You can be right, or you can be happy

I have been contemplating the role of religion in our quest for life. I believe we each have a unique language of connection to Spirit, God or Universal consciousness.

Personally, I don't feel particularly connected to ritual or ceremony when it comes to a relationship with God. Walking in a rain forest,  standing on a mountain top, or drifting on a boat in the swells of the ocean, breathing in the life around me represents the greatest communion with Spirit. Often, hours of tranquil silence would be a wonderful conversation. On other occasions, mere moments pass and my heart is moved, tears flow, a  connection is made and a sense of peace settles.

I find God in a genuine conversation, when two hearts meet. When it is not about me, but I am integrally involved in another's heart, feeling and experience. Again, almost 'breathing' in that life force.

For my wife - probably the most loving, serving and publicly conscious person I know - the greatest conversation with God is on her knees before an altar. In the Japanese home of her childhood, several symbols of faith decorate the altar - Shinto, Buddhist and Christian. Without a real understanding of this connection she makes, it has been easy for me to judge it as dutiful, mechanical or mere lifeless ritual. But in her daily walk with God, she 'breathes' in an energy that empowers her to give, to love - even to love me at times when I don't deserve it.

I see diverse expressions of faith and spirituality in the people I work with every

day.  I work with teens and young adults in my leadership program, NextGen Academy. Many are working to understand what they believe, what they are connected to, how they connect to it - what is their natural spirituality. This is the undercurrent of each of our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. I think it would be limiting and small minded to presume that I know what that spirituality or religious experience should be. I can teach certain principles and lessons from my experience or even from others'. But unless we each put it into practice ourselves, it is merely an intellectual exercise. 

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. Anthony de Mello

It is incumbent on me to be open to the possibility that others may have something to teach me. Breathing, living, growing is not a static thing. Why should our relationship with God be any different. We must always be open to grow, to learn. Indeed, my deepest moments with God have been when I let go of a concept I'd been holding fast to and welcomed in a new perspective, one that was perhaps foreign or not even in my realm of awareness before.

I will follow up this article with some thoughts about what it means to be a spiritual leader.