After a couple of references to Christianity in previous posts, I thought it only fair to share what I mean by Spirit in this blog and explore my own background and current attitude toward spirituality. I grew up in the deep south, and I have a lot of memories of going to church, of ministers coming to lunch, my grandfather sitting with a Bible in his lap, and singing where acapella voices wove in and out, and of my grandfather teaching me to sing with the shaped notes.
I remember tables loaded with food outside on special Sundays – “dinner on the ground” as it was called. In my memory there has been no better food since then. This was basically a fundamentalist church as it is called today. What I remember is that the people tried to follow the precepts and live by them. There was also a great deal of pragmatic acceptance that bad and good things happened to bad and good people.
I do remember being surrounded by a great deal of love and security in this atmosphere though I realize in the same area bad things were happening to people. That is my background. While I have changed my denomination and faith perspective over the years, I have never lost the respect and love I have for the people and those times. It is always a joy to visit and attend the same church my grandparents and other family members attended and feel that sense of homecoming. At the same time, I see the changes that the current times have made there. It is part of aging to want to share stories from the past. I wish that I had listened to my grandmother’s stories more carefully. All of those stories added together is part of who we are.
One of my clearest memories of childhood is sitting at my aunt’s dining table one evening where a circle of women worked stitching together newspapers, cotton batting, and clean white sheets into big rectangular pads. They were called cancer pads. My cousin and I were given one to stitch. The stitching didn’t have to be perfect. It had to hold the pieces together. The memory has remained there in my mind. The details and understanding of why we were doing that were vague, so I did a little research. I thought it might jab the memories of others my age and be a point of interest to younger readers – especially those in the healthcare industry – to a transitional time in the past.
This was in the mid to late 1950s. It was during a time when medical supply companies had not begun to manufacture disposable medical supplies, especially things to be sent or used at home by patients. It was a time when radical surgeries were being used for cancer patients. Chemo and radiation weren’t a common treatment. Because of draining incisions, pads were needed in hospitals and home care. The American Red Cross and the Cancer Society helped organize groups in rural areas and other areas to help with the need. There were some differences in materials, but as I remember so vividly one method was to take a page of newspaper, a matching piece of cotton batting, and an equal size of clean white cotton sheet and stitch them together – similar to making a quilt but less attractive.
I was probably around eight years old at the time and never really understood why we were doing this other than “to help cancer patients”. When I googled the background, Google was as interested in preserving my experience as in sharing the conditions and need of the times – an interesting juxtaposition of the past and the present.
It was thought that newspapers had a certain sterile quality because of the intense heat in the printing process. Being porous the newspaper did help absorb and contain moisture. So…a snapshot in time over health care in a not so distant past.
Exploring my spirituality is delving into a lifetime of living and developing my own sense of my internal center. For some readers here spirituality may not have had such a strong focus in your young years. For others it may not be oriented around church; but still, you have it. Others may be rejecting or neglecting that part of themselves right now through cynicism or disappointment in life. To begin with, I am Christian and have been all my life. On the other hand, I truly believe there are many different paths up the mountain that leads to God. That may be an un-Christian view. It is mine. I have read of and studied different religions. I have respect for all.
I have an interest in Buddhism. I think it contains a lot of wisdom and good practice. While being considered a world religion, it is not theistic. It is more of a philosophy. Many of us were exposed to some of this when the monks made their walk from Texas to Washington this past winter. They came right through my town and spoke. It was amazing how many people stood in sleet to hear and see them. It was not one sort of person, or demographic. It was a complete cross section of the community from what I could tell by moving through the crowd. It exposed a deep hunger in people, and the monks were met with respect and interest throughout their journey.
I seem to be thinking of less recent books while writing these posts. What comes to mind now is Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris. Toward the end and after exploring religions and spirituality, she commented that it was a relief not having to reinvent herself or create a brand-new identity. She reclaimed her Protestant Christian religion. I’m not saying this is for everyone. I’m saying our spirituality should be authentic to us. If there is anywhere, we are known for ourselves, I think it would be in our communication with God.
I think exploring, questioning, and understanding others’ heart-felt study brings us to a better understanding of our own. I think understanding where we are with ours makes us stronger. Ultimately, I do think there is a lot of man input into religions, but faith and spirituality are deeply intrinsic to who we are as individuals and communities. I am not discounting church, synagogue, or temple and their teachings as much as trying to express that through life and aging we develop our own inner core of spirit and what it means to us and how we express it. It goes with us into that final goodbye.
It is this later kind of spirituality that is mostly what I mean in the context of this blog. After all, what is innate and deeply held is what is part of our minds and bodies. It might be an interesting exercise for you to write your own expression of your spiritual understanding. An example of what I mean might be how I thought about prayer or meditation. My perception on this is that prayer is an opportunity to give thanks for blessings and ask for help. There isn’t much quiet in the prayers I hear. They are “busy” – almost like a speech to God. I think personal ones said in private carry more heart. I see meditation as a chance to listen, to seek the quiet, to be able to recognize an answer. Churches often refer to Centering Prayer. This is a kind of prayerful listening or a focus on a word. For me either one, prayer or meditation is a centering that brings me back to a place within myself of wholeness, peace and authenticity. Life is chaotic. It can take us away from that center.
Either way, I believe both benefit the Mind and the Body. I can tell you from wearing a heartbeat monitor that my heartbeat rate often drops steadily when meditating. Exposure to nature and time spent in the woods and forests have been shown to lower blood pressure. These are spiritual yet physical effects that are currently proven and reach back into time.
I referred to a “mangled quote” in a previous post attributed to de Chardin. I tend to believe those words that we “are spiritual beings living a human existence”. That is what Jesus came to do, and he often implied he was a pattern and example to follow. I think the Spirit connection is essential to the Mind and Body. Without it we are just floundering around in a sea of ummm, well, ego maybe.
So, I leave you with unusual memories set in past times and what you might call my personal creed.