Just before our weekly meeting last Thursday, I met a man at Mirabai Books in Woodstock, New York, who told me that he had searched restlessly through a half a dozen different spiritual traditions over the past few years, but without the sense that he was getting any closer to finding what he was looking for. "Have you considered the possibility that this searching is what you are looking for?" I asked him. I wasn't sure he'd understood what I was getting at, but after that he decided to join us for dinner at the cafe next door, and it wouldn't suprise me at all if he became a regular member of our weekly group.
That's exactly how it happens. You meet someone who's searching that profoundly for answers, and it's just a matter of time before it occurs to them that seaching is the answer. The problem is, until very recently, there haven't been spiritual communities who would support you in that search--or even permit it. And so, ironically, the spiritual journey has tended to lead seekers away from that seeking spirit, rather than toward it. Church isn't a good place for the seeker. It's hard to get on with the spiritual jourey when you're stuck listening to a sermon in a pew.
At our weekly meetings over the past ten years, we've gradually developed a model we call i-Religion--little "i," big "R". i-Religion takes the world's religious very seriously (hence the big "R"), but it prefaces them with one small but very decisive provision: we get to "download what we like and use it as we will." That's the little "i" part. It could stand for "individual," or it could stand for "Internet," but in either case it means the freedom to look for--and to find--those aspects of religious teachings which are life-enhancing or life-affirming, and leave the rest behind. For instance, one of our members is a dedicated rosary practitioner, but she feels no inclination whatsoever to defend the Catholic church against charges of abuse.
i-Religionists aren't interested in the "Whole CD" approach to religious affiliation which requires everyone to have the same creed, the same custons, the same practices, the same dogma...in short, the same "songs." If personal happiness and individual freedom are the price of religious community, we don't want it. But that doesn't mean we don't want spiritual community. We do. That's why we have evolved a format that allows us to come together weekly to share our insights gleaned along the way, to support one another in our seeking, and to find a way to be at peace together...even in the midst of the "restlessness" that defines our modern lives.
That is i-Religion. And over the coming year, I'll offer weekly reflections on how to "practice" it. Most of those reflections will concern traditional spiritual practices, unpacked and unpackaged for an age of religious plurality. Looking forward to it!
