Your Spirit

Please consider your spirit*.

Because it is experienced, at least part of the spirit resides in our bodies. When one has a spiritual experience, it is such because one’s physiology is engaged. In other words, spirit is something a human body does. Quite likely, other animal bodies do it too.

One’s spirit is engaged in a variety of ways. Falling in love, going to a large, well done concert or sporting event, listening to a compelling speaker, church, and solitude are a variety of ways people report their spirit being engaged.

Spirit makes meaning. Spirit motivates. Spirit heals.

There are many different ways one cares for one’s self in the sense of maintenance and to maintain readiness. One may saves for retirement, follow an exercise regime, sing in a choir, floss and brush one’s teeth, drink eight cups of water per day, etc. One may exercise one’s spirit.

At my high school, we had to gather at assemblies and practice our cheers while a band played. One of those cheers was, “We have spirit, yes we do! We have spirit, how about you!”. The combination of live music and coordinated, almost liturgical, group reaffirmation of values was a moving experience and deeply shaped the culture of student’s experience. At sports games we were a spiritual community engaged in direct action. For what more could any human being ask?

My high school was smart. To stoke the human spirit motivates them, makes them open to input. A human spirit, just like the mind and the body, is a dangerous thing to blindly put in the control of another individual. Each of us is responsible for our spiritual lives as we are for all the other aspects for which we care. Here’s what tantalizes me…..

There is a story in the Bible of an up and coming prophet asking God for double the spirit of Elijah (2 Kings 2:9)**. What would I do with more spirit than I have right now? What would that experience be like? If many of the world’s stories are true, it is like becoming content, being provided for by Nature and work, and serving one’s true fulfilling role. A spiritual life bringing this about is possible because,

Spirit makes meaning. Spirit motivates. Spirit heals.

May we each have the strength to take it up tomorrow. If you don’t know how, please ask.

*To speak of, or write about, the spirit is foolishness. The spirit cannot be captured in the metaphor of language.

**These two were a lot like these two.