"Spirituality and the Sea"

A definition of religion in many dictionaries says religion is a belief in a supreme being and a faith and practices related to this. But – this definition isn’t accurate because there are religions that do not believe in a god or gods. Similarly, some critics of religion say it exists because people fear death – but here again, some religions do not deal with any kind of afterlife.

I personally would expand even a limited definition of religion to include the notion that religion is a set of beliefs and actions that gives meaning and purpose to life and provide for modes of behavior on how one should live her or his life. In other words, religion can provide the mechanism for how one should relate with the world around them.

I also believe that an essential part of any religion is its spirituality. To be sure, not every religion, nor many supposedly religious people actively pursue their own spirituality, but I believe that a lack of spirituality can be detrimental to one's own being.

In recent times the word spirituality has been co-opted as a descriptive word in situations that are seemingly far from religious............. or are they? We hear people describing a good meal as a "spiritual experience". We hear people referring to a walk in the woods as spiritual. We talk of "New Age Spirituality". Some years ago a New York Times article described Unitarian Universalists as having a new "spiritualism." Actually, spiritual and spirituality have similar meanings but spiritualism is related to communication with dead people.

To me, the word spiritual includes the idea of relationship with the mystery and interconnectedness of ourselves with each other, with life, and with our universe. To some, spirituality also includes relationship with the divine or the sacred in some manner. (And some of us see the sacred in each other, in life, and in the universe as a whole.)

How each person experiences the spiritual is different. What may be spiritual to one person is not to another and vice versa. The spiritual is all around us in each and every day. We need only slow down our hectic pace and reach out a little to experience it. I think this is particularly true here on Cape Cod.

A fine painting may have specific and technical words that describe it, but the thing that captures the imagination, the heart, and the emotion of the viewer is the spiritual. Similarly, music may have form and content and may take great skill to perform, but when music generates intense feelings of awe and captures the soul, it is spiritual in nature.

Human beings exist in three dimensions: body, mind and spirit. To be healthy and happy we need to have a balance between these three. Body refers, of course, to our physical being. We all need to take care of our bodies as best we can. How we do this and our ability to do this will change throughout our lifetime but we need to do this. We all know the basic secrets of physical health – diet, exercise and seeing medical professionals on a regular basis.

Mind refers to several things and it too changes throughout our life. It refers to challenging our minds through education – which can and should be a lifelong pursuit. It refers to our occupation, our hobbies, our pursuit of the arts which can take many forms and many activities. It also refers to some extent to the material, a safe home that gives us pleasure and to financial security.

Finally – there is our spiritual dimension which is our connection with other, defined in so many ways by religions, by philosophers, sages and seers, by poets and by ourselves. Our spiritual dimension like the other two will change throughout our life and it is important to realize that body, mind and spirit are not equal components.

An 18-year-old is most often consumed by the aspects of the body while middle age people may focus mostly on their mind. Our spiritual dimension may become more important as we go older but not necessarily. It can be important in younger people as well. Our spiritual dimension may be defined by a religion or philosophy. Religious people can be spiritual but many, if not most are not. Remember, religion is defined by beliefs, faith and practices. As an example: a person who regularly attends church may be considered religious but if in their day to day life they are inconsiderate, quick to anger and seldom helps others they cannot be considered spiritual because care, concern and compassion are spiritual by their very nature.

To be happy, every person must find a balance between these three aspects of our being. Our world is filled with people who do not do this. Failure to address the aspects of our bodies can lead to ill health and most definitely this will make us unhappy. A person who focuses only on their body but not their mind or spirit will eventually be unhappy particularly as their bodies age and their youthful looks disappear. (Think of the TV advertisement when a person references their aging and say, “I’m fighting every step of the way. Really? Are they going to win?)

And a person who never focuses on their mind – on their occupation, on hobbies, on challenging their thoughts and ideas, on having a home and financial security, on finding meaningful things to do in retirement. These people will have great difficulty being happy.

And interestingly, a person who only focuses on their spiritual side will also never be happy because they too will ultimately suffer from ill health and have no sense of satisfaction in the pursuits of the mind. Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha discovered this. When he left behind the riches and the power of his previous life, he sought enlightenment by only focusing on his spiritual dimension through extreme fasting and meditation. He almost starved himself to death. This brought him nowhere and he finally realized the extremes of overindulgence and absolute physical and mental sacrifice will never lead to spiritual enlightenment. One must strike a balance.

The problem is that when a person does not find their own balance or ignores these aspects of their being, they can never find real happiness. Think of someone who focuses only on the material and financial aspects of their life but ignores the spiritual. They will sense a certain emptiness inside. Something is missing but they probably don’t know what. So, what do many do? They buy more and more things or they pursue more and more wealth. This may temporarily make them happy But what ultimately happens? The sense of emptiness does not go away.

How a person balances these three aspects of their being will vary based on the individual. There is no one right way. Unfortunately, the component most people seem to have trouble finding is their spiritual dimension. It’s true, some people can find it in their religion but there are so many more ways to experience it and make it a part of oneself.

A walk along the beach, a sunrise, the beauty of a waterfall hidden amid a dense forest, the joy of new life; all these things can evoke the spiritual. They cause us to transcend ourselves and to transcend the moment. They force us to connect with the world and with the universe. They bring forth the sacred aspect of our human existence.

People are constantly asking me if my many years at sea influenced my religious journey and my spirituality. The answer is yes: profoundly so. I have experienced a transcendent mystery, an awe and a power on many occasions at sea.

There have been times when I have stood alone on the bridgewing of a ship a thousand miles from any human shorebound soul and watched with awe as the sun disappeared over a distant horizon in a red blaze of glory while the veil of night revealed a starbound sky with thousands of stars stretching from horizon to horizon. It was as though my world teetered on the edge of forever.

I have watched with awe and even sometimes fear as an angry ocean tossed even my huge ship about as though it were merely a small toy boat. In all these experiences, I have been constantly reminded of the fragility of my existence and of the sacredness of the earth and the cosmos which shines boldly bright in the darkness of an ocean night.

Such transcending thoughts have made me a deeply spiritual person. I can no longer live in a day-to-day moment without contextualizing that moment as part of a greater whole.

During my training for ministry, I worked as a chaplain in a major Washington D.C. hospital. I was assigned to the Oncology (cancer) floor and to the Cardiac Care Unit. It is difficult to describe briefly how profound that experience was, but I think the single biggest lesson that I learned was related to the importance of spirituality.

My assignments to Oncology and Cardiac Care placed me on a daily basis with people and with families who were experiencing serious illness and those who were dying. What I found was that people who possessed a strong spiritual dimension in their life seemed better able to deal with the seriousness of their situation.

In cases where people had no sense of spirituality, I encountered hostility, anger, and fear in nearly every case. I make no judgment about this, it is simply what I observed.

Another important lesson that I learned during my work in the hospital was about developing one's spirituality. Based on my studies during my education and training in counseling, I had assumed that most people in a serious illness or dying situation would begin to develop spirituality and to tackle some of the large and profound questions in life if they had not already done so. I found this assumption to be completely wrong.

As nurses pointed out to me again and again, people approach illness and death in the same manner that they have lived their life. If they have incorporated spirituality in their life, it will become a part of their illness and dying process. Conversely, if a person has never been a spiritual person, they are very unlikely to become so during an illness.

One nurse explained it this way. She said, "if you have been jogging your whole life and at age sixty someone says, let's go out and jog through the park, then this will be a simple matter for you. But if you have never run a day in your life and then at age sixty someone says, "let's go out and jog through the park, you will have a great deal of difficulty even trying to jog.

"Spirituality is the same thing she said. If you have never developed your own spirituality during your life, it will become more and more difficult to develop it as life goes on, particularly in a crisis situation.

In a real way, developing a strong spirituality can help each of us cope with the pain and suffering of life. It can also help us to cope with the reality of death. It can help us find meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.

The fact that people in our culture often have trouble understanding and developing spirituality is due in large part to our western and Greek dominated way of thinking. Since the eighteenth century "Age of Enlightenment" and the rise of Science, reason and rationalism have come to dominate our culture's thinking. (Unitarian Universalism arose in large part due to his phenomenon).

The tragedy is that in the process of promoting reason and rationalism, we have sacrificed the intangible, so much so that some people suggest that if something cannot be empirically described, it has no essential value. Spirituality fits into this realm.

It seems clear that by bringing meaning into life and by instilling a sense of purpose and awe in our individual lives, we can be better able to understand that we are indeed part of an interconnected and interdependent web of all existence. This is what developing one's own spirituality can do. It is the intangible feeling, the awe, the mystery that provides a person with a sense of worldly and cosmic connection. This is the spiritual component.

And this is where Cape Cod comes in. Simply put, this is a spiritual place. The National Seashore, the numerous parks and historical sites and so much more. They all offer paths to the sacred but we must spend time in them to appreciate them. Think of why you chose to live here in the first place. Perhaps you did not realize in your love of Cape Cod, you were accessing your spiritual dimension.

But how often, do you now take advantage of this? Spending time in the natural settings of Cape Cod can grow your spiritual dimension if you pay attention to your surroundings. And if you are unable to physically spend time on the beaches and in the parks, you can still access them. YouTube is filled with Cape Cod videos that transport you to the magic and mystery of the Cape and they will evoke memories of when you spent time in these places in the past.

As I mentioned earlier, each human being is likely to develop and to understand spirituality in a unique way. There is no one right way. I am reminded here of the Hindu notion of yoga.

Hindu's believe that the ultimate purpose of life is to seek enlightenment which can be described as a kind of ultimate spirituality: a realization that all things, all people, and the universe itself are truly one cosmic reality. (The interconnected web!)

Hindus recognize that human beings are different from each other and they, therefore, suggest that there are different paths to take in order to find the spiritual and to ultimately find enlightenment. These different paths are called yogas.

There are yogas of action, yogas of love, yogas of intellect, and many other yogas which are designed to fit a specific individual. No one yoga is considered better or more effective than another. What yoga is right for a given person depends upon the individual. Similarly, developing one's spirituality must be a personal activity.

I believe passionately that each person must strive in his or her own unique way to seek and to develop their own spirituality. I believe that spirituality is so essential to one's own balance in life and to finding joy, happiness, and peace that I believe that it deserves priority in everyone's day to day activities. And I submit that finding the spiritual is hiding in plain sight right here on Cape Cod.

Too often we put off things that seem to have intangible returns, like developing spirituality. "Oh I'll work on that when I have more time", we sometimes say. But I submit that developing spirituality is too critical to put off to a future time, and indeed, that future time may never come.

With effort and practice in a variety of forms, each of use can develop our deeply spiritual side. It exists, in different ways, in all of us. By engaging this part of our humanness, I believe that we can each find new meaning and purpose in life.

We can also learn to place our own triumphs and tragedies in the context of a greater interconnectedness with other people and with the universe around us. In so doing, we can gain new reverence for the sacredness and the mystery of life. Such understanding can bring us to profound new insights and to a special kind of joy and happiness. It can connect us deeply to that which we find to be sacred and holy.

Reverend Christopher J. McMahon

UUMH

July 2024