Spiritual but Not Religious

The Search for Meaning in a Material World

John Bartunek

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781505113563
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Denominazioni cristiane

A Guide for Exploring the Horizons of Your Heart

More people than ever find themselves unfulfilled by merely material abundance and prosperity. More people than ever find their hearts yearning for some kind of satisfaction beyond swiping right or going viral. This is because the human soul was made for more than video games, social media, SMS messages, and flashy distractions.

This book, written with the warmth, sincerity, and clarity characteristic of Father Bartunek's many popular books, opens the door to a rediscovery of the spiritual landscape present in every human heart.

Maybe you are spiritually restless yourself. Maybe you know others who are, and you want to connect with them better. In either case, this book is for you. It will take you where few dare to go through a fearless exploration of questions like these:

• Why does "spirituality" attract us, and what does that word really mean?
• What is the real difference between "spirituality" and "religion"?
• Aren't all religions basically the same?
• How is it possible to be "religious but not spiritual"?
• What are the implications of choosing to be "spiritual but not religious"?
• Does truth enrich or impoverish our spiritual life?

Father Bartunek takes you on a tour of your own soul through his reflections on these themes and more, weaving together philosophy, natural theology, personal experiences, and analyses of selected works of art to make this a truly one-of-a-kind book.

You won't read this book and move on. You will read this book and grow, and then you will want to dip back into it again and again, to keep on growing. It's a book for a lifetime.

1

What Do We Mean by Spiritual?

The word “museum” comes from a Greek term meaning “seat (or place) of the Muses.” In ancient Greece, the Muses were nine goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory). These Muses were the divine sources of inspiration for great artists. Using the word “museum” to refer to a place where we can study and contemplate great works of art illustrates the implicit connection between spirituality (inspiration) and religion (divine source of inspiration).

In fact, many of the greatest works in the world’s best-known museums are explicitly religious in their subject matter and their origin, from Egyptian tomb decorations to baroque crucifixion scenes. Yet no one would claim that museum visitors must be religious in order to appreciate these great works of art. Somehow, their aesthetic eloquence is sufficient unto itself. The gallery of the Muses, then, is a safe place to explore the mysterious connections and distinctions between what is religious and what is spiritual.

Impractical Value

A museum also happens to be a quintessentially human thing. Unlike a burger joint, it has no obvious practical purpose. In a burger joint, we can get food. We need food to stay healthy and alive. The practical purpose of a burger joint is undeniable. But what about a museum? The practical advantage gleaned from gazing at and thinking about a painting or a sculpture is less tangible. Some might even say there is no advantage. And yet, for more than a few centuries now, human beings have continued to pour immense amounts of time and money into the production, collection, and display of works of art.

The Detroit Institute of Arts, for example (I will be referring to many works in the DIA throughout these pages; I live nearby), ranks among the top six art museums in the United States. Its more than a hundred galleries host a collection whose net assets exceed $300 million. Its annual revenue in 2017 exceeded $55 million and covered its $40 million functional expenses.¹

Yet no one eats its paintings. No one drinks its sculptures. No one lives under its roof, and no one weaves clothing out of the documents in its art reference library. What is so valuable about something so impractical?

In 2017, a recently rediscovered painting (just one painting) by Leonardo da Vinci sold at an auction for over $450 million, more than the entire asset value of the Detroit Institute of Arts. That broke the previous record held by an abstract landscape painting from William de Kooning called Interchange, which had sold for $300 million.² One single painting, bought for as much as a record-setting Powerball jackpot. Why?

A Matter of Fact

A great work of art is worth more than the material used to make it because it captures and communicates—and sometimes symbolizes—something more than mere matter. A great work of art is like a sacrament: it mysteriously makes present through its physicality something that transcends mere physics. This is why human beings make art; this is why humans delight in beauty; this is why humans laugh at stand-up comedy routines and cry at sad movies; we, too, are more than mere matter.

I have never seen a squirrel contemplating a Rembrandt. I have never seen a dolphin attempt to capture a seascape in oils or watercolors. The arts—the creation of things like paintings, sculptures, and even films—is something uniquely human. Having food, clothing, and shelter is somehow not enough for us. Once we have supplied for our basic biological needs, we are still restless. This restlessness, this yearning for something beyond what is merely material, is the spark of spirituality. Every work of art is an expression both of the restlessness and of an insight or experience in which that restlessness was somehow recognized and relieved, even if only partially or temporarily. When we truly connect with a work of art, then, we are enriched by it in immaterial terms.

Surprised by Saint George

Have you ever been surprised in a museum? I have. In fact, the trajectory of my life was altered by a surprise encounter I had with a marble sculpture.

It was my junior year of college, and I was in adventure mode. I was in love with learning, with exploring and discovering. My history major and my university’s myriad overseas campuses pointed me toward a year of study abroad. I started out in Florence, Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance. My art history class was touring the Bargello National Museum, the medieval city hall turned priceless sculpture haven. Our guide led us into the Donatello room, and as the rest of my classmates followed the professor, my eye caught a marble figure in the corner that completely arrested my attention and irresistibly drew me toward it.

I stood before a life-sized statue of St. George whose presence was so compelling that it made me catch my breath. St. George had been a Roman legionary who became a Christian and rescued a Middle Eastern village from the tyranny of evil, usually represented in art and legend by a dragon. Donatello, however, chose to omit the dragon from his marble sculpture. Instead, he depicts George as a young soldier, wearing his armor and military cape, and balancing his shield on the ground in front of him. With his weight equally distributed on both feet, contrary to the more popular Renaissance trend toward the elegant, dance-like contrapposto position, the saint gives an impression of stability, firmness, and determination.

His head is turned slightly to the left as he looks into the distance. Whatever he sees, whether the dragon or something else, he is ready for it. His furrowed brow shows a recognition that the challenge ahead of him is serious. His slightly parted lips show an eager confidence instead of fear.

But that day, when this six-hundred-year-old sculpture seemed to tug at my soul, I perceived something even deeper than courage and strength. I saw in his face and his bearing something that I didn’t find in myself, something that I longed for even without realizing it. Purpose. Joyful, vibrant, life-giving purpose.

Before going to college, my life’s purpose had been clear: get into the best college I could get into. That goal shaped my decisions and behavior all through my high school years so that arriving to university was for me kind of like arriving to heaven. I threw myself into the joys of learning, free from pressure and worry. But by my junior year, heaven was halfway over. I had to make some decisions soon about what would come next. What criteria would I use for those decisions? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. I had no underlying purpose. I felt a strong aversion for any path that offered social acceptability and worldly success without also offering lasting meaning. I was thirsty for a meaningful way forward in life.

In the figure of St. George, I found a stunning depiction of someone who knew his purpose so clearly that every fiber of his being was fully engaged in carrying it out. That’s how Donatello had understood the soul of this saint and martyr. I caught a glimpse of that, and it gave me hope: Someone had found purpose, experienced it, captured it, and communicated it in this sculpture. Purpose is real. Maybe I can find it too.

Purpose is not merely material. Meaning goes beyond matter. The thirst for meaning and fulfillment is a thirst for transcendent values, for goods that will last, unlike all the passing goods of the material world. We can get a taste of these values through encountering great works of art. These works are known as mighty achievements of the human spirit precisely because they are windows into the spiritual realm, the mysterious realm of those transcendent, supra-material values so much more satisfying than even the finest seven-course meal or the soundest night of sleep. In its most basic and general sense, that’s what we mean by “spiritual.”

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¹ “The Detroit Institute of Arts,” Charity Navigator, accessed October 10, 2018, https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3619.

² Chris Harris, “Listed: The World’s Most-Expensive Paintings Sold at Auction,” Living it, accessed October 10, 2018, xhttp://www.livingit.euronews.com/2017/11/16/listed-the-world-s-most-expensive-paintings-sold-at-auction.

2

What Do We Mean by Religious?

The word “temple” comes from the Indo-European root word for “clearing” or “space.” The earliest temples were simply clearings in the forest where people would worship their gods. It was important to have a special place reserved for those activities because they were sacred, somehow separate from and more precious than normal, everyday, profane activities.³

Temples vs. Museums

The beautiful marble columns on an ancient Greek or Roman temple remind us of this original meaning. They reflect the columns made from tree trunks used in even more ancient constructions, which in turn echo the original forest context. Their capitals are like the spreading branches at the top of a tall tree, reminiscent of the majestic oaks or sycamores that might have flanked a primitive temple clearing.

Reserving a sacred space for interaction with deities, or a deity, implies a recognition that those deities were somehow relatable, personal. But it also implies that they were distant, or at least resided in a different realm or dimension, a transcendent dimension.

Here we find both an element in common between spirituality and religion and also an element of difference. Each points toward transcendence, toward something greater than what we normally perceive and experience in the material world. Yet unlike spirituality in general, religion always populates that transcendent realm with personal beings. True, some religions view the transcendent in terms of impersonal forces, but even in that case, the forces can somehow be influenced; a relationship can be established that allows interaction between them and the people living in the material world who are somehow dependent upon them.

This helps explain why what happens in a temple is so different from what happens in a museum.

In a museum, we contemplate works of art. We read them and, in a sense, listen to them; we try to discover their message and allow them to touch our souls. We enjoy them—their beauty, their meaning, their inspiration. But we don’t pray to them. We don’t attempt to enter into a relationship with them—at least, that’s not what museums are for.

Religion, on the other hand, is all about relationship. One theory about the origin of the word “religion” points out that it may come from a combination of “re” (a Latin prefix meaning “again”) and “ligare” (a Latin word meaning “connect”, as in ligaments). Religion is about establishing a mutual interaction with the beings who dwell in the realm of transcendence but who at the same time influence the material world, where people like us live their lives.

Religion From Beyond and Religion From Within

Because transcendent values resonate so much more deeply in the human heart than immanent values, the beings who live in the transcendent realm are thought to be that much more powerful than us. The things that change—the seasons, plants and animals, the very earth itself—are seen to originate from and depend on things that don’t change, transcendent things.

It is no coincidence that humanity’s earliest ventures in writing and science were linked to religion. It was the religious instinct, this vague but undeniable awareness of the transcendent, that moved our ancestors to study and record the patterns of change so evident in the material world. Finding ways to record the motions of the heavenly bodies gave rise to calendars, and calendars allowed for a more accurate prediction of seasonal and climatic phenomena, which in turn opened the door to enhanced agricultural techniques. The first literate groups in human history were the priests, who were also the first scientists. Somehow, the human mind’s search for greater understanding of self and the universe was, originally, connected to the human heart’s experience of awe and wonder in the face of nature’s beauty and power.

Religion has always sought to know what the transcendent realm, and the beings who live there, are like. The answers to those questions gave rise to religious dogma, either mythical or doctrinal or both. Religion has always sought to establish ways of properly entering into relationship with the transcendent realm and the beings who dwell there. The rituals of worship and prayer, so varied throughout human history, have their origin here. They provide an avenue for communicating and interacting with the gods, the transcendent beings so evidently present behind the veil of the material world.

For many centuries, dogma and ritual were deemed sufficient. Then in the sixth century before Christ, a worldwide revolution in religion took place, weaving moral behavior into the religious outlook.

Confucius in China, Buddha in India, Zoroaster in the Middle East, and Socrates in Greece each independently and in his own way constructed a bridge between morality and religion. For them, ritualistic theogamy (the bringing together of this world and the transcendent realm) wasn’t enough. It was too superficial. Evidence of transcendence could certainly be found in the material world, but for these religious revolutionaries, it could also be found within the human heart. We could touch transcendence by reaching out beyond the stars, but we could also touch transcendence by reaching deep within ourselves.

There we discover a mysterious spiritual depth, a limitless space of encounter and yearning where an inner voice guides and calls. Learning to hear and heed this voice became an alternative avenue for entering into relationship with what was lasting and fulfilling. And so moral behavior became a more explicit element in religion.

Religion thus took on its trappings: dogmas, rituals, and behaviors deemed worthy and fruitful for living in harmony with and tapping into the realm of transcendence.

Superstition, Spirituality, and the Search

When those trappings are present, but a living relationship with the deity is absent, we find superstition of one form or another. The superstitious believe that transcendent powers are influencing their lives, but managing those powers is more of a technique than a relationship.

Superstition can be connected with magic, tapping into unseen powers through esoteric methods. But it can also take the form of religious dutifulness. The dutiful are those who follow all the religious rules but have no real relationship with the deity they worship. It is religious compliance and achievement often, though not always, based on fear, but it lacks true religious companionship. The deity watches and judges, perhaps, but doesn’t accompany. Dutiful believers check all the dogmatic, ritualistic, and behavioral boxes, but they don’t share a life with the one they worship.

Superstition is at the root of those who end up religious but not spiritual. Somehow they have lost, or maybe they never had, the transformative spiritual experience of deep personal contact with real transcendence. The truly spiritual person will revolt at this kind of aberration. And it is an aberration. Religion without spirituality—rituals, dogma, and moral boundaries without an experience of transcendent beauty, truth, and goodness—is a lifeless shell of real religion.

And yet, spiritual...