This is proving to be harder than I thought. Whilst previously it was easy to rely and fall back on the wisdom of others to frame and articulate an argument or viewpoint, it is difficult to reach within to express and explain this phrase without the comfort and safety of footnotes. The nagging fear is this – if Christian Spirituality is what I think it is, then my inability to elucidate its essence in words is a worrying sign that I have not experienced it. However the fact that I made a statement like that shows an assumption about Christian Spirituality already -that it must be experienced. It therefore cannot be a theoretical construct or an abstract notion.
One thing for sure – I understand one part of the phrase. At least I am a Christian. The question then remains if I am, at the same time, spiritual. However, if my memory of “Theological Foundations I” serves me well, then I am both a physical and a spiritual being. Theologians, of course, differ on whether we are primarily physical and secondarily spiritual, or primarily spiritual and secondarily physical. That, I suppose, is a moot point. We will never really know, will we? The bible doesn’t dichotomize this clearly, if it does at all.
So what is spirituality, in the context of being a Christian?
It must first start with an awareness – an awareness of our duality that exists in a non-exclusivity. This duality refers to our being – whilst we interact primarily and most easily and conveniently with the physical world through our senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste; the other aspect of our being interacts with varying degrees of ease and comfort with the more intangible and invisible world of emotions, thoughts and attitudes. These two aspects of our being are inseparable and they ought to be brought to involvement with the other awareness that is brought to mind.
This other awareness is that of the Trinity Who exists in a community. Because the Triune God exists within an eternal loving relationship (after all, who did He love before there was anyone to love?), this serves as the basis for our interaction with Him. Spirituality therefore involves interacting with God both with our physical senses, as well as with our intangible side (the soul or the spirit). It no longer exists as a theoretical construct, but becomes exceedingly real and engaging in its expression - whether it is an expression of love or a tussle of will.
However this one-on-one engagement between man and God spills over to an engagement between man and man. Because God does not exist as a singular entity within Himself but is continually in relationship within the Triune Godhead, man therefore, as a truly spiritual person, cannot exist as a singular entity if he is created in Imago Dei. He realizes then that he is created for relationship - with his Creator and with the creation.
Christian Spirituality then is intensely personal (an ongoing dialogue with the Creator) as well as expressively communal (an ongoing dialogue with the creation).
However, before this descends dangerously towards the realm of New Age Spirituality where all is God, let me qualify that Christian Spirituality must then be rooted in the Person of Jesus Christ and having its foundation and expressions firmly grounded in the Word.
Contemplation and expression are two characteristics of Christian Spirituality. Without contemplation, expression becomes haphazard and directionless. Without expression, contemplation becomes insular and meaningless. Christian spirituality thus involves a great deal of effort to maintain a balance between these two.
Perhaps it is not enough to attain balance as much as it is important to have contemplation and expression in a continuous cycle – by this I mean that contemplation leads to expression which requires re-contemplation of the expression which in turns leads to a renewed and reviewed re-expression, and so on. Before this degenerates into mere rhetoric, I think it simply means we have to think about what we do, and do after we think.
For this to happen, I believe there is a need to actively carve time out of our busy rushing schedules. Taking time out, wasting time with God and with each other, is rare and difficult to do but thoroughly and absolutely essential. A deliberate slowing down in order to speed up later, is therefore a spiritual discipline that defines the depth and breadth of one’s Christian Spirituality. Having eternity in our hearts is as important as the reality of the finiteness of time.
It has been a convoluted few pages worth of contemplation about Christian Spirituality. I hope in the course of this module, for which time has been deliberately proportioned out of the normal schedule, a deepened understanding of Christian Spirituality learned will translate to a heightened expression of lived out Spirituality – both in relation to the Creator as well as with His creation.
And all this in His good time.
