What Does Your Spirituality Mean To You? A Meshing of Science and Spirit Perspective
Introduction by Cole Goodwin
Welcome to The Spiritual Roundtable, an interfaith roundtable featuring a diverse range of spiritual belief systems in the Gorge Community.
Each week, spiritual leaders and learners will share their take on some of humanity's biggest questions, starting with: What does your spirituality mean to you? And ramping up into discussions about the nature of existence, the soul, the divine, and of course…a question as old as time itself: why are we here?
Look forward to new installments every Sunday morning!
Take a deep breath… Meditate for a moment…And when you’re ready…keep reading to explore the diverse faiths, belief systems, and philosophies that exist in our communities.
This Month's Question: What does your spirituality mean to you?
Why this question was chosen: This question asks us to examine what purpose and function our (faith, practice, belief system, philosophy) can serve in our lives. As well as how spirituality can guide our actions and way of walking in the world.
About the Author: Rhiannon Griffith has had a long and complicated life, but the current version of her lives in The Dalles and works at MCMC in the lab. She loves science and writing and her granddaughter, who lives in Portland.
“My spirituality is a patchwork quilt of different religions and beliefs threaded together by personal experiences and a belief in the power of truth and love,” said Griffith
A Meshing of Science and Spirit Perspective
by Rhiannon Griffith
According to the Pew Research Center, about 30% of Americans between 18 and 65 identify as "spiritual but not religious." I am one of them.
Although the words "not religious" are kind of deceiving.
I don't lack for religious experience.
I have worked with practices from a few different religions. I’ve read about and studied even more. I've also grown spiritually from some powerful experiences not usually considered religious: my work with healing from severe childhood abuse; some profound experiences using psychedelic drugs (in my hippie youth); a near-death experience in my early 50s; and a lifelong study of science and enthusiastic appreciation of the way it opens windows into Truth for me.
The immensity and complexity of the Universe fills me with awe and delight and wonder.
There is the observable, visible universe. The visible universe is all the stars and galaxies whose light has had time to reach us in the last 13 to 14 billion years or so, traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. There are a lot of seconds in 14 billion years; I'll let you do the math, because that's too many decimal places for my comfort zone.
Then there is the size of the actual universe, which is a whole lot bigger, since the universe has been expanding that whole time and there is a lot out there that's moved so far away the light will never reach us (Earth is middle-aged after all, only has about another 5 billion years to go.) Author Timothy Ferris, says in The Whole Shebang, that the ratio of the size of the visible universe to the actual-now universe is about the same as the ratio of the size of a single atom to the size of our planet.
And yet, as big as all of that is, if you go down in scale--if you look into smaller and smaller sizes, the cells of your body, then the molecules that make up those cells, then the atoms that make up those molecules, then the subatomic particles, then the quarks and other bits that make up those particles--there is as much Universe inside us as there is above us.
In fact, as far as we can tell, the size we are (that is we, the life forms on this planet, and also the planet itself) looks to be about in the middle of the scale of the Universe, from its smallest bits to its largest expanses.
Is that not amazing? Doesn't that give you chills? This is what we are made of! This!
On the one hand, we are just funny little bags of molecules that take shape and die and take shape and die rapidly and repeatedly, evolving in form as we go; made from a very thin layer of minerals covering the surface of a small, pretty and wet but otherwise unremarkable planet; which is orbiting around a smallish star that lies about two-thirds out on one spiral arm of a galaxy containing about 100,000 million stars; and which is in turn part of a galaxy cluster that is one of about 100,000 million galaxy clusters, give or take, that we know of. That is to say-- we aren't very big and we are definitely not nearly as significant as we think we are.
On the other hand: whatever all of that is made of--that is what we are made of.
The molecules that are the Lego blocks of our little meat bodies were forged in the fires of dying suns far, far away. This little planet that is our home swirls through space driven by the same gravity that bends the light of galactic superclusters. The energy of distant supernovas pours through our bodies just as it floods the stars around us. We are the living, leaping flames of Reality, just as much as the atoms and the stars. We are the Universe expressing itself in an infinite number of forms. We are majesty, we are wonder, I would say that we are God; but I don't talk about God much, because the God that I hear most people talk about seems much, much too small to me.
And I find that comforting.
I had a particularly tough childhood. Life has been a struggle for me. Overall, humans haven't really made the best impression. I can't say that I find the idea of a Divine Being that is shaped like a human being, designed for humans by humans, to be particularly inspiring or appealing. I am very grateful that our universe is a whole lot bigger than our species. And I am profoundly grateful for the great luck of being born in a time when we have the tools and insight to get a glimpse into the massive, amazing, unimaginably beautiful Existence we are part of.
I believe that this immense universe is made, essentially, of consciousness. (It's science, honest. Google "panpsychism." There's a SciAm article.) When I contemplate the idea of All That Is, it's the only thing that makes sense. What could "All That Is" (i.e, the universe) possibly be made of, other than its own self? The stuff of the universe must, at its deepest base, be the stuff of Is-ness: pure, benign, joyous Being.
The popular Western notion that everything in the universe is dead and unconscious except for the minds of human beings is ludicrous in the extreme (not to mention mathematically impossible.) It also, as it happens, comes from the same roots in Western philosophy that give rise to the idea that certain men deserve to own and run the world and everyone else (of either gender and any species) exists to be used and be colonized. That's not a paradigm I want to reinforce or follow, and I think too many religions do both. So I probably am not going become religious. But I'm never going to not be spiritual.
My spirituality is what has gotten me through this challenging life. I've drawn on practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Christianity. I've also gotten a ton of therapy and a lot of hugs, and listened to a lot of waterfalls, and conversed with a lot of trees. All of these practices have helped me hold onto a sense of meaning in life and to navigate through my days.
And what I've learned from science has helped me to see my time in history and my own suffering with a sense of proportion and excitement and wonder. I'm not just a scared and damaged child, not just another member of a species that seems determined to ruin its own home, not just another overworked cog in the capitalistic machine. I am very, very small, but also immense. I'm a vibrant strand in a massive, kinetic tapestry of Being.
And I find that magnificent.
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If you are interested in being included in the roundtable please email cole@columbiacommunityconnection.com
