Get Your Butt in Gear!

In a recent post, I suggested that those who say they are ’spiritual, but not religious’ really are not saying much. One of the things they might be saying, however, is that they have concerns about trusting the Church with their spiritual growth.

Complaining about ‘organized religion’ is another way of pointing to the signs and tokens and structures marking the trail of our spiritual journey and expressing concern about whether they mark the trail well.

Sometimes our skepticism says more about us than about those signs and tokens. Sometimes the problem is that they direct us to a trail too steep, too narrow, too filled with risks, and so the real problem is that we don’t like or are afraid of the trail itself. The Way of Jesus is tough.

For many, the explanation that they are spiritual but not religious can be reduced to a complaint that the Church is too filled with fallible humans.

But there is no avoiding the messiness of life as the Church. There is no avoiding moments of muddle, no avoiding the disorderly dialectical discourse which is our intrinsically human way of recognizing and performing the good. Tension marks the journeys of the most creative pilgrims.

Religion is not messy because the trail is false but because those en route the summit are human.

Yet sometimes the problem is in fact with the signs and tokens themselves, the rituals and practices others have created to mark the way to our spiritual flourishing. We’re thirsty, but they don’t seem to mark the Living Water.

Wizened old sojourners know that there is no avoiding the brambles, dry spaces, and steep slopes en route the summit. There will be periods of thirst, periods of feeling lost in the wilderness. But sometimes we have to blaze a new trail to the water. Sometimes our rituals and practices need to be cleared of debris.

The mountain abounds with life, causing the trail to shift with time and seasons. The way is often rough, steep, slow, and mystifying. We ought to expect tension and dissonance as we sort which paths are right for our particular contingent in our particular time.

So many of us are at a standstill on the trail because we are waiting. Waiting in the hope that someone will come along to fix the signs, to redirect us by pointing away from the false trails, by showing us the true and reliable paths to the spiritual maturity that God intends for all.

If that’s you, here’s a kick in the butt: there is indeed a waiting that is a listening. But such a waiting is necessarily on the trail, and not off it. It is a ‘blow break,’ a juncture, a catching of the breath while we pause to discern the right direction.

If you need a blow break right now, fine. But not too long. Catch your breath, ask for directions, if needed. Then get your butt in gear, and walk. The summit beckons.

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