As soon as the dust settled at ground zero in New York City and
the scope of the 9-11 tragedy became apparent to all, makeshift
shrines began to spring up near the site and at adjacent fire
houses. Pictures of those lost in the tragedy were pinned on walls,
and at the foot of those same walls people left flowers, candles,
mementos (teddy bears were a favorite) and scrawled messages --
notes of loss or grief, passages from the Bible or prayers. The
candles often had religious decals of Our Lady of Guadalupe or
Saint Anthony or Christ with a crown of thorns; other candles
were those known among Jews as Jahrzeit (remembrance)
lights.
Before too long people began to stop at these sites to look
or pray or take pictures. When the World Trade Center site cleanup
ended in May, the workers left standing an upright steel girder
festooned with messages and photos; an American flag flew on top.
The girder then was cut down and ceremoniously hauled away as
tearful viewers watched.
These makeshift shrines often show up on the American landscape:
in front of Columbine High School after the April 1999 shootings
there or along highways where a white cross marks a fatal automobile
collision. These clusters have the look of something primordial:
the kind of display found for centuries at sacred shrines or pilgrimage
chapels so common in Mediterranean Catholicism. Sacred spots are
marked; gifts and tokens are left; people come to pray or meditate;
community bonds are formed.
What do those displays "say"? Briefly this: We want to mark
the spot; we want to remember; we want to symbolize our grief,
our sadness, our bewilderment. Plainly put, people reach back
to some of the most ancient gestures of spiritual symbolism to
articulate something too deep for words. In a broad sense, we
want to make a spiritual statement.
Americans have an insatiable desire for the spiritual. Our bookstores
have groaning shelves that try to teach us how to "get in touch"
with our inner child, our guardian angel, our bliss, our soul.
We want chicken soup for the soul to warm and heal us. We read
books by spiritual gurus to make us more effective people, to
harness our energies, to experience a high by running or rock
climbing or walking along a beach. Sometimes we try a disciplinary
regime of meditation to seek inner peace or lower our blood pressure,
or we enter a 12-step program to combat our raging appetites for
drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex or food. The more dedicated might
actually take on a seminar in mind-expansion or Sufi dancing.
Sylvan areas of the country are studded with ashrams, retreat
houses, conference centers and houses of worship that cater to
every need from angel study to Zen.
What many seekers desire (to repeat what is now a weary cliche)
is to be spiritual without being religious. One hears this with
some frequency: "I am spiritual but not religious." Observers
of the American religious scene have studied this phenomenon in
works from Wade Roof's A Generation of Seekers to Robert
Wuthnow's more recent After Heaven: Spirituality in America
Since the 1950s.
Every cliche bears within it a nugget of truth. This particular
cliche about being spiritual but not religious seems to mean something
like this: I would like to have some kind of fulfilling experience
in my life but I do not want to be constricted by the demands
of institutional religion. Being spiritual is to be uplifted by
the spectacular awe felt at watching a sunset over the Gulf of
Mexico, while being religious is sitting on a pew listening to
some dreary moralizer preaching about sin to a bored congregation.
Spiritual means freedom and exaltation. Religion means rules,
rote rituals and, well, religion. Spiritual is large and religion
is small. Being spiritual will make me feel fulfilled but being
religious will make me feel guilty. Being spiritual, then, is
good but being religious is, if not bad, at least second best.
Is that, in fact, the case? Is the gap between religion and
spirituality to be described in such stark oppositions? That distinction
works only if we accept such a narrow caricature of religion and
if we resist caricaturing spirituality as being the desire for
some kind of "wow" experience to go along with all of the other
comforts of post-industrial Yuppiedom. After all, the aim of certain
forms of New Age spirituality (warm feelings of contentment and
peace with the world) could as easily be obtained by the regular
use of the hot tub.
To be sure, there are certain forms of spiritual discipline
that not only exist outside the walls of institutional religion
but do so with great benefit to large numbers of people. Alcoholics
Anonymous and other serious 12-step programs come immediately
to mind. Alcoholics Anonymous puts a premium on confession, repentance
and dependence on some transcendental principle (a "Higher Power"),
together with a desire to help others gain sobriety. That A.A.
has a religious or spiritual component is so clear that some efforts
have been made by militant unbelievers to adapt the 12 steps without
reference to any Higher Power. It is also true that certain forms
of New Age spirituality bring healthy benefits: Meditation does
lower blood pressure, and a vegetarian diet might well forestall
the Big Pain in the Chest.
The limits of "spirituality," as opposed to belonging to a religious
tradition, are also well known. Much spirituality (think of the
preachments of such best-selling authors as Thomas Moore or Deepak
Chopra) is highly narcissistic and not easily distinguishable
from old self-improvement schemes and/or the standard smorgasbord
of psychotherapies. One might call such tendencies "spirituality
lite."
Because such strategies are for the "self" they are not so easily
transmitted to others. A good test case for a "spirituality" is
this: Can you teach it to your children? Does it spill over into
more loving relationships with others who are not part of your
own nurturing community? An even better test: Does a way of being
spiritual help in moments of profound crisis, like coping with
serious illness? Nothing focuses the mind, the great Doctor Samuel
Johnson once said, like being sentenced to hanging.
