Spirituality and Religion - not a good idea to confuse them. Spirituality is about meaning and purpose,  It’s not about what name we use for God - or even what we mean when we say ‘God’.

Jon Sobrino, the Latin American Jesuit priest and liberation theologian, defines spirituality as ‘profound motivation’. So it’s about values, about the passions that drive us and make us who we are.

Religions are the ways human beings have tried to explore and express all that - the questions they’ve asked, the mysteries they’ve tried to resolve. Often, they found that the only way they could express their insights was to tell stories - so they developed powerfully truth-filled mythologies about how the world came to be, why bad things happen to good people, what’s the point of being good in the first place, and much more besides.

Mulit-faith Spirituality in Kensington

I’ve only ever been to the Albert Hall once - for the performance of a children’s musical I’d been commissioned to write for the Schools Prom. I found myself reflecting on the layout of the building - a massive circular structure with a number of entrance lobbies leading into a central arena. What a loss it would be to mistake the entrance for the arena and never experience that great domed structure with its architecture and artwork!

And yet, that’s what we religious folk too easily do. We enter one of the entrance lobbies of Spirituality - maybe the one marked ‘Christian’ or labelled with the name of another world faith, and we stop there thinking we’ve found spirituality. But spirituality is further on through a second  door - religion was just the way in.

My entrance to spirituality was through Christianity - and I still spend a lot of my time there because it’s valuable to me. It’s given me insights and inspiration that are unique to this particular lobby. But it’s not the end of my search.

Sometimes I get the chance to go through into the arena beyond that is Spirituality - and I find myself in the company of Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Pagans, Humanists and so many more who have come in by different routes but have also been able to get beyond the limitations of their lobby into this great multi-coloured arena. And together we share the awe of learning not only each other’s insights and experiences but something infinitely greater than the sum of them.

Many times, I’ll return to my particular entrance lobby - especially when I’m wrestling with issues about pain and the evil that befalls wonderful, undeserving people. Then I find the Christian lobby which I know so well to be particularly inspirational.

I also love it because it connects me with who I am - it is inscribed with my personal story, with my family history, the memories of my parents, sister, son and countless other lovely people - so much that has shaped me and still speaks to me of who I am and why. I love it because so much of me is rooted there.

Perhaps that is why I become angry when others spoil it for me - when the lobby seems to be full of people with loud voices, stridently declaring that the lobby is the true temple of spirituality and that no one should dare venture beyond into the arena - the arena that I also love and where other parts of me are also rooted.

Maybe that’s enough for me to write for now - hopefully it gives some sort of flavour of my spirituality, and maybe I’ll write more another time.