The Fire In Our Belly

Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snow
lies the seed that with the SON'S love
in the spring
becomes the Rose.

Adaptation of Bette Midler's song "The Rose"


Spirituality is not about choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality. Thus we all have a spirituality whether we want one or not, whether we are religious or not.

Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her.

Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality.

And what shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies - and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others, and the cosmic world.

Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing, The Search For A Christian Spirituality


SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY:

"It is because one antelope will blow the dust from the other's eye that the two antelopes walk together." - African Proverb