Our Spiritual path is much like learning Math…

"Dorothy Parker" a fellow hubber asked the question “Do you follow the traditional spiritual path of your family or have you changed your spiritual path?” "Carolegalssi" answered that she got nothing out of her parents experience but had her own spiritual epiphany when her life got rocky. Bless Carole’s parents!

Attending church, learning about God, learning the basic stories and concepts enabled Carole, as so many of us, to think about and understand God for ourselves when we were mature enough to do so. It’s just like learning math, when we are young we really don’t grasp the need to learn all of those rules and memorize all of those tables. Then we begin to grow and find ourselves using the basics sub-consciously, calculating time, calculating miles, calculating our allowances. Eventually we mature and find that math has a real place in our lives and that we are held back from a lot that the secular life has to offer if we didn’t get the basics in the first place. On our spiritual journey, many of us were given the gift of learning about the bible, God and Jesus when we were young. Our parents took us to church, helped create and engage us in a community where it was safe to hear about and discuss spirituality, a place where we could learn about the needs of others and our role in life. We learned about God (albeit sometimes in a very basic way). We learned the fundamentals but it was up to us as we grew up to think, to challenge, to study, to grow and find our own path. The interesting thing I’ve found as I’ve waddled through middle age is the understanding that I've reached about “church” and it's place in life. For me, I’ve found church isn’t about being spiritual – I spent my 20 and 30’s honing my spirituality and I came to a very close relationship with God, but it is about “community” and “strength”. It is about sharing ourselves and our personal spirituality with our neighbors who are struggling. It’s about being imperfect and being accepted anyway. It’s about strengthening our spirituality and belief that God really does exist and love us unconditionally no matter what we have done in our varied lives or how many times we have continued to fail. It's about building our spiritual strength and giving it back to the next generation.

So the answer to Dorothy’s question for me is that while my spiritual path certainly doesn’t mimic my family outwardly it probably appears that way. No two spiritual paths are the same, just as no two people are exactly the same. Wikipedia says that "Man experiences spirituality as a state of awe, reverence, and wonder, in response to that which he holds sacred, (his highest values). Spirituality has long been associated with religion, deities, the supernatural, and an afterlife. Many equate spirituality with religion, but the two are separate entities, religion being one way man experiences his spirituality." I certainly don't really have "religion" but I do have a spiritual relationship with God and I reached it through much prayer and meditation. Being part of a church community early in life focused my prayer and meditation...and later my study of and with God.