Yesterday I went to a day of recollection for priests. It was good to get away and be able to pray and reflect a little. It's a pain to be behind in returning phone calls for a couple of days, but I'm still glad I went.
The presenter was a professor of spirituality. So someone asked him for a definition of it, to tell us what "spirituality" is. I like what he said:
"Whatever you do with your dis-ease, that's your spirituality."
Everyone has a longing heart, a basic experience of incompleteness. We experience ourselves as what Johann Baptist Metz called a "transcendental neediness." Whatever you turn to in that experience, whether it be anxiety, depression, despair, drugs, sugar, video games, alcohol, overwork, abusing others, pornography, sitcoms, celebrity gossip, or maybe even prayer, self-sacrifice, caring for others, humor, or God, that's what's called your spirituality. Some are healthy, some are destructive, and most are some mix of both.
1 comment:
I used to fill the void with art, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside, unfortunately. I occassionally fill it with video games, which is a less the ideal way of doing so.
Lately taking the dogs to the park has been one solution, and a rather positive one methinks, except for the driving and gas.
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