No one has kicked my ass, despite the fact that, if you read this blog, it will appear that I haven’t done so.

However, I have started a new blog surrounding some of the things I discussed in my previous post. It’s called Daily Disciplines and it is where I am doing most of my “spiritual” blogging now.

I’ll likely keep this site up and running for some of my more personal and/or introspective stuff, but Daily Disciplines is the main focus for the time being. Please check it out: http://www.dailydisciplines.net.

In that regard, I’ve been thinking a lot about my spirituality. This mostly falls into the “looking toward the year to come” category, but there is some reflection to be had, too.

First, the reflection.

My spiritual practices have been all but non-existent in the past year. One thing that I set out to do at the beginning of 2010 was to read the A Year With Rumi: Daily Readings from beginning to end, one poem a day, as intended. This didn’t happen. I lasted for a few weeks, at best, and then lost the practice.

More recently, I’ve tried to take up the practice of meditation. Again, I did really good for a week or two and then I let it fall by the wayside.

Essentially, I left the discipline out of spiritual discipline.

In the new year, I hope to recover that missing element. I’ve got a few spiritual “goals” in mind, which will require some discipline:

• Reading from A Year With Rumi on a daily basis;
• Reading the entire Bible, following the “Reading the Bible in One Year” guide in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Bible;
• Meditating on a daily basis; and
• Attending church regularly.

The last one shouldn’t be too difficult. I already do this. This weekly discipline is easy for me to fulfill. I already know that I get value out of it. Plus, it’s also a social outing, since I have friends at church who I enjoy seeing on a regular basis (some of them, due to differing schedules, are people whom I only see on Sundays).

The other items on the list require some amount of effort and discipline on my part.

I haven’t been so good at maintaining discipline—spiritual or otherwise—in my life, recently. About the only discipline I maintain is making sure that I get my ass to work everyday. And, honestly, a large part of the reason that I can maintain that discipline is because I have someone else holding me to it (i.e., my boss). If I worked for myself, at this stage in my life, I’m not sure I’d do well.

I would like to be self-employed someday, though, so training myself to be disciplined will be good for me in ways that are practical, as well as in ways that are spiritual.

I’ll be chronicling my efforts with maintaining these disciplines throughout the year—this will, itself, be another discipline to maintain. Despite the research indicating that sharing your goals can make it harder to actually achieve them, I’m hoping that writing these things down and making an effort to share my efforts on a regular basis, I will actually hold to these and other disciplines that I want to begin/maintain throughout 2011.

I’m currently debating whether or not I should create a new blog for this. I have this grand idea in my head of starting one of those “personal development/self-improvement” blogs based on my daily spiritual practices. Making a lot of money off of such a blog would be great, but I have no illusions about that.

I know that it’s an over-saturated niche; I’d be doing it mostly for myself, but also because I truly want to share my experiences and ideas with others.

Somehow, using this blog for that purpose doesn’t seem like the right way of going about it.

This blog, I feel, is more of a personal thing. And it doesn’t just talk about my spiritual disciplines and the things that I learn from them. It talks about going to church. It talks about what I think god might be. It talks about whatever I damn well feel like, to be frank.

It’s less focused than I’d want this new blog I’ve imagined to be.

I’ll let those thoughts stew for a while. In the meantime, I’ll be practicing my disciplines and writing about them—whether here or elsewhere. If you don’t see me writing about these things (or announcing a new blog) within the first week of the New Year, please kick my ass…hard.

Where does religious tolerance end? At what point does someone cross the line where I can no longer respect their beliefs?

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot in recent months.

As a Unitarian, I am supposed to respect the religious beliefs and values of others. The 3rd and 4th principles of my faith talk about this, stating that Unitarian Universalists are to affirm and promote:

• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth [...]; and
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Now, that first one, technically, ends with “[...] in our congregations,” but I think it is fair to extend it beyond just UU congregations. We should at least try to accept all people and to encourage all people to grow spiritually (in whatever way they find meaningful).

But, at what point can I say, “No. I will not respect your beliefs.” At what point can I draw that line?

I believe that the line must be drawn in the sand at some point. I cannot simply say that, as a liberal religious person, I accept any and all beliefs. I do not. I cannot.

If you believe in a personal god who will answer prayers, fine. I don’t, but I won’t disparage your beliefs. This is not the sort of thing that I’m referring to when I talk about drawing a line.

I’m talking about beliefs and values which are hateful. When someone uses religion as an excuse for committing acts of terror, I will draw the line. When someone uses religion as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ people, I will draw the line. When someone uses religion as an excuse to eliminate democracy, to commit murder, or to otherwise commit acts of evil, I will draw the line.

These lines are easy to draw. And, I don’t feel that they are outside of the realm of that 4th prinicple that I mentioned above, affirmation and promotion of  ”A free and responsible (emphasis added) search for truth and meaning.” Using faith and religion as a justification for evil acts means that you are no longer being responsible in your search, and so I am comfortable drawing these lines.

But what about more subtle lines?

What about the church whose members say that homosexuality is a sin but that they hate the sin, not the sinner? Do I have to respect and accept the beliefs of these people? If they are not actively harming anyone with their beliefs, do I have to accept them? Am I violating the principles of my faith if I do not accept them?

Technically, these people are not hurting anyone—not directly or intentionally, at least. But they are being discriminatory. They are claiming that something as inherent to a person’s identity as their sexuality is somehow wrong unless it matches a specific definition of heterosexuality (and, most likely, not any sort of queer heterosexuality).

It would be one thing if they were simply being exclusionary. By just about any definition, all groups are exclusionary to some extent or another. Even Unitarians are exclusionary. We would not accept into our fold, for example, the people I described earlier—the people who use religion as an excuse to promote hatred and evil.

And, in practice, we are likely just as exclusionary as most other religions, though we may not be willing to admit it (or even consciously aware of it).

So, I would be OK with beliefs which are exclusionary. That is the nature of most religions. I am not OK with beliefs that are discriminatory. And so I find it hard not to drawn a line in front of even that more “tame” form of religious homophobia—the hate the sin not the sinner variety.

But this, I guess, is where things fall apart for me. I’m drawing this line, but is doing so the “right” thing to do? Does doing so violate the principles by which I try to live my life?

I’m not sure.

And, because I often find myself on the side of religion in debates about ethics and morality, on the side of the religious person, saying that religion is not inherently evil or immoral but that human nature causes many of us to interpret it in a way that justifies our actions, I don’t necessarily know where to draw the line.

What if I draw the lines to rigidly and too close. Do I end up vilifying religion? Do I end up boxing myself into a situation where I end up saying that my faith is the only true faith?

More thoughts on this to come…please leave any comments that you may have…

It opens me up to the possibility of spiritual experiences—whatever those may be—and I find it to be rather therapeutic. It centres me and calms me before or after a hectic day. It reduces my stress levels and I find that I am more able to “not sweat the small stuff” when I’ve made a point of meditating that day or the day prior.

Recently, I have thought about the possibility of sharing this valuable and therapeutic practice with others, as a meditation guide/teacher.

I’m obviously not really experienced enough to do this in any meaningful way, and certainly not in a way that I could turn into a business (hey, a guy’s got to eat, right?). So I have been looking for ways to gain more formal training and experience in this realm.

There are a few ways that I could probably approach this. The first would simply be to attend various classes and retreats. Learn by doing and build my own knowledge base as a result.

The second way, which would be more conducive to setting up some sort of therapeutic practice, would be to pursue a graduate degree in Counselling and then add some meditation and spiritual training on the side. This way, I would have the skills to be a true, professional counsellor, while also having the added bonus of being able to bring a holistic element to my practice, in the form of guided meditations.

With this second option, I’d also have the option of pursuing the degree from a distance, while maintaining my current job (and, in fact, my current employer would pay for a portion of my education).

The third option that I have seen is to pursue a Holistic Health Practitioner diploma from MacEwan University.

When I first discovered this third option, over the weekend, it seemed intriguing and like a great opportunity. However, upon closer inspection, it seems to be filled with a lot of pseudo-science that I just can’t get behind. I cannot take seriously a 3-term course about the therapeutic value of “flower essences.”

I try not to be judgmental about people’s spiritual beliefs, but when you start claiming that your mystic/spiritual beliefs are science, well, I find it very hard to respect that. And I can’t imagine throwing my time and money at something that I could only take half-seriously, in order to gain a designation that would allow me to be “qualified” to do the type of work that I’m considering.

What, then, does one do? It’s either option one or two, I suppose.

Either way, I’ll need to figure out where and how to get the training to develop and use guided meditations as a therapeutic tool. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find anything about this online. All of my Google searches turn up results about yoga classes. Either that, or they turn up a lot of wooey New Age stuff that claims to be science when it is, in fact, little more than a pseudo-science.

Where, then, do I begin to look for these resources? How, then, do I begin to find the teachers/courses that I would need in order to gain the sort of knowledge that I’m seeking?

If you have any information to help me along this path, I would really appreciate it.

I wasn’t able to hear the sermon because I was teaching Sunday school that day.

Even though I wasn’t able to hear the sermon (which was apparently incredibly good), the idea of the church community is something that has been resonating with me over the past little while.

In a world where people are more mobile than ever—where young adults often move across the country (or even across the world) for work—biological families are arguably less relevant. This isn’t to say that they aren’t important, but phoning your mom for advice about raising your kids isn’t the same as having someone in your community who can help you do that raising.

Churches, generally, are multi-generational. There are, of course, those churches which try to be “cool” and have rock bands and whatever. These appeal only to a very specific demographic.

That model serves a niche, but it is very much outside of the type of multi-generational community that I’m going to be referring to throughout the rest of this post.

Other People’s Children

Let’s talk about kids. I like kids. Even when they’re acting like horrible little monsters, I tend to like them. (In fact, I am likely to blame the parents for being “bad parents,” which is probably not fair most of the time.)

Having said that, I do not have kids. None of my friends have kids*. Until I started attending UCE, I basically had no regular interaction with children.

Until I started having regular interactions with kids, this wasn’t something that I missed. Rather, I didn’t realize that I was missing out on something by not having these interactions.

But, interactions with children are important. They remind us of the importance of play. They give us hope for the future. And, sometimes, they teach us how to argue with people who have no sense of logic or rationality (or, at least, not one that makes sense to anyone other than them).

By attending church on a regular basis, I have developed an extended family of other people’s children. They tell me fart jokes. They turn into angry wolves who try to claw out my heart. They torture their siblings while their parents plead with them to “just leave your brother alone and he’ll stop screaming!”

I get all or most of the benefits of having kids, without actually having kids. It’s a pretty sweet deal, really. All of the good and very little of the bad. Plus, hopefully, those kids gain something from their interactions with me, as well (it takes a village, they say, and I’m a part of that village).

Adopt a Grandmother

My biological grandparents have never lived in the same province as me, let alone the same city.

We visited them occasionally and they occasionally visited us. But, for reasons both geographical and financial, phone calls and letters were the main way that I interacted with my grandparents.

I now only have one grandparent. The rest have all died. My grandfather lives in Quebec, so I rarely see him. About the only time that I’m likely to see him these days is if someone is getting married.

Because of this, I’ve also found value in forming relationships with some of the more elderly people at my church. I won’t name names, to avoid offending the aged, but I’d say that I have adopted (or been adopted by) at least one or two surrogate grandparents.

Because I was/am unable to have deep relationships with my biological grandparents, I really value these new relationships. I don’t think I truly realized this until Sunday, but there is something very valuable about these relationships. And it’s not just the value that comes from having a friend or relative who can share their decades of life experience with you.

That is valuable and appreciated, of course, but it’s not exactly what I’m referring to. There is something deeper, that I can’t quite put into words. A sense of connectedness, I suppose, and maybe even a sense of family, but those words don’t really accurately describe it either.

Whatever it is—this feeling that I can’t  put into words—I was missing it without realizing it in the same way that I was missing something by not having regular interactions with children. And now I’ve found and cherish it.

Surrogate Parents

I can’t really speak to this point, as my parents are both alive and living in the same city as me. I have a generally positive and healthy relationship with my parents and we see each other on a fairly regular basis.

But, many people are not in this situation. I imagine, much as I have developed a sort of extended family of the younger and older generations (as well as developing strong friendships among those of my own generation within the church), that those who do not have their parents in their life can find surrogate parents in a church community.

This is outside the realm of my experience, so I won’t go into it. But, if you’ve adopted surrogate parents as a result of your church community (or another multi-generational community), please share your story in the comments.

And, of course, any other thoughts that you’d like to share in the comments would be most welcome.

Last night was the first night and there were definitely some interesting experiences. I had planned to write about the experience I had during the guided meditation that we went through, but I think I’m still trying to unpack it a bit. I’ll likely write about it in a day or two, after I’ve had some more time to think about it.

For now, I’ll just share the working definition of “spirituality” that I came up with during last night’s session:

Spirituality is that moment of letting go. That moment when it seems like the pen and ink are the ones doing the writing; when the keyboard tells my fingers where to go.

Spirituality is that moment of wakeful unconsciousness, when the intellect becomes secondary—it doesn’t leave or become unimportant, it just moves to the background and lets that unconscious “something” lead the way for a moment.

Obviously, the bits about writing should be taken as a metaphor for that “in the moment-ness.” For that “letting go.” For that moment of Zen. I used the example of writing because that is when I tend to feel that experience the most. It will, obviously, happen at different moments for different people.

Since I began my focus on my personal spirituality this year, and particularly since I started regularly attending the Unitarian Church of Edmonton, I’ve been reading a lot of these sorts of books. Of particular note are the following:

• A Year with Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks;
• Ethical Ambition, by Derrick Bell; and
• Becoming Human, by Jean Vanier.

In some ways, these books are my personal religious texts. I have found more spiritual value in them than in the Bible (which, admittedly, I have never read in it’s entirety).

I do plan to someday read the entire Bible, as well as other religious texts such as the Koran and the Sutras of Buddhism.

But, at least at this point in my personal and spiritual development, I have gained more from the works of non-dogmatic spiritual thinkers (who, often, are not explicitly writing about spirituality) than I have from traditional religious texts.

It is these books that are my personal religious texts.

What would you consider to be your religious texts? Do you find value in tradiational sources, such as the Bible or the Koran, or do you get your spiritual inspiration from other sources, such as poetry or music? Let me know in the comments section.

I was going to call this post “I joined the cult,” but my SEO instincts won out over my humour instincts.

It’s true, I have joined the Unitarian Church of Edmonton (UCE). I submitted a membership application about 3 weeks ago (as did Sara) and the board accepted it sometime during the week following.

Why did I join the church? Well, essentially for all of the reasons that I mentioned in my earlier posts, “Why I go to church,” and, “Choosing a spiritual home.”

I feel a sense of community at UCE—especially now that there is a young adult social group for the Gen X and Gen Y members of the congregation (all of whom seem to be really cool people)—and I really feel like I’ve found something that’s been missing from my life since I started going to church.

Plus, I very recently starting calling myself a Unitarian—I even updated my religion on Facebook (and we all know that nothing is real if it isn’t on Facebook). Since I have started identifying my faith in this way, it only seemed logical to become a member of the church.

Will this change my relationship with the church? Probably not. I’ve been attending regularly for months now, and I already felt like I was becoming a member of the church. I’ve begun identifying my spiritual/faith beliefs as UU. All that I’ve really done is to submit the paperwork and make it official.

I mean, OK, now I’ll be able to vote on church issues during general meetings (or, rather, I will be able to vote once I’ve been a member for 2 months). And, I suppose that, maybe, I’ll feel a bit more willing to give money and volunteer time to the community than I did before. But, ultimately, all that I’ve done is to make official what I’ve already been putting into practice for several months now.

Are you a member of a church/synoguage/mosque/temple? When did you join? What made you decide to become a member of your particular church (by which I mean the congregation, not the religion itself)? I’d love to read your answers to these questions in the comments.

In a $36-billion budget, the Alberta government chooses to eliminate $700,000 for gender reassignment surgeries. By my calculation that’s a whopping 0.00194 per cent of the budget.

Sorry, but to me this looks like a convenient opportunity to disguise blatant and cruel discrimination as fiscal prudence.

If it wasn’t tragic, it would be laughable.

And the saddest thing is that the government will now have to spend considerably more than they will save in defending this policy before a human rights tribunal.

It’s wrong, mean-spirited and petty, and for what it’s worth, against my religious principles.

Rev. Brian Kiely, Unitarian Church of Edmonton

The emphasis in the final paragraph is mine, but it serves to highlight the way that my church matches my beliefs. I can’t think of too many other religions where a minister would sign his or her name to a letter like this. For that reason, among others, I can’t think of too many other religions where I’d feel comfortable exploring my spiritual side.

For a look at my own opinion on this issue, check out my (unpublished) letter to the editor, “Cutting coverage for sex-change operations shameful,” on my other blog, AdamSnider.com.

It was quite a moving service, for me. It was short but sombre. It caused me to be much more introspective than I have lately, and to acknowledge the darknesses in my life.

In particular, I thought about my father.

My farther is ill. He may even be dying, albeit relatively slowly. His kidneys are failing. In fact, he started on dialysis earlier this week. While I think he still has some kidney function, it’s as though the organs have already failed him completely.

It seems more and more unlikely that he will live to be an old man (he is only 50). I have been denying this and, in doing so, acting as if our time is unlimited. Instead, I should embrace the dark truth of the situation. I should acknowledge his illness.

I should cease taking my father’s life for granted. I should make more time for him in my life. I should let him know that I love him—through actions, if not through words. I should do all of this soon.

Now may be all that we have.