I couldn’t have said it any better, and the whole entry was so good that I couldn’t just snip a sentence out of it. Kurt has been exploring the role writing has in his life:
I regard writing not just as personal expression but as practice, as another tool in the small kit I bring with me to the spiritual search. This search is most easily characterized by a desire to get beyond mere belief to knowledge, and this in turn requires that I be fully open to each moment, prepared to learn whatever it has to teach me, without preconceptions or dogma. Writing, by its nature, is interpretive. If the fruit of religious practice is a sense of the sublime, then writing about it is essentially reductive. At its most absurd, it is an attempt to contain the uncontainable, to cage the wild animal. How is Mystery served by doing this?
On the other hand, not to make the interpretive attempt is not really an option. The expressive impulse is part of human nature, which includes the need to communicate — to think symbolically, to be conscious, to share with others. We are a social animal. Sealing off the dimension of the numinous from such a basic instinct is impossible. We are meaning makers at heart, and the attempt to share wisdom must be made.
People who write — who need to put words to paper or screen as consistently as they need to breathe — are in effect using a spiritual practice. I believe the word “spiritual” applies even to those who reject or don’t acknowledge the concepts of god and religion, because one definition of spiritual is of or pertaining to the intellectual and higher endowments of the mind; mental; intellectual. I clarify this point so as to be inclusive to readers who do not ascribe to religious beliefs.
Hey, man, I don’t know about all that introspective questioning, just put the writing out there. But Kathryn, I deeply appreciate your statement about spirituality. Religions would like to describe it according to their definitions; but in the end, each person has to establish their own relation to self, others and the larger universe. A tough assignment.
“one definition of spiritual is of or pertaining to the intellectual and higher endowments of the mind; mental; intellectual.”
I think there must be more to it than that, Kathryn. One who obsessively completes crosswords, might be scribbling on the newspad with a need as consistent as the need to breathe, and also be engaging in an activity which fits the above definition. But is it *really* spiritual? At what point does the term ‘spiritual’ lose its potency? When it involves nothing more than rigorous mental exercises, I’d like to suggest the meaning might be growing a little thin.
Well, that was one definition from the dictionary, so I included it. Though I chose not to interpret it, for me it alludes to philosophy, to thought that focuses on existential issues, and to scientific exploration — actually exploration of any kind. As for what is really spiritual, I’ll leave that up to the reader. I’m not taking a position to judge what is spiritual for another; it’s really not a topic I’m interested in debating. My point was that spiritual need not be equated with religious.