Secular Spirituality: Why It’s Necessary || By Rev. Mary Coday Edwards MA
Awe: The avalanche’s sharp crack echoed through the valley as it broke off from Pakistan’s Karakorum Mountain Range and slid down the range’s craggy peaks. Ice crystals spun into my hair and brushed my face.
Awe: In a blur of stripes, a great herd of African zebras thundered past my tent in Kenya.
Awe: I sat mesmerized in my screened-in back porch as Pakistan’s relentless monsoon winds and rains thrashed and shredded the leaves of thirty-foot-tall banana plants.
Awe: I watched warily from our boat as Indonesia’s Anak Krakatoa spewed a dark cloud of volcanic ash a hundred feet in the air.
ANAK KRAKATOA, INDONESIA. PHOTO BY REV. MARY CODAY EDWARDS
What is Secular Spirituality?
Secular means anything not affiliated with a church or a faith. Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion, although it can coexist with institutional religions. It often emphasizes:
-a sense of awe—in grand or small events of life—and it includes acts of kindness at the grocery store
-the inner peace of an individual
-the search for meaning outside of a religious institution
-mindfulness or meditation practices
-nature, the environment
-humanistic values, such as compassion for others and a desire to lessen our planet’s suffering through helping others
-ritual versus a set of beliefs
It can be found in one’s creative actions. This includes art, music, dance, writing a poem, reading a poem, gardening, raising children, woodworking, sculpturing, building, teaching, intellectual endeavors, and in practicing one’s vocation/calling.
Why We Need a Secular Spirituality
It allows for a third way to the metanarratives (2, 3) of both science and institutionalized religion (4).
The scientific method does not speak kindly of spirituality: Spiritual concepts are not third-person objects that can be observed, measured, and tested; they cannot be replicated/duplicated; they cannot be falsified or proven wrong. This is not a judgement on the scientific method, it’s just an observation. Jeffrey Kripal in his book, The Flip, says that by remembering this observation, we
“. . . can prevent a great deal of misunderstanding and a whole bunch of missteps. Those missteps all come down to two fundamental errors: trying to explain something [spiritual experiences: those that occur outside the ego and its immediate needs or outside of our five senses] with the scientific method that is not amenable to the scientific method, and then assuming that anything that cannot be so explained must not be real or important, or, worse yet, must be fraudulent or faked” (5).
He lists other methods to give meaning to our spiritual phenomena. But before we can give these experiences meaning, we must embrace them as reality.
“I like to experience the Universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified.” -Einstein
My own spirituality includes a deep and knowing connection, a oneness, with a greater cosmic consciousness, which came about through my understanding of quantum physics’ interconnected reality. And again, because of quantum physics, I know my efforts matter (the observer effect).
It includes the joy I feel with my family and friends.
I feel most spiritual when I’m living authentically: speaking my truth and acting upon it. Or when I’ve read a great book—fiction or nonfiction—that reveals something about our world outside of a typical view supported by the status quo, especially books that leave me in awe due to someone’s willingness to say, “But the emperor has no clothes on!”
What spiritual experiences give meaning to your life? Do they move you into community? Are they further imprinted into your being through ritual?
I leave you with two suggestions: sit mindfully (6) with these questions, and pay attention to energy coursing through your physical body—at the end of day, what made you feel most alive, and what deadened your spirit?
PHOTO BY REV. MARY CODAY EDWARDS
Notes & Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality
- Metanarrative, definition from Oxford Languages: an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides a pattern or structure for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences.
- A metanarrative speaks of absolute, universal truth. Postmoderns view a single narrative giving meaning to all lives as an impossibility. In sociology, metanarrative refers to the dominant narratives that shape our understanding of social structures and institutions. For example, the idea of the American Dream is a metanarrative that has shaped the way we understand and interact with concepts such as social mobility, success, and happiness. https://philonotes.com/2023/04/what-is-metanarrative
- Friends and family tell me those acts of nature reveal God—but the catch is that they reveal THEIR God, of course—a metanarrative. Their God is confidently spoken of in male pronouns, tells me how to vote, that abortion and gay rights are the grave sins this God hates (not greed or materialism or environmental destruction or injustices or discrimination), that women must be subservient to men. Their list is long of what their male God demands of me. I must believe a certain way and live a certain way. As a reminder to fundamentalist Christians, according to the Bible, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).
- Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. Bellevue Literary Press, 2019; page 138.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, says mindfulness is “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”
- Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions; 2013.
About the Author: Award-winning author Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister. A life-long student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.
