A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

Being alive is a complicated business. Each of us has a ‘public life’ which is what the world sees of us, and a ‘private inner life’ which nobody sees apart from ourselves. Beyond then both is a ‘hidden life’, a dimension of life over which we have no conscious control, but that we sometimes glimpse and which will both surprise & enrich us, if we are willing to be open to trusting it..

As an example I share a personal story from many years ago, described from those three dimensions.

Public life

An observer might one Saturday autumn morning have noticed a man walking across a stretch of grass by some flats. A young boy is crossing the same stretch of grass but from the opposite direction. The two meet in the middle & there is a brief exchange before they each continue walking …. away from each other.

Personal life

I am the man and I was feeling down, for reasons I no longer recall, and as I walked I was kicking through the autumn leaves lying on the grass. A young boy, whom I did not know, approached me from the opposite direction. He greeted me by name & offered me a crisp from the packet from which he was eating. I noticed that they were ‘salt and vinegar’ flavoured crisps that I dont much like. But it felt ungracious to refuse the boy’s offer so I thanked him, took one and ate it. We both continued our walk. I suddenly was aware that my sense of gloom had disappeared to be replaced with one of joy and hope.

Hidden life

The reason that I remember the incident so clearly, over fifty years later, is that it spoke deep wisdom to me at the time and still does.

I was feeling down because a small cloud had come between me and God, obscuring God’s love. The boy calling me by name & his kindness in offering me one of his crisps had lifted that small cloud so that I once again knew God’s love. But it required the indwelling God in me to have the grace to accept the boy’s gift that I could so easily have refused. I intuitively knew almost immediately that the boy was an angel [aka ‘a messenger from God’] and that through him God was assuring me of God’s love. 

I continue to feel down from time to time as everybody does. But sometimes an ‘angel’ crosses my path with an unexpected gift that I am sometimes pleased to receive and sometimes not so much, but if I accept it, may restore my hope and optimism about life, and remind me of a God Who loves me unconditionally, whatever my mood might be.

Spirituality is nurtured by my being aware of and open to this hidden dimension to life. Indeed once I’ve experienced it and if I’m willing to trust it, then I’ve learnt to recognise it more often in all manner of different ways. As one might expect of a God Who in the Bible seems willing to speak to people through almost anything if they’re open to hear it. For me it’s become the most significant and meaningful dimension to life. Not that the other dimensions are unimportant, but they are less so. It’s the dimension that brings meaning such that my life has become a pilgrimage.