Spiritual Ambivalence

Rev. Nell Newton
August 2, 2015

We’ll sing that we need to “Do when the Spirit says Do,” but what about all those other moments in life when spirit or Spirit is not a big factor in our decision making or dinner making? This Sunday we’ll take a short tour of the history of our concept of “spirit” and examine the ambivalent ways that spirit might move or remain inert in our daily living.

Sermon: Spiritual Ambivalence

Spiritual Ambivalence… How’s that for a provocative sermon title? As I remember it, I had previously committed to writing about spirituality and there was a newsletter deadline looming but I was feeling tired or cranky, and groused to a colleague that at that moment I didn’t really care one way or the other about Spirituality. “Oh, so you’re experiencing Spiritual Ambivalence?” he asked. And really that was a better title than something like “Spiritual Indifference” or “Spiritual Apathy” because those sermons would get too grim too quickly. So let’s give thanks that he offered Ambivalence.

Valence has several different usages, all rooted back to the same Latin root as “value”. Ambivalence has both antique and contemporary uses. The “ambi” refers to being able to go in at least two different directions. So being ambivalent don’t mean simply not really caring one way or the other, it’s more about being able to consider the value of two different things or ideas. So, as I talk about Ambivalence, it’s not to say that I don’t really have much interest in something, it’s that I am willing to consider the value, the upside and downsides of multiple competing, and exclusive ideas.

So, what am I ambivalent over? Spirit. Spiritual. Eternal and everlasting spirit. Soul. Unseen and unmeasurable. Maybe that spark of the divine that animates us and connects us to something. And, when it comes time to really consider the concept, I wind up ambivalent. I suppose, compared to some folks, I’m a fairly spiritual person. At times it seems like a very important aspect of my life, well worth placing at the center of things. But other times, I really figure that my spirit probably knows what it’s up to and to just to trust that it’s fine wherever it is or isn’t without my mind trying to micro-manage and scrutinize and fuss over what or where or if spirit is a valid construct to work with.

So what do I mean when I’m talking about “spirit”? We’ve all heard the term and we probably share some common assumptions of what we all mean with the concept. The word we use is rooted in the Latin for “breath”, but the concept itself needs a little unpacking.

The concepts of spirit go back well before Socrates and Plato, but we’ll start with the Greek’s take on an unseen human soul and the notion of a world of the eternal spirit – separate from the physical world. Plato was explicit in his dualism – the body is of the physical world, material, and finite, while the soul is on loan from the unseen spirit world, to which it returns upon death to face judgment. So, according to Plato, in one person is the temporary flesh and the eternal spirit. And, as he saw it, education involved coming to recognize that the spirit was superior to the flesh and that this fleshy life should be spent preparing the soul for its eternal destiny.

Yes. If all that sounds familiar, Jesus and his followers picked up that construct, merged it with some of the Jewish theology and ran with it – partly to make their ideas easier for the average Greek to recognize and adopt. Because, thanks to Alexander the Great, common Greek was the lingua franca of the early Christian era, so if you wanted to spread the word you did it in Greek.

Now, to contrast Plato’s notion of spirit, we should look at another Greek who came along shortly after Plato. Epicurus modified the whole dualistic view of humans and took the stance that flesh AND soul were physical and both ended with death – and both body and soul dissolved back into nothingness upon death. Life was for living; it wasn’t just a preamble to eternity.

It was this dissolving into nothingness that fit nicely with the atomic theory of the philosopher Democritus. He was the first who theorized that all things are made up of tiny particles that bounce around temporarily forming things, disintegrating, and reforming things. When you mashed together Democritus and Epicurus, you wind up with a universe where humans are merely a chance collection of atoms, destined to arrange, dissolve, and rearrange. Because human life and souls were temporary, Epicurus felt that reason should be used to live well and lie low and not draw too much stress into one’s life. It wasn’t so much that he felt you should eat dessert first, but he would have recommended that you avoid politics and heated arguments that could turn nasty.

Perhaps folks didn’t like the idea of dissolving into nothingness, or perhaps the Christians really got some traction with their emphasis on souls, but either way, we all have a shared understanding of spirit and/or soul and it generally is understood to be ongoing, eternal, not-of-this world. We’ve all heard of your everlasting soul, and some of us have even picked up on the Hindu notion of a soul that is reincarnated over and over before finally being reunited with the eternal. But very few of us have a common, shared idea of soul or spirit as something compostable, something that might degrade and have its bits rearranged. And Epicurus is now known more for his appreciation of a good meal rather than for his finite soul.

Is it ego or the love of self that makes us prefer the idea that some part of us will go on indefinitely? Perhaps. In any case, one version of “spirit” is more popular, than the other. When people say they don’t really believe in souls, they typically are referring to Plato’s and not Epicurus’.

And plenty of folks have rejected Plato’s separate, unseen, and eternal version of soul. Because why would a universe have two sets of books with two sets of physics- one for the material and physical and one unseen and unmeasurable? Just to keep us on our toes? That’s the kind confounding that prompts some of us to just quit worrying about spirit, souls, and anything else that is unmeasurable. It’s hard to fix dinner while contemplating the eternal. Water gets burnt that way. It’s just easier to get like Epicurus and focus on the living of the here and now and live fully and well. Avoid politics and loud arguments. Just fix a nice simple supper and eat it slowly and with appreciation for the way your body takes those atoms and rearranges them into energy and tenderness.

But, perhaps you have had a moment where you could sense the largeness and interconnectedness of all things. Maybe you’ve had a sense of transcendence – that which transcends time and body and even the laws of physics. Those are the moments when the spirit seems to be saying Pay Attention. And when the spirit says “do”…. It’s hard to ignore such a commandment.

So where does that leave us? Well… if you’re ambivalent, or uncertain which approach to follow, let me assure you that it’s okay. Our religious tradition doesn’t insist on a belief in an unseen soul or eternal spirit, and even when we do recognize a soul or spirit, we aren’t asked to make it the most important part of ourselves. We’re cool with bodies here. Some of my best friends have bodies…

I’ll even offer that this ambivalence towards spirit is actually a legitimate theological response, steeped in history, and reflective of our values.

If we are ambivalent on spirit, it’s because we refuse to be certain. We know that with certainty comes complacency and a tendency to be smug. When it comes to the most vital details, like if we have an eternal soul or are simply a random collection of atoms, we’d rather be uncertain and open to see new truths, than to be stubbornly fixed and unresponsive. If we are ambivalent, it means that we feel that revelation is not sealed, it is ongoing.

Can you see how that is a different theology from one that tells us that everything is fixed and predetermined? We’d rather have a messy uncertainty that might bring us to something new than a certainty that will keep us pinned in place, unable to respond to change.

To wrap all this up, what is my advice to the Spiritually Ambivalent and those of us who tend more towards certainty?

Well if you truly don’t hold with notion of soul or spirit, please know that you have plenty of company. But I would invite you to do some honest examination of what you’ve thought about spirit, spirituality, soul, and anything eternal, and figure out where you learned to think like that, and be able to state clearly what it is that you might be uninterested in.

And, if you’ve had a sense of soul, a presence of spirit, here’s what I’ll invite you to consider: look at what you know verrrry closely. Are you keeping the idea of an eternal spirit as simply an extension of the self through eternity, or are you willing to consider that it might follow the same laws as atoms and redistribute over time? What if the soul is not about the self, not about your acts or actions, not about judgement, but entirely about your letting go and reuniting with the All That Is? What I’m asking you to consider is a totally non-self version of spirit. No ego, no personality, no person at all. Quite simply, what if it is a spark of the divine that is returned to the source when you’re done with it? That follows closer to the laws of physics AND the teachings of the mystics.

This is a tough order because really, right now we’re pretty busy just living and learning and loving and leaving in these bodies. It’s a full-time job – this being alive. So, it’s hard to think about not being alive, even if it is trying to contemplate something eternal.

But, perhaps after you’ve had a simple supper, you can reflect on the eternal Now of a life well-lived.

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