Athletes of god

The Olympics are on, in case you haven’t noticed. Once again we are awed into submission to our television sets and webcasts by bodies—the bodies of these women and men—reaching, twisting, bending, spinning, flipping, thrusting, hurling, heaving, kicking, rowing, and running. We are impressed and again amazed by the concentration focused, the effort expended, the will to win demonstrated time and again in extraordinary bodily movements.

Close, yet so far. On the one hand, these bodies are just that—bodies like ours. Their movements are ordinary, basic to the workings of nearly every healthy human on the planet. On the other hand, we can hardly imagine making such extreme versions of those movements. We come away strangely rapt, somewhat inspired, giddy, determined, and humbled all at once.

Yet what rivets us in the end, what we celebrate and cheer, is not the particular accomplishments, as great as they are. It is the human power to become: the basic capacity of bodies to become something other than what they once were, whether swimmer, gymnast, runner, shooter, equestrian, fencer—someone who can empty his or herself, mind, heart, and soul, into a split-second breathtaking bodily act of extraordinary precision and grace.

What we celebrate and cheer is the power of bodily becoming. You might call it the spirituality of sports.
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Inhaling. Exhaling. The movements of breathing, the basic rhythm accompanying and enabling every moment, every movement, of our lives. Inhaling, we take in the possibilities that await us—the resources that may become us. Exhaling we release what we were, to become something new.

Inhaling. Exhaling. Present in this basic oscillating rhythm is a moment where we are not—a moment between who we were and who we now are. It is a moment of transcendence—a moment when we are transcending ourselves, becoming other to ourselves, moving beyond ourselves, and becoming something else. Someone else.

Are you breathing?
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It is tempting to think of sports and spirituality as two distinct realms of life. We tend to think that in sports, we use the power of our minds and wills to push the limits of our physical bodies, whereas, in our religious and spiritual paths, we plumb the heights and depths of our spirit or soul, expanding our horizons beyond our finite bodies, bound as they are by time and space.

The distinction is a false one. For our spirituality is itself an expression of our bodily becoming. Our bodies our infinite, not our minds, and they are infinite in the range of movements they can potentially make—movements that include believing, breathing, and bounding over a pole.

Spirituality, like sports, involves a rigorous education of the senses to certain possibilities of experience.

A gymnast learns to notice the give of a parallel bar, the spring of the mat, the curve of the ring, the tilt of the horse, and spontaneously make the micro adjustments needed to align his intention and action.

A member of a religious group learns to move with the melody of a song, the cadence of a chant, the names and images of god. A member learns to make the gestures of prayer, think with the arc of repeated narratives, pay attention for the anticipated length of a ritual, and so too, learn to make spontaneous micro adjustments that align her heart and mind and body with the beliefs and intentions expressed.

In each case the apparatus—whether material or conceptual—provides the one who practices with an ability to develop an acute awareness of a given sensory range, and devote himself or herself to the perfection of certain virtues, the completion of desired tasks. Each offers a particular course and context, a training ground and goal for our bodily becoming.
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Nevertheless, there is a difference, and one worth noting. What distinguishes sport from spiritual is the moment in the rhythm of bodily becoming that each values as worthy of sustained attention.

In our spiritual lives, we are drawn to various tests and challenges that exercise that moment of our bodily becoming when we become other to ourselves—that moment when we move beyond who we are, expanding beyond our myriad fears and insecurities, troubles and ill—to connect with a source or presence or energy or whole that is greater than we are. We inhale and absorb visions of who we are and what we can be. Doing so, we strengthen our capacity to transcend.

In pursuing excellence in sports, we exercise that moment of our bodily becoming where we become other, realizing, in our physical actions, what we desire. Making the goal. Winning the prize. Overcoming all obstacles.

The two are not mutually exclusive. At the extremes of practice in either case, the difference is negligible. Our sensory and spiritual selves, inhaling and exhaling, are fully entwined in the pure presence of awareness—the action of the moment.

It is this entwining, really, that we celebrate. It is what we yearn for in everything we do. It is what makes anything satisfying to do. Finding it, realizing it, is what gives us the sense of vitality, direction, and belonging that will satisfy our desire for spirit. We become, in the words of one faith, "athletes of god."

Next week: Why and how this model of spirituality can help us in a world torn by religious conflict.

Where is the Spirit?

Back from vacation!

I was discussing my understanding of our desire for spirit with a colleague this week. He asked: where is the spirit in all this?

I knew what he meant. I talk of vitality, direction, and belonging, all worthwhile elements of life, for sure. But, like many definitions of religion on the books, it seems like my definition reduces our desire for spirit to something psychological or social, to a function or use, such as personal happiness, communal cohesion, moral up-building, or the passing on of tradition.

Where is the spirit in spirit? Where is the sacred, the holy, the transcendent Other? What about God?
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I have been reading about Rick Warren these days. It is hard not to. Not only is he the founding pastor of one of the largest churches in the United States, the author of the best-selling Purpose Driven Life, and a global activist, he is also the host of an upcoming “civil forum” between Obama and McCain. Commentators are heralding Warren as a new breed of evangelical leader, one who is broadening the politics of the Christian right beyond party lines and divisive issues to include health care, poverty, illiteracy, and global warming.

Pondering the many facets of his story, one thing rivets our attention: Warren claims that his purpose is God’s. As Warren insists, it is not about him. It is about God. It is about doing God’s Will. Doing God’s Work. God spoke to him. Warren’s success seems to confirm it.

We want what he has. We want that sense of vitality, direction and belonging—we want an unquestionable capital-A Authority to tell us that our lives are worthwhile and worth living. Our desire for spirit wants it.
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From the perspective I have been developing here, Warren’s conviction serves him well. It energizes him into action, providing him with a seemingly boundless sense of vitality. It guides him in his daily tasks: he has a mission, a clear direction. And, his specifically Christian commitment, ironically enough, provides him with a strong sense of belonging not only to his church, but to his community, his country, and his world.

But we wonder too. How can Warren be so sure? Was it really God speaking to him? (Can God speak to me? What would God say?)
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All we know comes to us through our senses. As we are born and grow, our senses evolve as the pathways through which our inner consciousness and outer awareness come to exist for us at all.

We are familiar with five primary senses—touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing—but the dimensions of each go far beyond the immediate impressions they register. As we use our senses, we open up an internal sensory space. We remember what we sensed; we anticipate what we will sense; we imagine what we might sense. And these memories, anticipations, and imaginings come together as a rich mesh that sifts our sensations. We learn to sense. We educate our senses to notice, to recognize, to compare and contrast.

An eye scans, an eardrum vibrates, nose and skin hairs tremble. We move; things appear to us. We create and become the patterns of sensation and response that orient and guide us in the world.

All that we can ever know or think or feel, then, arises in us by virtue of our sensing, moving bodily selves. Even when we believe we hear God speaking to us, even when we believe we encounter the presence of something Other we are, even when we enter into a state of otherworldly consciousness, we do so because of what our sensing, moving selves have sensed, are sensing, and can imagine sensing.

Which is not to say there is no God or spirits or states of altered consciousness. It is only to say that we will not be able to experience and know any of these things unless we believe in the possibility, educate our senses along the lines of those beliefs, and bend ourselves to listen.
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I remember a time when I was obsessed with the Will of God for my life. I was paralyzed, unable to move, constantly in tears. I wanted some Voice to speak to me out of Nowhere, loudly and clearly, telling me in no unquestionable terms who I was, where I should go, what I should do with my life. I prayed to God desperately, alone and with others. I read the Bible constantly, looking for clues. I attended church regularly, hoping for a sign. Nothing.

I finally talked with a pastor who said: Sounds like you’ve been working pretty hard on God. Why don’t you let God work on you.

I let it all go. Everything. God, Will, worry, faith. Whatever comes back will be mine. I walked and walked. I healed. Perhaps God isn’t limited to words. Perhaps God is speaking to me through what I desire most.
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“You were not put on this earth for your own satisfaction. You were not put on this earth for your own fulfillment. You were not put on this earth for your own happiness. God made you for His purposes.” –Rick Warren

Warren's teaching seems to go against everything I am writing. The only desire that matters here is God’s. God’s Will not yours. God’s Will is why you exist. God’s purpose will satisfy your desire for spirit. God versus you.

But the question remains: how do we know God’s Will for our lives? Only through our own senses. Only through the sensory, sensing movement of our bodily selves.

In the end it is you and only you who can know. You and only you who must make the decision to say, yes I know. Yes I have heard. In the end, it is all about you. But who are “you”?
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Can we know something that exists far beyond our sensory selves as their source and guide? Can we access other states of consciousness that allow us to know something we otherwise don’t? Can we escape from our ignorant, finite selves into some kind of larger intelligence?

The questions mislead us. For the questions presume that we are individuals, living as autonomous being. We are not. They presume that there is a clear break between the world inside of us and the world outside of us, between ourselves and everything else that exists. There is not.

We are moments in a seamless eternal web that is constantly moving, creating and becoming itself, at every level of existence, microscopic to macrocosmic. There is no inside or outside, only an infinite Movement of life becoming what it is. We are that movement, we participate in that movement, and we do so as we make the sensing movements that make us who we are.

The implications are radical. Our senses are not and cannot be merely physical. What we sense is always shaped and pulled by what we can imagine. For this reason, we sense-bound humans are inherently spiritual beings. We cannot not try to imagine what might be true. We cannot not keep creating sense-enabled pictures of the forces that blast through us—pictures of our relationship to these forces imaged in terms of words or visions or dream quest journeys. God speaking. Animal spirits guiding. Visions appearing. Healing energy rising.

All are possible. All can be real for us as life changing encounters. For we can imagine them. We can imagine them because of what we have sensed; we can sense them because of what we imagine. And what is it that constantly impels us to keep sensing, imagining, and encountering that which transcends what we have known? Our desire for spirit—our desire to find the sense of vitality, direction, and belonging we need in order to discover who we are and unfold what we have to give.
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The hard and fast distinction between spirit and sense is one that is fading in many realms, as people seek resources for embracing the spirituality of their bodily selves. However, the distinction continues to haunt us in the lingering sense of ourselves as minds who must choose or lose the best Will to authorize and reveal our bodies' way.

We need a model of spirituality, an understanding of spiritual practice, that emerges from the movement of our bodily selves. An understanding that begins with the idea: How you move shapes what you are able to sense as real and true.

Next week: a model of spirituality enabled by the cycle of breaths