Friday, December 14, 2012

Spiritual But Not Religious?

When engaged in casual conversation with someone I have just met, I am often asked what I do for a living.  I'm sure you are, too. When I say I am an Episcopal priest, however, I usually get one of two responses: either a sudden, distant look, followed by an awkward pause in the conversation, then a "That's interesting," and a quick change of subject... or a vaguely guilt-tinged confession, "I don't go to church," followed by the justification, "I am spiritual but not religious."

While I hear it used with ever greater frequency, I have never really known what to make of the phrase.  People seem to be saying that they are sensitive souls, aware of a transcendent reality beyond the realm of matter that shapes and directs their lives, but that they do not find an adequate or helpful expression of that awareness in religion.  If, however, you accept the premise--as I do--that we are all spiritual beings, then everyone possesses a "spirituality" of sorts.  Your spirituality is simply your disposition toward spiritual reality, even if you deny it or fail to perceive it.   You therefore cannot distinguish yourself by describing yourself as "spiritual."  What will distinguish you is your practice of spirituality, what you do to express and integrate your spirituality into daily life.  And that, of course, is precisely where religion comes in.  The word religion is derived, appropriately enough, from a Latin verb meaning "to bind together."  Religion is that which binds together the experiences of our lives in a grand vision of the whole, including our connections to the reality that lies beyond, and offers us the means by which to enter more fully into that reality.

I know that, to many, "religious" implies rigid conformity to an arbitrary set of rules, intolerance of those who live differently, and immersion in hidebound institutions that stifle creativity and label nonconformists as heretics.  These stereotypes are rooted in a certain degree of truth.  Some religious people do obsess over rules, some are intolerant, even to a murderous degree, and religious institutions can be stifling.  Like all human practice, be it business, government, or family life, religion is messy.  Human beings are deeply flawed.  We lack vision, we lack clarity.  Our motives are mixed and often confused.  We screw up.  Few would suggest, however, that we abandon our businesses because business often is blighted by greed and corruption.  Few would argue that we should give up on democracy because it is inefficient, tainted by nasty rhetoric, and suffers from all the shortcomings of a beauty pageant or popularity contest.  And despite all the snide remarks we make about marriage and family, and all the wounds we suffer through our families, we nonetheless always return to them, hoping for comfort, healing, and love.  And yet, religion--perhaps because it allows us a higher degree of choice regarding our participation, or because it purports to embrace the highest good--we feel free to reject out of hand when it doesn't meet the standards we set for it.  To be sure, we can go about our daily lives religion-free if we so choose.  It is much harder to go about one's life shunning all business, avoiding all governance, or untethered by family ties.  I would argue, however, that religion, despite all its flaws, is as vital and necessary to us as economic activity, governance, and family life, and that in our practice of it, we need to demonstrate the same kind of forbearance we show to these other human endeavors, simply because it is a human endeavor, however divine its inspiration may be. 

Religion is important in that it gives us a framework, a skeleton, that lends shape and structure to our spirituality.  This is necessary in the same way a curriculum or teaching plan is necessary for our academic and intellectual development.  This is not to say that we cannot make spiritual discoveries on our own, any more than to say that learning cannot go on outside a structured classroom.  But religion does present a discipline, a path of exploration, that allows for a greater possibility of discovery and encourages regular growth and development.  It is worth noting that every figure the world has deemed a great spiritual leader--Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Heschel, Rumi, Gandhi--has been firmly rooted in one of the great religions of the world.  Though there have been great spiritual figures who have stood outside the circle of religion--Albert Camus comes to mind--they are very few and far between.  And even Camus was constantly in dialogue with Christianity, attempting to embrace its values while rejecting its dogma.  Indeed, toward the end of his life, some scholars believe he was on the verge of embracing the faith he had for so long kept at arm's length.  Most of the spiritual greats were quite open to the insights of other religious traditions and they came to remarkably similar understandings of how human beings should treat one another and the non-human world that surrounds us.  Compassion, kindness, honesty, integrity, simplicity, courage, and faith characterize the spiritual practice of all the greats.  And yet, each would argue that it was precisely their practice of their particular religion as a daily discipline that enlivened and deepened their capacity for all of these glorious virtues.  Again, this is not to say that virtue cannot be present in those who do not practice a religion, or that there are not religious people who are decidedly unvirtuous, but only that religion provides a disciplined, coherent, and demonstrably successful  means for cultivating virtue on a very deep level.

Far too many who say they are spiritual but not religious seem to be dabblers, people who have superficially explored a variety of spiritual traditions, but have never fully engaged any of them.  I am reminded of an experience of the Methodist minister and writer Tex Sample, who was told by a woman at a party he attended that she used to be a Methodist, but not anymore.  Now, she said, she was "into" Native American spirituality.  The pastor challenged her by saying he didn't really understand what she meant when she said she was "into" Native American spirituality.  Which Native American spirituality?   Mohawk?  Navajo?  Lakota?

The woman looked baffled.

Well, okay, did she study with a particular shaman?

"Oh, nothing like that," she said, dismissively.

"Well, then," said Sample, "I just don't know what you mean when you say you are 'into' Native American spirituality."

"Oh," she said, "I saw Dancing with Wolves, read a book about it, and thought it was very nice."

While it might be argued this woman once identified with the particular religious tradition of Methodist Christianity, she clearly never fully engaged it, but merely dabbled in it, as she dabbled in Native American religion later.  No deeply held convictions, no ongoing discipline or practice, just a flirtation of the moment, flitting from one tradition to another, avoiding any binding commitment.

Binding commitments, of course, are risky.  They force you to struggle, when things don't go quite as planned.  You are forced to confront the ways you messed up.  It is true with marriage, with business contracts, with citizenship... and with a deep religious commitment.  It enforces a discipline.  Sometimes people who assert they are spiritual but not religious do so to avoid that discipline and the judgment that comes with it.  Perhaps the most notorious instance was when Barbara Walters confronted Monica Lewinsky, in her interview, regarding the former intern's affair with Pres. Clinton.  Lewinsky had claimed to be a spiritual person.  Pres. Clinton had said that he had sinned in having the affair.  Did Lewinsky believe she had sinned?  Lewinsky, visibly uncomfortable, squirmed in her seat and then said, "I'm spiritual but not religious," as if that dispensed with the issue and exonerated her behavior.

Spiritual but not religious?  This says nothing to me.  Everyone is spiritual.  We are spirit wedded to flesh, to matter.  What I would much rather know is that you have a discipline to your professed spirituality, that you work to live it on a daily basis, struggling to grow into the ideal it envisions.  I want to know how your spiritual impulses are bound together into a cohesive practice.  In other words, I would much rather hear that you were spiritual and religious.


Thursday, October 18, 2012

More in Heaven and Earth Than Is Dreamt of...

I am a religious man and a reasonable man.  For some, this a problematic statement.  They would insist there is no such animal, that it is a non-sequitur to say someone is both reasonable and religious.

Admittedly, many of the people who assert such things have a child's notion of religion.  I am reminded of a story told me by an older priest, who many years ago attended a debate at Union Theological Seminary in New York between the German theologian Paul Tillich and a logical positivist philosopher from Columbia University. The debate centered on the reasonableness of religion.  The philosopher had the first crack and immediately launched into a dismissive swipe at the biblical account of creation, stating it was patently absurd to think, in this age of science, that God created the world in seven days or that the first woman was shaped from a rib of the first man.  When it came time for Tillich's rebuttal, he stood up and said, "You'll get no argument from me.  I thought this was going to be a debate."  He then proceeded to describe the symbolic semiotics of religion, leaving the philosopher so flummoxed and embarrassed, he could not continue.  The smug sense of superiority, coupled with an oddly literalistic and ignorant misunderstanding of religion, that characterized the positivist philosopher's attitude is reproduced again and again in the many atheists who imagine themselves to be enlightened, but who show a startling lack of knowledge or curiosity about theology, biblical scholarship, the relationship between psychology and religions, or the philosophy of religion.

At the same time, many secular skeptics have a difficult time dealing with phenomena that do not seem to be explicable in scientific terms: miraculous healings, the appearance of angels, demonic possession, etc.  The typical response is, "Well, there has to be a natural explanation.  Either this is a fraud or we simply don't understand the science well enough at this point."  The notion that there could be a supernatural explanation is dismissed out of hand.  In the grip of a naive realism, they refuse to consider the possibility of a transcendent reality existing outside the box of nature, i.e., that which is governed by physical laws.  That said, I must confess that many religious persons are also reluctant to embrace supernaturalism.  This is particularly true of people who subscribe to more liberal forms of religion.  As a graduate of both Harvard and Union Theological Seminary of New York, stalwart bastions of liberal religion, I once counted myself among them... but not any more.

I first gained an inkling that there might be some invisible realm of reality that every once in a great while crashes into our own when I read a reprint of an article written by a professor of religion at Smith College back in 1963.  The professor, Ralph Harlow, was a product of the same modernist, "enlightened" form of religion that had shaped my early understanding.  Prior to a walk in a park he took with his wife, he would have explained angels as symbolic conveyors of God's word in Scripture: in essence, a literary device.  On that day in 1963, he and his wife both heard voices behind them on the park pathway and kept looking back to see if someone was following behind, but could see no one.  The voices grew louder and stranger, so that Harlow became convinced that a large gaggle of foreign students must have entered the park, but still they could see no one behind them.  Then, suddenly, the voices were above their heads.  They looked up and, to their astonishment, saw a flight of winged creatures in colorful, flowing robes, chattering with one another in an unintelligible tongue.  Stunned, unable to take in what he had just seen, Harlow reached for a park bench and abruptly sat down.  His wife slowly settled down next to him.  He looked at her and before the words, "Did you see what I see?" were out of his mouth, he knew the answer.  It was in her eyes.  All she had to do was nod.  Harlow's account of his experience in Guideposts magazine was the first plausible telling of an encounter with angels I had ever read, but it was not to be the last.  I have since become convinced: angels are real.  Some of the current crop of public atheists have expressed dismay that despite our ever-accelerating advances in science, so many, even among the well educated, still cling to such "superstitions."  Perhaps it is because enough people have had inexplicable encounters like that of Prof. Harlow and his wife to render the secular skeptic's version of reality too limiting to fit "the data."

The second impetus to reconsider my perspective was my encounter with the work of Dr. Larry Dossey, a physician who has spent much of his career examining the relationship between healing and prayer.  Dossey, when he was a resident at a large Dallas hospital back in the 1980s, had been dismissive of prayer as anything more than a source of emotional comfort.  A scientific rationalist, he considered as ludicrous the idea that prayer could heal, or that God would heal through prayer... until, that is, he witnessed it firsthand.  A patient of his who had "terminal" cancer in both lungs was completely, inexplicably healed, after his friends and fellow believers had prayed for him.  There had been no therapy, no radiation or chemo.  The physicians had told the man to make his final arrangements.  There was no explanation for it that made sense within the bounds of science.  Dossey began to wonder about the relationship between prayer and healing and the more he studied, the more evident it became to him that the two were profoundly and often dramatically linked.  Dossey's testimony was later reinforced for me through the work of another skeptic who witnessed the healing power of prayer, the Pittsburgh journalist Emily Gardiner Neal.  Their work had a profound effect on my own tepid view of prayer, which I saw largely as a way of remaining present to God and one another, but in no sense a pathway to physical healing.  I have since become convicted of its power, but did not witness it personally until 2007.  A lay woman in our church, a very active and influential member, had battled throat cancer in the early 90s and had been healed through the usual methods, but the cancer had suddenly come roaring back and her doctors were not optimistic about her future.  When a prayer team from Faith Alive, a renewal ministry in the Episcopal Church, arrived at our church, she asked them to pray over her in the hope of healing.  I joined in that prayer, but tempered my expectations because I had known many who had prayed and not received the physical healing they had pleaded for.  But two weeks later, my parishioner burst into my office, so excited she could hardly contain herself.  The cancer had vanished and her physicians were completely baffled.

I am admittedly astonished at the capacity of human intelligence to understand the physical realities of God's universe.  It staggers the mind to think we can see to very edge of the universe and calculate the very moment when it all began.  Science is undeniably powerful, revealing wonders our devout ancestors never dreamed of.   But it no longer surprises me to think that there may be limits to what science can reveal, that there are phenomena that transcend the cosmic reality of matter and energy, that spirit may be more than thought, more than consciousness.  Ironically, paradoxically, it is the very immensity of the universe science has revealed that confirms it for me.  If God is capable of creating a cosmos of this magnitude, surely he has infused it with wonders that are beyond human ken.  Angels and miracles?  Why not?  To my rationalist friends, I would quote Hamlet to his skeptical friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Seduction and Resistance

When they were teens, my sons often protested when I limited--or tried to limit--their exposure to violent or overtly sexual movies and video games.  Setting aside the futility of the exercise, given that they were growing up in a culture that flooded their minds and hearts with a tsunami of violent or lustful images each and every day, I contend even now that I was right to do so.  It strikes me as inconsistent, if not willfully blind, to maintain that the sight of beautiful art, the sounds of musical masterpieces, or the words of great literature can be transformative, and not grant the same kind of power to base images and ugly words. 

Both image and word elicit response, regardless of their content.  Sometimes our response is ephemeral.  We react, then forget.  They wash over us and drain away, leaving no apparent mark.  But at other times, they remain, stuck in mind's eye or the heart's echo chamber, haunting or enchanting us for days, weeks, years, even a lifetime.  They captivate us, for better or for worse, and we can find it difficult, if not impossible, to free ourselves.  And once they hook us, they begin to shape our behavior, our interactions with the world around us.  This is why companies spend billions of dollars each year on advertising.  Their leaders know well the power of sound and image to suggest and gently direct our behavior, even against our better judgment.  The power of suggestion is enormous; it is the essence of seduction.  Totalitarian states have known this unpalatable truth for centuries.  Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruthlessly exploited it for their own purposes, placing entire nations under their spell.

When, in the early 1980s, the serial drama, The Holocaust, was shown on West German television, an enormous upswelling of anger and bewilderment erupted from young Germans born after the Second World War.  They confronted the older generations, demanding to know how it could have happened in Germany, the nation of Bach, Beethoven, and Goethe.  Often just as bewildered, tormented by guilt and regret, many older Germans protested that the younger generations, having grown up in a democratic, pacifistic culture born out of the defeat of Nazism, had no understanding of how brilliantly Hitler had manipulated the emotions of a frustrated, deeply wounded nation, or how easy it was to be seduced, to dismiss the brutalities of the SS and SA as regrettable but infrequent expressions of excess enthusiasm or as the propaganda of Germany's enemies.  Hitler was mesmerizing, a master of symbol, word, and image.  Only the strongest minds, those most deeply committed to a greater good--the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Sofie Scholls, and Willi Brandts--could resist.  To many of the younger Germans, this sounded like an excuse, as it did to many outside Germany.  But having seen Leni Riefenstahl's notoriously brilliant propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, I could not help but be sympathetic.  In spite of myself, in spite of every truth I knew about Nazi Germany, she had my heart racing, entranced by the spectacle of the Nuremberg rallies, thrilling to Hitler's plane as it landed in the Berlin airport, anticipating the adulation of the crowds awaiting their leader's emergence onto the runway.  If I could be so affected, what must the Germans of the 1930s have experienced?

Of course, the very success of The Holocaust in awakening the anger of young Germans is itself illustrative of the power of image and word, especially when they are married together in a single medium.  It brought to life a horrific past in a way the dry academic history texts of West German classrooms never could, forced a public conversation long overdue, and became a powerful force for good.  Image and word can be made to serve many different masters, many different purposes.  Our capacity for discernment in assessing their end is crucial.  The questions we need to confront are, Who is the master of the images and words we are experiencing?  What is he telling us?  Why?  What is his agenda?   What response does he want us to have?  And what should our response be?  In short, we need to assess critically what we are experiencing, to set it at the mercy of reason, examining it in the light of values we know to be true.  I believe wholeheartedly this is why, despite being inundated by some of the worst dreck of the American entertainment and advertising media, my sons have grown up to be thoughtful young men.  They have learned, at least in some fashion, to make these assessments.

And yet, I cannot help but fear for them and for the culture at large, precisely because so much of what washes by us is, in fact, unexamined.  So great is the tsunami that we are unable much of the time to maintain a critical distance.  And this is a peril.  If, as Christian philosopher Dallas Willard insists, our character is determined by the company our mind keeps, how do we make sure we keep the right company?  How do we resist the temptations blandished before us?  How can we remain impervious to the pornographers who want to excite our lust, the demagoguing politicians who wish to enflame our resentments, the corporate pitchmen who seek to amplify our greed?  Clearly, it would be of benefit to us to restrict our exposure in some measure, so as to allow some breathing room, and to focus instead on those words and images that feed our souls.  As St. Paul put it to the Philippian church, "...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."  These are the things that strengthen both our critique and our resolve to resist.  Both Paul and Jesus understood how deeply our inner thought life impacts our actions.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned his disciples to turn away from anger and lust within because he knew these were the passions that fed both murder and adultery.

Admittedly, such a  prescription does not sit well in the American psyche, conditioned as we are to understand freedom as the highest good.  As public atheist Christopher Hitchens once protested in a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, it smacks of mind control.  But Paul understood the problem well.  He, after all, was the great proclaimer of "the freedom of the Gospel" and rebelled against the deadening hand of the Law: "For freedom Christ has set us free." (Galatians 5:1)  Yet, as he pointed out to the Corinthian church, just because we are free to do something does not mean that we should.  All things may be "lawful" for us, but they may not be beneficial.  In fact, says Paul, some things are bound to become our masters if we are not careful.  (I Corinthians 6:12 f.)  The key is discipline, a submission to the Way of Jesus that is as much about habits of the heart and mind as it is about what we do and say.  The end is perfect freedom, the kind of freedom that comes from knowing what is good and right and true, and desiring it alone.  This is the promise to Jeremiah that a day will come when the Law of God will be written on the hearts of Israel.  It will no longer be necessary to instruct and correct, for all will know what to do and how to do it.  (Jeremiah 31:31 f.)  The good will become instinctive, as reflexive as a boxer's counter-punch.

If we can tune our minds so as to be able to do complex calculations or understand multiple languages, or compose exquisite poetry or music; if we can train our bodies to run and jump and respond with agility, speed, and grace; then surely we can train our souls, our hearts, to desire above all else what is good and true and do them.  If we do not, if we refuse in the name of freedom or passion, we will in the end become slaves to the seducers of the world--not just the pitchmen and pornographers, but the tyrants, despots, and demagogues as well.  And when it happens, we won't even notice, we won't even care, because it will be exactly what we lust and yearn for, exactly what we "want"... at least in the moment.  Misery will undoubtedly follow... but by then, it will  be too late.

Friday, February 3, 2012

When Your Children Do Not Share Your Faith

This past Christmas, my two 20-something sons were "home", but not in one of the houses where they had grown up.  It was our new place in Lancaster, where Ann and I have lived for the past year and a half.  Though they both knew the place and seemed perfectly comfortable in it, I was keenly aware that it represented a kind of break for the two of them, and for us as well.  Gone were the rooms they had made their personal bunkers, retreats that each reflected their unique personalities, filled with books and posters and gadgets.  Instead, they bunked in a guest room and a study.  While there were a few tokens of their past lying about the house--Michael's cub scout badge display, a medal of achievement for his work in a national competition; Alex's college diploma and graduation cap--it was clear to anyone who might come by that they were, indeed, guests and that they lived their lives elsewhere, apart.

While I know full well that Ann and I both went through the same break with our parents at the same age, I found it more painful than I expected, not only because it represents the loss of treasured time and a particular way of relating, as it does for all parents, but also because I was keenly aware of how different their worldviews had become from my own.  This, too, is on some level, inevitable, but I found it particularly acute because I am an Episcopal priest, someone who has spent his life devoted to the Christian vision of the world, but neither of my sons consider themselves believers.  They have respect for Christianity, to be sure, but they have yet to find faith.  Though Alex remained active in our church youth group in his teens, neither he nor his brother took communion after the age of 14 or so.

There is a certain irony here, because I, too, diverged radically from my parents' worldview, as they did from that of their parents.  Growing up, I darkened the door of a church but twice, once for a Lessons and Carols service at age 8 and once in Germany with my dad at age 6.  Sunday morning at our house was for bacon and eggs, the Sunday Boston Globe, and the New York Times.  Church was not even an afterthought.  My dad was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy, but developed an antipathy for the Church after watching his priest bring down a breviary on his brother's head for failing to learn his catechism correctly.  He went on to become a full-blown skeptic in college.  My mother grew up in a family of Scandinavian pietists who worshiped in a Congregationalist church.  Though she taught Sunday school in her teens, she had a myriad of questions her parents told her she should not ask.  Eventually, she grew defiant and rebellious, rejecting Christianity for an angry atheism.  While my dad has continued to show interest in philosophical questions touching upon religion, mom has absolutely no interest in discussing the subject and little other than contempt for religious thinkers.

But I, of course, had my own life, which took a different course.  At the age of 14, I had a revelation of sorts on a Cape Cod beach, watching the sun set with my dog.  I was suddenly enveloped in a sure and certain sense that God existed, and that he loved me and had created all the beauty I was seeing for me and for all the rest of us to enjoy from the inside out, in a way that he couldn't.  Suddenly I found myself haunted by religious questions, longing to know what truth lay behind the Christmas carols I had always loved.  I remained a seeker until my senior year in high school, when an invitation to a prayer meeting changed my life.  I kept going to that prayer meeting, in the hope I would discover something.  One night I left the meeting to ask God to reveal the truth to me and felt as if the spirit of Jesus had followed me home to confront me.  The tearful confession of faith I made that night would one day, after a long, meandering trek, lead me to the door of an Episcopal church in New York City, where I was confirmed... and which would eventually sponsor me for ordination to the priesthood.

For me, Christianity is a beautiful vision.  It helps me make sense of suffering.  It gives me a sense of belonging: I do not feel alone in the universe, but cared for by its very author.  It fills everything with mystery, longing, and hope.  It gives me courage to move beyond my fears and anxieties, to grow and to risk.  As St. Augustine once said, I believe in it "as I believe in the rising sun; not because I see it, but [because] by it I can see all else." It pains me to think my sons (not to mention my parents) do not share it.  I find myself asking how I failed, wondering aloud why I could not find the words or live the life that would reveal to them this marvelous truth.  It is true that, aside from reading them occasional Bible stories, singing them to sleep with "Amazing Grace" or "Be Thou My Vision," and saying grace at meals, I did not take a very proactive approach to their Christian formation.  They attended church, they went to Sunday school, to be sure, but it seems to have had little effect, beyond giving them a rudimentary knowledge of Christian doctrine.  The joy, the vision, was not contagious.  I could not pass it on.  And for that, I am inclined to blame myself.

But neither my parents nor theirs before them were able to "pass on" their vision either.  Perhaps it is not something you can teach; perhaps it must be experienced.  While we baptize our children, it remains to them to adopt the baptismal covenant as their own and make a mature affirmation of faith.  It is something they must discover for themselves.  They too have their own lives, their own journeys.  It is not for us to say whom they will meet upon the road.

It is a mystery to me why God corners some of us, falling upon us suddenly and unexpectedly, to claim us for his own, while seemingly not others... and why one vision of who and what he is, and not another, takes hold of our hearts.  While we can learn church doctrine the way we learn history or English grammar, the knowledge of God is different.  It is gleaned through inference and extrapolation.  We take our experience, which is often difficult to describe, and shape it with the accumulated wisdom of those who have experienced it before.  We look for revelation and apply it to our encounter, trying to give it a more definitive form and substance, so as to make sense of it.  If I had grown up in Iran or Thailand, and had somehow experienced in tone and emotion exactly what I had experienced on the Cape Cod beach or in my room after the prayer meeting, I suspect I would have become a Muslim or a Buddhist instead, simply because the understanding of God whirling around me would have been Muslim or Buddhist.  This is not to say that the reality of God is subjective, only that our experience of him (her? it?) is.  But for all that, John Donne and Rumi seem to speak an eerily similar language.  The observations and expressions of the great mystics of the major faith traditions possess a striking similarity, a mutual resonance that tells me what they have experienced is that same ineffable Something we call God.

I hope and pray that one day my sons will experience that Something themselves.  Perhaps they have already and have not known what to name him, despite all my efforts to give them a vocabulary by which to do so.  Be that as it may, I know it is not something I can give them.  They must encounter it themselves.  Perhaps one day, once they have, the words that I have spoken about it, the efforts I have made to live into it, will begin to make sense to them.

I can only hope.  It would be such a sad thing, to live without the vision it brings.