Home Tools for your Journey May 2

Friday, May 2

For your immortal spirit is in all things.
—Wisdom 12:1

Mention the word “spiritual,” and some of us will immediately picture a group of people huddled around a Ouija board or hear the theme music from The Twilight Zone playing in our heads. What we’ve done, of course, is confuse spirituality with “spiritualism,” which isn’t the same at all. To be spiritual requires no props, no magic, no special incantations. In fact, its focus is actually quite mundane.

Asking a person if he or she has a “spiritual life” is a bit like asking if they have a temperature. Clearly they do, as does everyone else in the world. They may not be nurturing this life very well, but it’s part of them nevertheless.

In other words, spirituality isn’t something we go after or invent: it simply is. It’s the stew that comprises our work, our relationships with family and friends, our use of money, our health—or lack of it. Nothing is left out of the pot—not the television programs we watch or the books we read, not the way we decorate our homes, not the reaction we have when we look out the window on a spring day and see a wren carrying a twig to its nest.

Far from being ethereal or other-worldly, a well-fed spirituality gives us a deeper appreciation of the things of this world. Consequently, creating some expression of our spirituality need not be put off until we deem ourselves “proficient” or see our lives as worthy of reflection. We begin wherever we are, finding God in the dailiness of life, and finding our own hearts as well.

O God, I long to know you not just in the dramatic moments of my life, but also in the everyday, in my work and in my leisure, in relationship with others and in time I spend alone.

The Signposts for May are written by Susan Hanson and originally appeared on explorefaith.org in September 2004.