Everyday
sunrise jog, a home-cooked meal with a friend, the smell of moist soil in a freshly tilled garden, a smile from a stranger on the subway…
Grace A
Most would agree that such Earthly
experiences can give us something to look forward to or add a spark to an otherwise ordinary day. But to an increasing number of people these ex- periences are nothing short of spiritual opportunities—a chance to tap into the Divine, beyond the walls of any synagogue or cathedral. “For a long time, there was an idea that there was only one way to do ministry, and that was within the church walls,” says Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. “But there is an explosion of spirit going on right now, and people are ex- perimenting with other ways to serve and seek that go way beyond that definition.” Taylor, an Episcopal minister, left
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www.VOFLnatural.com
Finding the Sacred in Daily Living by Lisa Marshall
a 15-year stint as a parish preacher for life as an organic farmer and professor of spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Georgia. She is among a host of faith leaders who have moved beyond the confines of the altar to shine a light on the sacred nature of the outdoors, physical activity, food, garden- ing and even mundane workaday tasks. The proliferation of such uncon-
ventional sacred practices comes at a time when the number of Ameri- cans who identify with one religion is dwindling, while those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious” is at an all-time high. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the number of adults who say they are not affiliated with any particular faith has grown to 16.1 percent, twice what it was 20 years ago. Among adults under age 30, one- quarter say they are unaffiliated. Mean- while, 92 percent of Americans believe
in God or a “universal spirit,” three- quarters pray and two in five meditate. With the recent publication of such atheist tomes as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and the meteoric rise of conservative Christian personalities like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, those on either end of the spiritual spectrum have taken center stage in an increas- ingly divisive dialogue in recent years. Meanwhile, former Episcopal priest J. Pittman McGehee points out that the more moderate seekers have been quietly creating a modern-day al- ternative all their own. “There is a 21st -century spirituality out there that is neither fundamentalist nor atheist,” ob- serves Pittman, a University of Houston psychology professor and co-author of The Invisible Church: Finding Spiritual- ity Where You Are. “People are looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary, the miraculous in the mundane, and the sacred camouflaged in the profane.”
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