How Do I Even Talk About This?

I find that one of the most difficult things for me to talk about in an academic context, even in my blog, which is academic in only the most tangential, daily way, is spirituality. It's not exactly that everyone is atheist or agnostic, although I suspect a fair number of my colleagues in my field and otherwhere secretly believe anyone who isn't atheist is a dupe of some kind. It's that there's no place for spirituality to be a real part of anyone's life as it is practiced in the academy.

I don't exactly mean that academia makes spirituality or ritual attendance impossible. I know many colleagues who go to some kind of worship service regularly and participate in their respective congregations. One of my colleagues here can't teach or hold meetings on Friday afternoons because she's Orthodox Jewish and lives in nearby City because we have no Orthodox temple here and must be home before sundown, which, let's face it, is at about 4:30 these days. Another colleague is Catholic and wears her Ash Wednesday ashes all day long. It's not that it's impossible. It's that these actions are somehow suspect. They're quietly mocked when they interfere with department function; they're outright ignored when people plan conferences, seminars, and teaching schedules. Religion as a whole and spirituality as a corollary are sometimes studied, but rarely engaged as both intellectual and lived.* Since I've been thinking about this for a while, I'm going to bore you with the narrative and the place we're at now.

When I was in graduate school, this is how everyone I knew lived their lives. A few people meditated, a whole host of us did yoga, and a very few admitted to going to church. Even though I had no real desire to rejoin the Catholic church I was raised in, I kept feeling like something was missing. I wanted some kind of structure in which to engage spirituality, and I couldn't find one. Slowly I ended up at paganism, an odd blend of Wicca and Druidry and what-makes-sense-to-me. None of it feels comfortable.

Ms. P, on the other hand, is an innately spiritual person. She jokes that she was atheist for two days once, until it struck her how stupid that seemed to be for her. Her spirituality is complicated, though. She has twice thought about Catholic religious life, she has a second degree in a particular branch of Wicca, she does magic on a regular basis, she's spent long periods of her life going to Quaker meeting, and she likes nothing better than a good altar and some home-grown ritual with people she loves and trusts.

Together we continue our small personal pagan practices, but we've also been searching for a place, a congregation, a something we can lean into, something that can hold us up when we're searching, something that is big enough to throw ourselves against when that's what we need. It's not Catholicism; she's having mad backlash right now from being with the nuns and the Catholic church is more and more witchhunting queers among its congregations. We spent some time at the local reform Temple after we did some reading in preparation for a Jewish wedding I was in. There are a number of things we adore about Judaism, things we want in our life. But the experience of Temple wasn't compelling to either of us. That idea is on hold until we move someplace that has a bigger Temple and potentially a Reconstructionist Temple. We went to Quaker meeting for a while, but while it fed Ms. P, it made me itchy. Again, the congregation here is so small that it makes me feel self-conscious instead of held in the Light. We can't seem to find grown-up pagans here, although we know they've got to be here somewhere. We went to midnight services at the Episcopal church last Christmas because I refused to go to the extremely conservative Catholic church and the good one didn't have midnight Mass, and Ms. P was a little hooked. I dug in my heels for a while (how many religions were we going to go through, anyway?), but we're going to Episcopal services here now.

And it's fine. It's not exciting, and I'm looking forward to smoothing out the small differences from the Catholic service so we don't make so many mistakes thinking we're doing it right, but it's friendly and pretty and has good music and fine sermons.

The problem is, I really don't fit in Christianity. I think the principles of Christianity are wonderful and a really good idea, but I don't believe Jesus was the son of God any more than any of us are. So on some level, going to any Christian service makes me feel like a fraud. But the pagan experience I cobble together don't satisfy me.

So I feel stuck and angry, and then I blame academia for not having spaces where I get to encounter people living their spirituality on a regular basis. It would make a difference to me, I think, if spirituality were part of people's vocabulary, their narrative of the everyday. But it isn't, not in academia, and probably not in many other contexts. Because what really happens is that people bring their religions into the workplace, and then it's just intolerance all the way down. But damn, what I really need is some grown-up, tolerant, narrative, open-minded, committed, and engaged conversation about how we go about being spiritually engaged people in this world of ours. Any ideas?

*A colleague of mine studies Anchorites in the 13th century, but when I told her about Ms. P, who was then in discernment for the convent, she said it had never occured to her that people still did that.

Comments

[Carrie]

Unitarians? You don't even have to believe in one God to go there. They talk about the spirituality in many religions, and, at least at the services I have gone to, celebrate holy days from a wide variety of traditions, including pagan. At the church down the street, the lesbian and gay families actually outnumber the heterosexual ones. It was a good fit for my sort-of Catholic upbringing and my husband's Quaker upbringing. Just enough ritual to make me feel like I'm actually at church, and a lack of fire-and-damnation that makes my husband feel comfortable. And everyone truly lives their beliefs in this group. No one is telling them they have to show up or they'll burn in hell, but they still do. Teenagers are involved, willingly. It is a wonderful place for me to feel good about believing in God without being typecast as a loony Christian (I'm with you on the Jesus thing), and not feel like I am somehow lacking because of my unorthodox views. The new pastor is not someone I really click with (she's perfectly nice, I don't know what it is), so we don't go much anymore, and I miss it.

Thanks for the kind words on my blog. It means a lot when people comment, especially people who don't know me, and so therefore I can't convince myself they are doing it out of obligation :-)

[Pronoia]

The Unitarian church here is small and odd. I've tried Unitarians in the past and gotten frustrated with the lack of a regular liturgical structure. But they're certainly on my list of places to go next if this doesn't work out!

Have you tried Quaker services? I find that I *want* to like them more than I actually like them, mostly because I like meditating, but meditating by myself in the attic, with my incense and my cushion on the floor is much different than sitting in a circle with 15 other people! But I respect Quakers immensely, and I might like services better in another time of my life.

Thanks for reading, and for commenting. It's nice to have a little on-line community.

[Carrie]

I haven't been to meeting, because I thought it sounded too weird, frankly. I like the idea of it, but I feel like I need more...ritual, I guess, to really feel the way I want to feel. I have a hard time focusing during meditation, and don't really enjoy it at yoga class, so I think I wouldn't like it at meeting either. My husband went to meeting here for a while and didn't like it, because there's a guy who is apparently compelled by God to begin speaking about politics and the wrongs in the world for most of the time, and no one has ever stopped him, apparently.

We actually have two Unitarian churches here, and one is a lot more formal than the other. The formal one, unfortunately, is filled with rich white people who didn't make me feel particularly welcome, though I liked the sermon much better. I wonder sometimes if I should be worrying so much about the church community instead of actually going, but I really do think it is as important as what is said on Sunday.

[dale]

There are two issues, I think, pulling in different directions. That's what makes it difficult.

On the one hand, you want a church that doesn't ask you to believe nonsense. On the other, you want a church that preserves the structure, the lore, and the discipline which supports genuine spiritual transformation. Unfortunately you rarely find both at the same time.

Rarely isn't never. I wouldn't assume that the right church (temple, sangha, coven, whatever) isn't out there. It could be anywhere, under almost any auspices.

One of the (many) joys of leaving academia, for me, was discovering that the rest of the world is considerably more hospitable to a life of the spirit.

You might be doing your fellow-academics a huge favor by just bringing it up. "I'm looking for a church or a temple, do you know of a good one?" -- might start unexpected conversations. There are lots more academics out there, I think, with serious spiritual yearnings, than you'd ever guess -- to hear them being clever at parties, anyway. After all, we've all been clever at parties too, nicht?