For me, spirituality is a private matter; very private in fact. Aside from a select few people in my life, I don’t really talk too much about my spiritual beliefs. Which, of course, does not mean that I don’t think about them. On the contrary, I think about spirituality/religion/belief systems fairly often. Why am I so uncomfortable to talk about these things? Well, I think there are few important reasons:
- It is a sensitive topic and I don’t want to offend people.
- Religion is such a loaded arena of human interaction with significant and far-reaching impacts, both positive and not-so-positive.
- I myself have many uncertainties when it comes to a spiritual understanding of the world.
- Perhaps, it has become a somewhat socially taboo?? Not exactly water cooler talk… “so by the way, I’ve been pondering the meaning of my existence and here is what I’ve most recently come up with…” In fact, I have many close friends who I love dearly and I have absolutely no idea what their spiritual belief system is. Hmmm… is the lack of spiritual conversation generational? Or, is it the people I spend time with? Or, it is just me?
The thing is, I used to have it more or less ‘figured out.’ Or, so I thought. Then I went away to university and enrolled in a Sociology 100 class, where I was 
introduced to the skill set of critical thinking. Ahhh… critical thinking. As I learned to think critically about social norms, academic texts and my assignments, I too began to question pretty much everything, from past choices, to gender roles to religion. Of course, developing the ability to think critically is likely the most valuable lesson I took away from university; however, it sure did make my world a whole lot more complex! I remember that first year of university when the great majority of my beliefs and taken-for-granted ideas became an arena for exploration. Naturally, my immediate response was to hold on even tighter to my previous beliefs/understandings/knowings; however, once the questions were raised into my consciousness (ie. the birth of critical thinking), there was no going back.
In no other area has my critical thinking left me with so many unanswered questions than that of spirituality / religion. I have a fairly solid sense of what I don’t believe in (the blending of religion and publicly-funded institutions, for example), but there is a vast void when it comes to figuring out what I do believe in. Now, please don’t take my candid discussion of my spiritual uncertainty as an invitation to be ‘enlightened’ in any particular religious direction. Remember, I find this to be a deeply personal journey; one that I need to take at my own pace, and one in which I ultimately need to take the lead.
All in all, this month’s challenge is going to be a tough one for me. To write openly about something that is naturally so private to me will be a stretch. Yet I hold hope that in such a stretch new learning will emerge.
Warmly,
Kyla.
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