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Introduction

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I am spiritual but not religious,” then I might not be any wiser about what that means—but I would be richer. I hear the phrase on the radio. I read it in interviews. People often say it to my face when they learn that I am a religion professor who spent years as a parish priest.

In that context, people are usually trying to tell me that they have a sense of the divine depths of things but they are not churchgoers. They want to grow closer to God, but not at the cost of creeds, confessions, and religious wars large or small. Some of them have resigned from religions they once belonged to, taking what was helpful with them while leaving the rest behind. Others have collected wisdom from the four corners of the world, which they use like cooks with a pantry full of spices. Plenty of them are satisfied, too, even as they confess that they are sometimes lonely.

I think I know what they mean by “religious.” It is the “spiritual” part that is harder to grasp. My guess is they do not use that word in reference to a formal set of beliefs, since that belongs on the religion side of the page. It may be the name for a longing—for more meaning, more feeling, more connection, more life. When I hear people talk about spirituality, that seems to be what they are describing. They know there is more to life than what meets the eye. They have drawn close to this “More” in nature, in love, in art, in grief. They would be happy for someone to teach them how to spend more time in the presence of this deeper reality, but when they visit the places where such knowledge is supposed to be found, they often find the rituals hollow and the language antique.

Even religious people are vulnerable to this longing. Those who belong to communities of faith have acquired a certain patience with what is sometimes called organized religion. They have learned to forgive its shortcomings as they have learned to forgive themselves. They do not expect their institutions to stand in for God, and they are happy to use inherited maps for some of life’s journeys. They do not need to walk off every cliff all by themselves. Yet they too can harbor the sense that there is more to life than they are being shown. Where is the secret hidden? Who has the key to the treasure box of More?

People seem willing to look all over the place for this treasure. They will spend hours launching prayers into the heavens. They will travel halfway around the world to visit a monastery in India or to take part in a mission trip to Belize. The last place most people look is right under their feet, in the everyday activities, accidents, and encounters of their lives. What possible spiritual significance could a trip to the grocery store have? How could something as common as a toothache be a door to greater life?

No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.

Many years ago now, a wise old priest invited me to come speak at his church in Alabama. “What do you want me to talk about?” I asked him.

“Come tell us what is saving your life now,” he answered. It was as if he had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground. I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone. I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church. All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on. All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about it that helped my listeners figure out those same things for themselves.

The answers I gave all those years ago are not the same answers I would give today—that is the beauty of the question—but the principle is the same. What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.

Every chapter in this book is a tentative answer to the question that priest asked me so many years ago. For want of a better word, each focuses on a certain practice—a certain exercise in being human that requires a body as well as a soul. Each helps me live with my longing for More. Each trusts that doing something is at least as valuable as reading books about it, thinking about it, or sitting around talking about it. Who wants to study a menu when you can eat a meal? The chapters do not build on one another in any methodical way. They do not bank on literal truth or promise visible results. Instead, they trust the practices to deliver the wisdom each practitioner needs to know. They trust the body to enlighten the soul.

In a world of too much information about almost everything, bodily practices can provide great relief. To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.

Some of the practices that follow—walking meditation, pilgrimage, fasting, and prayer—have long histories in the religions of the world. Others are so ordinary that their names do not even give them away: eating, singing, bathing, and giving birth. Religion could never have survived without such practices. Even now, purposeful return to these practices has the power to save religions that have just about run out of breath.

If you have run out of breath yourself—or out of faith—then this book is for you. Since it is a field guide and not a curriculum, you may start where you like and end where you like. I have no idea what you will see when you look at your life—but if you are tired of arguing about religion, tired of reading about spirituality, tired of talk-talk-talking about things that matter without doing a single thing that matters yourself, then the pages that follow are dedicated to you. My hope is that reading them will help you see the red X under your feet. To put it another way, my hope is that reading them will help you recognize some of the altars in this world—ordinary-looking places where human beings have met and may continue to meet up with the divine More that they sometimes call God.

Like anyone else, I am limited by my experience. The practices in this book grow from that experience in all its particularity, including my long immersion in the practices of Christian faith. I trust that those practices, like the central practices of all the world’s great faiths, are meant to teach people what it means to be more fully human. Without that confidence, I could not offer them to you. Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it. So welcome to your own priesthood, practiced at the altar of your own life. The good news is that you have everything you need to begin.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Easter Season 2008