I'm bound

I've never liked the word 'religious'. It's usually applied to people by those who don't consider themselves religious, in a way that makes it clear the word isn't a compliment. Religious seems to have picked up a few negative connotations along the way - small minded, fundamentalist, boring, inhibited, outdated, judgemental. Not many people would queue up to be described like that.

But I think it's time that poor old religious shook off the dust and the dirt so we can see her at her brilliant, beautiful best.

Because hiding in the heart of religious is 'lig'. An ugly-duckling of a syllable, but we know what ugly-ducklings can become. Lig is what links religious to words like 'ligament' and 'ligature.' All three words are descendants of the latin word ligare, which means to tie, or bind together. Our ligaments tie our bones together and stop us falling apart.  Ligatures are used for tying and binding. And religion is about a kind of tying or binding.

It's a testament to the tattered reputation of religion, that when we see 'binding' at the heart of it, we shudder. Aha, we think, I knew it! Religion is a binding thing, to be got free of at all costs! For what human being would ever seek to be bound? We see prisoners being marched in line, humiliated and shackled. We see heroines tied to the train-tracks. It is not in our way to want to be bound.

But the binding is not ours, it is God's. It is not a cruel and unusual punishment meted out to unworthy sinners. The binding is of our lover's heart to our own.

There is a throbbing, pulsing, life-giving energy that courses through the universe. From the moment of the big bang, the universe has been growing. Life has been forming and evolving. Not a single sunrise has ever been repeated. The dew will never settle on the fir tree outside my kitchen window in the same way twice. The endlessly renewing creativity is astonishing. The Spirit of life is everywhere I look, everywhere I touch, everywhere I taste, everywhere I hear, everywhere I smell. And the Spirit of life is within me.

I am alive because the Spirit of life is endlessly creative, creating, breathing, giving. I have never been separate from whatever, or whoever, this Spirit is, because in the Spirit of life, I live, and move, and have my being. We are bound together, the Spirit and I, bound together in a dance-hold and a lovers' embrace. From my first cry, to my final breath, I am bound together in love to the endlessly giving Spirit of life. My lover would not leave me pinned to the train-tracks.

He and I are one. He and you are one. Ligare. Religion.

A three-letter word

Because I'm a speech and language therapist, I'm also a bit of a word-geek. Or maybe it's that I'm a bit of a speech and language therapist because I'm a word-geek. I'm not sure yet. But I love words, their meanings, and discovering a word's journey through time. Take this word: Hal. It's an Old English word meaning 'whole', and being a word, it has lots to say.

Hal: 'entire, whole, unhurt, uninjured, healthy.' What a beautiful meaning to carry. It may only have three letters, but as we all know, it's not size that counts, it's what you do with it. And Hal is not only beautiful in meaning, but has also done its bit for the English language, giving us Old English words like hælþ (health) hælan (to heal) and halig (holy, sacred). 

There's another word that keeps cropping up in my thoughts: violence. 'An unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power. Force that damages, injures or hurts.' The opposite of Hal. 

My Sunday School taught me well enough to ensure that I don't usually inflict violence on other people. I'm tempted towards violence when the cat starts humping my feet, but depending on how well I slept the night before, I usually manage self-restraint. But Sunday School didn't show me how to resist the violence I would be tempted to inflict on myself. Perhaps because that sort of violence can be subtle.

Like moths to a light, humankind is drawn to the way of violence - to think that we can become masters of our bodies, minds, sexuality, emotions, dreams, and spirituality by the exertion of force. When I see a side to my personality that I dislike, I am sorely tempted to squash it, crush it, repress it, lock it away in a dark place out of sight, like a despotic god on a power-trip. Hal on the other hand, would gently coax that side out into the bright warmth of day, and ask it why it behaves as obnoxiously /enviously /impulsively as it does. Hal would listen carefully and find the wound that needs healing. Hal would say that those unlikeable characteristics are no less part of me, no less deserving of love, and perhaps (if it were possible) be more deserving of my love, since they are really messengers of the truth - if only I would listen to their message. And as I would start to love them, I would find a greater degree of wholeness - of unity within these different parts of me. This is Hal.

When I try to separate my body from my mind, or my sexuality from my spirituality, I am in the way of violence again. When I say that I 'have' a body, rather than that I 'am' a body, I have dealt myself an injury. It makes me believe my body should be and do things according to the bidding of my mind, like any other commodity I possess. When I buy into an an economic system that turns planet Earth from my sister into my slave, and humans into units of production, I am in the way of violence. But Hal gently calls to us. Who hasn't seen a glorious dawn and felt the presence of Hal - the profound connection and wholeness that happens in that moment between the senses, soul, spirit and sunlight? These moments are sometimes even healing. The way of violence surrounds us, but so does Hal. Hal doesn't shout or raise her voice in the streets. Hal is the quiet whisper in my soul, the burning optimism that rises in the face of a glorious dawn, or a sudden rainbow. My soul can hear an invitation into the way of Hal, of wholeness, healing and one-ness.

Hal is that little word that gave us 'health', 'healing' and 'holy'. The way of Hal is the way of whole, is the way of healing, is the way of holiness, is the way of God. Hal and God - both three-lettered words.

Walking in circles

I read some research recently showing that when people are blindfolded and asked to walk in a straight line, they will often end up walking in a circle. In the dark, they end up back where they started. I like to think that God is enjoying this little joke, but that the phenomenon hints at a deep, liberating truth that pervades human life on earth.

About two years ago, I set out on a journey of the soul, in the dark. My journey began one winter's evening. I was at a Christingle service, one of those church services that happen just before Christmas, where children squish candles into the top of oranges, and listen to the story of the birth of Jesus, light of the world. The darkness of the church is softened by lots of little glowing candle flames. It should have felt cosy and familiar. But instead I felt a niggle, something like a stone in a shoe. I listened to the preacher talk about God, sin, the cross, and sacrifice. It was a story I'd heard many times in many places, sometimes embellished with long religious words like 'atonement' or even 'penal substitution' (for men who aren't happy with what God's blessed them with... maybe, who knows.) Being the offspring of church-going parents, I'm familiar with people talking about these things, but all of a sudden something just wasn't right anymore. Something in the stories that church people like to tell each other began to feel jarring and uncomfortable. And so I set off into the darkness, looking for answers, looking for God, all the while with the feeling of a stone in my shoe.

If I had read that piece of research back then, perhaps I could have guessed that I would end up walking in a circle. I found that the truth I was looking for was in the very place I had set off from. I saw God when I looked in the mirror. I saw God in my own humanity. The soul that sets out looking for God eventually arrives back where it started. He is within us. I hardly dare to suggest it, but what my soul is whispering is this: God is me. Which is different from saying "I am God". I am not God, but God is me. We are, in some unfathomable, mysterious way, one. It took a journey of walking in a circle to see what had been there all along.

And the stone in my shoe? It turned out to be two stones, actually. But I'll write about those another time.