Matters of The Spirit

Who is holy? What is sacred?

As spiritual wayfarers, what do we think about? What do we talk about? Divine presence, God, spirit, soul, reality, truth, self-knowledge, mystical experience, inner peace, enlightenment. The spiritual life is concerned with issues such as these. And when we talk about our experiences of the divine, we don't all use the same vocabulary. Sometimes we use the same words and mean different things; sometimes we use different words and mean the same things.

We share an intuitive sense that we are on a journey and that we must search for real answers to our real questions. We do this even knowing that we may find out that the answer is that there is no ultimate answer; some things remain unknowable. And that answer may well be enough. Nonetheless, as seekers we choose to live out our questions. Infinity is open-ended. That's what the Buddhists call "sunyata," or emptiness.

Whatever words we choose to use, spiritual matters concern themselves with the true bottom line, with those things that really matter in the long run. As spiritual seekers, we think about how we can learn to love more deeply, know ourselves more truly, and connect with the divine more fully.

We think about those things that are beyond the self; we think about the intangible as well as the tangible; we think about the visible and the invisible; we think about touching the palpable sweetness of spirit; we think about how we can find ourselves in the whole, the bigger picture, the universal "mandala."

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