There are occasions when a photo cannot adequately capture the spirit of a moment. This is one such occasion. As we shared the closing moments at Cliff College of the Consultation on Spirituality in the Methodist Church we gathered around this focus, which I found immensely helpful to my thinking and reflecting on the event. There was no direct reference to the objects placed around the focal point, but I was drawn to the small bird in the foreground and the pine cones tucked behind the tree.
We have spent the past 24 hours considering how we ‘engage with spirituality’, and how we enable others to do the same. I was grateful that we did not spend hours attempting to define ‘spirituality’, but agreed to work with a definition provided for us at the beginning of our time together. We talked about this engagement in our own contexts and also ‘engaged’ for ourselves throughout the weekend.
This may sound cryptic, or it may make perfect sense to you! Our definition of spirituality on this occasion and for the purposes of our consulting ran thus: ‘the lived experience of God, present in our world and active in our lives’.
In one of our small groups today we posed ourselves questions similar to this one. Do we, as church, provide space and time for people to express, articulate and explore ‘spirituality’? I wonder how you would answer that question in your context?
More musings on this tomorrow…
