Two things ...

First, as an old guy who as been there but is still trying to do that, I can’t begin to tell you how important spirituality is for young people today. That’s because you young folks will graduate from college, get your first of ten or so jobs, get married, have families, have an affair or two, have successful careers, and then, at some point, everything will fall apart. Your children will move away, communicating with you only when they need their tuitions paid or a small loan. Your spouse, having found someone younger and more interesting, will divorce you in a no-fault state and take half of your retirement. Your company will downsize – did you know “lean and mean” is just a euphemism for “skinny and nasty?” – and you’ll find yourself with a hip replacement or an incurable disease, sad, broken, and alone, sitting in front of your computer monitor, scrolling through profiles at the Match.com web-site.

And that’s where understanding spirituality will have a significant pay-off, because, time after time after time, you will come upon profiles of interesting-looking members of the opposite sex in which the “Religion” category is filled in with “Spiritual but not religious.” And right then and there my young friend, you will thank your elders for subjecting you to all of those weird spirituality experiences they subjected you to in your youth.

Indeed, I’m looking at an M.com profile as I type this, and, in this case a 58-year-old woman, adds “I have only three absolute requirements. My match is not a smoker. He is not politically right winged (too difficult to mesh conservatives and liberals), and he will not try to convert me to Christianity.” So, you see what I mean!

Second, as someone who has spent and continues to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort studying and contemplating creation and existence, I was eager to see how The National Study of College Students defined spirituality. So I went to their web-site ...

http://www.spirituality.ucla.edu/about/spirituality.html

and discovered “Spirituality points to our interiors, our subjective life, as contrasted to the objective domain of material events and objects. Our spirituality is reflected in the values and ideals that we hold most dear, our sense of who we are and where we come from, our beliefs about why we are here—the meaning and purpose we see in our lives—and our connectedness to each other and to the world around us.

Spirituality also captures those aspects of our experience that are not easy to define or talk about, such as inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, and the mystical. Within this very broad perspective, we believe spirituality is a universal impulse and reality.”

I thought it was quite remarkable that they could write that stuff without putting at least ten words in quotation marks. Anyway, I thought about my own quest for spirituality, starting with a fairly conservative Christian background, spending almost five traumatic years rejecting it, and then, over the next forty years, becoming a “secular humanist,” terminal agnostic (“terminal agnostic” means I don’t know and I think, with high probability, it’s unknowable for me). And now I’m leaning toward atheism.

I can tell you that when I read, “spirituality points to our interiors,” the first thing that came to mind is that quite wonderful Tios 4-X Hot Sauce that always takes my lackadaisical interior and turns it completely around. I mean a big spoonful of #4 give me a spiritual clarity that rivals an entire evening of reading Aristotle’s “Ethics.”

http://the-communicator.org/index...site/article/tios_restaurant_review/

I’ll have to admit, going back to the definition, I care very much about (1) values, (2) ideals, (3) who I am, (4) where I came from, and (5) the meaning and purpose of my life. All of those are entities I have worked long and hard to give to myself. But the issue of “why” I’m here is something of very, very little interest to me. I suppose you could say “I don’t know and I think, with high probability, it’s unknowable for me.” On the other hand, maybe I should enroll in Spirituality 101 at my local community college.

Frizbane Manley, at 9:15 am EDT on May 8, 2007

Spirituality or Philosophy?

I teach an introduction to Philosophy course and advise for our college’s Philosophy Club. Students seek out both the class and the club because they want to learn about themselves and their place in the universe. The definition of Spirituality as stated by The National Study of College Students sounds much like the definition of Philosophy – the search for answers to the big questions. Instead of adding spirituality classes why not simply send students to Philosophy classes? Philosophy does not claim to provide any answers, but it does provide access to the greatest literature written about the quest for human understanding about the nature of the universe, the nature of humanity, and the relationship between humans and their world. From Socrates to Aristotle to Aquinas to Hobbes to Kant to Sartre, the philosophers have always faced questions that Mr. Manley asserts an interest in “1) values, (2) ideals, (3) who I am, (4) where I came from, and (5) the meaning and purpose of my life.”

GMS Community College Faculty, Faculty at Cochise College, at 2:15 pm EDT on May 9, 2007

This article was forwarded to me and I want to comment. My first thoughts were BYOB! It’s not what you think. Let me explain.

When I entered St. Lawrence University several years ago, I was interested in discussing spiritual issues with people who were as curious as I was. I joined a campus program called “Build Your Own Beliefs:” a series of seminars that provide a tolerant and open atmosphere for those looking to expand their self-understanding and their spirituality. Not an experience focused on a particular faith, BYOB explores a diversity of topics on personal spirituality and creating a sense of self-identity.

My experience with campus spirituality has led me in a socially-conscious direction. Far from being someone who will evangelize my beliefs, I developed the attitude I wished to work towards providing spaces of dialogue where people may voice their opinion about issues of social justice. I lead a campus chapter of Amnesty International, and we have raised money for human rights issues, including AIDS. I’ve also helped encourage a new campus chapter of Oxfam International, bringing hunger awareness to students.

While I can’t definitively say I believe in a higher power and am not a member of an organized religion, I do believe that spirituality starts with a sense of self-understanding that a college campus like mine was able to foster so well.

Salvatore J. Cania III

St. Lawrence University’07

Salvatore Cania III, Student View on Spirituality at St. Lawrence University, at 2:00 pm EDT on May 10, 2007