirituality was instrinsically linked to earth and sea. He valued time alone in the bush, fishing and skin diving… and often spoke of the incredible silence he enjoyed underwater… In his argument, I found some middle ground.

Hence their questions: Who is God? Where does God live? Did I believe in God?

I thought long and hard before I answered:

For some people, God is a man with a beard who lives in the sky, he makes plans and watches over you.  Some people believe God made the mountains, rivers and animals and the first man and woman - like magic all in a week - and I told the story of creation.

Some people don’t believe there is a God at all - and I told the story of evolution.

I believe God is everywhere, all around us, and in every person – so it’s important to be kind to people and respect what they own. I believe God is in the earth, in the trees and the flowers, and animals so don’t throw litter, damage gardens, or trample the bush. Be kind to animals - remember to feed our cat and dogs. I believe God is in the air that we breathe, that he helps it flow, so think about how we can keep it clean.

Talking with my children that day of questions was a turning point, the beginning of renewal, the blending of old and new beliefs, realisation of what my truth was, and acceptance of the spiritual dimension of everyday life. It marked the beginning of letting go of the old, looking forward, waking to a new day.

Awakening

Anthony de Mello explains  ‘spirituality’ as waking up…’emerging from the slumber of daily living… the nightmare of accepting the ordinary…’

He says, ‘There’s nothing that will … explain away all the sufferings and evil … in the world…because life is a mystery…’ and you can’t make sense of it. When you wake up you realise,  reality is not problematic, ‘you [yourself] are the problem.’ When you awaken you understand: … ‘you don’t feel good because the world is right’…rather, ‘the world is right because you feel good.

I’m OK, You’re not OK

At the time in my life I spoke about earlier when I dreaded each day, I was deeply hurt. In my mind, I was okay. I’d been brought up in a ‘good’ family, I didn’t break too many rules, I knew how marriages and families ought to be. My marriage was falling apart and it wasn’t my fault. I was a victim, full of blame. I had much to learn. I needed to wake up.

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Just like when you wake in the morning, there’s a time of resisting daylight, dozing, stretching, yawning, procrastinating before you get up from the bed to begin a new day. It’s the same with changing old habits moving to a new way of thinking. It takes time.

Far from the findings of the study reported in the SMH where people who are spiritual are more likely to be mentally unwell, once I had enunciated my belief and identified as being spiritual rather than religious, my anxiety eased.

I began practising meditation and a self developed ritual of yoga. I read, reflected, entered debate and discussion, mixed child-raising with work, and took action to change the negative aspects in my life. I stopped accepting what Tony de Mello calls ‘the ordinary’ and began stretching myself.

In the decade after my marriage ended, I gave birth to a fourth beautiful child, returned to study, and found employment related to what I believed in. I felt whole. As I woke to each new day, I became aware of the sacred in ordinary daily interactions and experiences.

Consistent with the reasoning I gave to my children, I realised that when I thought I was abandoned, God was actually all around me, in the people who visited each day bringing a loaf of fresh baked bread, a sack of home grown vegetables, a dozen eggs from their chooks, or a fish from the weekend’s catch. I listened to their problems and this helped me solve mine.

I recognised my mother-in-law, Nana’s early rising before dawn to dig in her garden, no longer as eccentric, but part of her own healing. She’d lost her family of origin, her first Australian home to debt, fled from another home after bushfires destroyed her animals.

When I met Nana she had few possessions and lived in a tumbled-down cottage surrounded by overgrown paddocks. I watched as she turned this space into God’s art celebrating the seasons as jonquils and lilacs, lilies, lavender, roses and forget-me-nots bloomed. My family grew rich from Nana’s and nature’s gifts as she harvested vegetables for ‘zup’ – her special borscht, blackberries for ‘patashki’ dumplings and apples for strudel.

Before the seasons closed on her life she left a legacy greater than any earthly gift. She gave us lessons in reincarnation through regenerating the earth, propagating plants from cuttings and turning life’s harvest into the recipes to be handed down over generations.

My favourite memory of Nana captures the simplicity of her existence.

I called her one day at my house, where she was caring for my children while I was at work. She’d never had a telephone and rushed to answer when it rang:

There was a long pause then…

‘Hull-oh-oh-oh…’

‘Hi Nana, it’s Annie here’…

‘…Unnie, How you know das me?’

Retelling Nana’s story is a spiritual event for me. Her life was simple, yet remarkable, her legacy, great. She asked me to tell her story, and in relating this today, I feel she is guaranteed eternal life far more surely than the insurance I sought with my nine first Friday’s!

Conclusion

The Sydney morning Herald did provide an alternative view in the article I opened with today, concluding:

‘It was not all bad news for believers…Other studies in the US found that performing religious or spiritual practices provides physical and psychological benefits and helps …positive healing … especially if …built-in to one’s daily, weekly seasonal and annual cycles of living’.

I find this when talking to my children each day, regularly kissing my grandbabies, and at St Mary’s community, a place to bring together the respective beliefs and practises of a diverse group of people looking to share the same God as we celebrate in liturgies and homilies that are real, relevant and spiritual.

Now, more than ever I find joy as I wake to that special time of day when you know there has to be a something far greater than you or I to make the sky red, change it to orange, gold, yellow then pink before it becomes light bouncing off water, reflecting from buildings and bubbling in the river I cross as I travel to work each day.

Thank you, God in everyone in my family and at St Mary’s for being part of my spiritual renewal.