Why Spiritual Community

I think lots about this.

I know one reason I began looking beyond the bounds of my Zen practice was how I felt there really wasn’t much worthy of the term “community” within the Zen groups I had access to.

The question was what, if anything, to do about it…

For ages I had been aware of Unitarian Universalism. I’d even visited a few congregations over the years. But they seemed to be weak on spirituality, at least as I understood that term.

But eventually need drove me and I started attending Unitarian Universalist worship services, accepting the advice that you don’t let the good become the enemy of the perfect. There ain’t going to be a perfect anything. Since that time I’ve been pretty happy as a UU, both as a member of several congregations, and for the last couple of decades as a minister of same…

And over the years I found a happy place where my Zen discipline was (mostly) honored, and my desire for community of a spiritual sort could be (mostly) fully expressed.

Those who follow my ruminations know it was through the emergence of a very UU friendly Zen organization, the Boundless Way, that I felt my life pretty integrated, where I can be an honest to goodness Zen Buddhist and a full Unitarian Universalist.

At the same time, why the need for community? What’s that about? And where is it supposed to take us?

I think there is a deep need for human beings to gather together. I think maybe because we’re herd animals. Mostly. But that’s just “grubby roots.”

There is something more.

We need to turn the light inward and look deeply into our individual hearts and minds. That is the key to wisdom.

And, we need to step off the pillow and reach out into the world.

Both.

Without both we become twisted, in differing ways, depending upon our taste buds, toward the inner or toward the outer. But ultimately the product of going too much in one direction seems pretty twisted…

With both, I suspect there’s still some twisting, at least I see my twists; but with both, attending to the inner and the outer in conscious ways, the chances of a truly healthy life, a truly meaningful life gets better and better.

Spiritual community invites encounter. Not always fun. But always enriching.

We move from the individual to family to spiritual community to larger community to the world itself. Maybe not quite so teleologically, each emerges in its own way at its own time. But we do seem to need all…

At least it seems to me if we attend to each of these things we are on a path of genuine possibility…

Early morning rumination…