Some words make us feel powerful by using them. Others make us feel powerless when we are denied, or deny ourselves, access to them. Many words associated with spirituality fall into the latter category for me. Visiting the UU church and listening to the inclusive way they use religious language has led me to reassess the meanings of some of these words. I have a tendency to assume there is some external authority that has more right than I do to define what something is "supposed" to mean, and if my preferred meaning differs, I will reject my preferred meaning.
I think my motivation for this is good: I want to avoid the kind of cultural appropriation and insensitivity that occurs when people decide what they want a thing, like a racial or ethnic slur, to mean and then dismiss any backlash by saying they didn't mean it that way. This is important. It doesn't matter how I feel about Confederate flags or Native American sports team names; if they are hurting someone, they need to be done away with, end of discussion. However, here I have to ask myself, would I be hurting someone by "appropriating" religious language in a way that is spiritually meaningful to me? If not, is there any other reason doing so should be considered unacceptable?
To my best knowledge, the answer to both of these questions is no. If this is the case, then my self-denial is causing more harm than good by hurting me while not helping anyone else, which, according to the Wiccan moral philosophy I subscribe to, is morally wrong. "An it harm none, do what ye will" means you can do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt people, but "people" includes you, so I think this indicates that self-harming behavior with no greater purpose is prohibited. This is interesting, because it implies that we have not only a right but a moral obligation to reassess non-beneficial behavior that causes pain or distress, not only to others but also to ourselves.
In my case, it definitely causes me distress to deny myself the use of personally meaningful language to describe my feelings, desires, and experience related to spirituality. So, in the interest of fulfilling my moral obligation not to harm myself, I have been thinking about what words are meaningful to me and why, and how I can use them in ways that are empowering rather than disenfranchising.
For several years when I was a teenager, I attended an annual conference with the youth group from my church. The band that played there produced two praise and worship CDs with several songs that I found deeply moving. I finally got rid of the CDs last year (another non-beneficially harmful act, as I only got rid of all my Christian albums because I felt I didn't have a "right" to have them because they weren't "meant" for me), which I kind of regret now since they're no longer available. I still remember a lot of the songs, though, particularly one called "Take My Life" that I have thought about a lot over the past few days:
Holiness, holiness is what I long for
Holiness is what I need
Holiness, holiness is what you want from me
So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, to yours, oh Lord
The second and third verses replace "holiness" with "righteousness" and "purity." My emotional response when this song would pop into my head occasionally over the years always felt self-betraying, because on the surface it appears to argue for surrendering one's free will to a kind of divine "thought police," which feels very Orwellian to me and not at all like the kind of relationship with the divine that I would be comfortable espousing. Even setting that aside, though, the words "holiness," "righteousness," and "purity" are loaded. These words can be, and often are, used as weapons, either unintentionally by the kind of people who toss them around lightly or quite intentionally by those who aim to kill. Being the kind of person I am, I feel like I should be repulsed by them. So why do my feelings betray me by being stirred by these words?
The simple fact is that, no matter how they are or have been used, these words, in their most sincere form, have weight and meaning that draws me in more strongly than the dark side of each one pushes me away. Yes, they can mean holier-than-thou, prudish, ignorant, imperious, and sanctimonious, because many people who aspire (either sincerely or falsely) to spiritual goodness are holier-than-thou, prudish, ignorant, imperious, or sanctimonious. But the words are bigger than those people.
To me, holiness is the quality of a person or thing that does not belong only to that person or thing but to the whole flow of life. It is the part of me and you and everything that is inviolable, consecrated, sanctified and sacrosanct, that cannot be lost or destroyed, and that is always seeking to return to its source, which is perfect love. When Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet, "You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore," he is not talking about the physical bodies we were born in, but the holiness that we contain and that contains us, at birth, in death, and beyond. The awareness of this shared nature is found in the Sanskrit greeting "namaste" -- "the divine in me bows to the divine in you." To me, saying that "holiness is what I long for" does not mean that I am base and sinful and in need of forgiveness and redemption in order to become holy; it is a plea to be shown and reminded of holiness as my true nature and my connection through love to the holiness in all things.
To me, righteousness is the state of living in accord with one's own understanding of the good. When we are in accord with our own truth, we walk our own paths and move peacefully with the flow of life. When we are in discord with our own truth (even if this happens because we are fighting against ourselves in order to follow someone else's rules), we stumble on the wrong path and exhaust ourselves swimming against the current of life. To me, saying "righteousness is what I long for" does not mean that I want to be better than I am; it means that I want to be more true to what I know to be right for me.
To me, purity is the experience of oneself as a complete person, unpolluted by influences that muffle the voice of one's own heart. When we engage with others, ourselves, and the world in ways that make us feel clean and whole, we experience purity. When we allow love to mend our wounds and see that we are stronger and more beautiful in the places that were once broken, we embrace purity. To me, saying "purity is what I long for" does not mean that I am dirty and need to be purified; it is a call for strength to wash away the pain and fear that keeps me from seeing my pure self.
Even having clarified these definitions for myself, though, what about the troubling idea of handing over my life, mind, and will to be reshaped into some kind of spiritual automaton by a deity who supposedly knows better than I do what's right for me? Yesterday, I asked myself who or what I would feel comfortable trusting completely with my choices and actions. I certainly don't trust myself completely; I can be selfish and unkind at times, and I have no desire to justify my shortcomings by saying I was being "true to myself." When I talk about being true to myself, the definition of myself becomes very important. I am large; I contain multitudes. Which self do I want to be true to? When I think of myself as holy, righteous, and pure, I am not thinking of just any old version of myself; I am thinking of my best self. And who or what do I trust to continue to lead me toward my best self?
This turned out to be a surprisingly easy question to answer. When I asked it yesterday, I started singing this song, and I realized as I sang that it suddenly had the right words for me, as if they had been in there all along, waiting for me to find them.
Holiness, holiness is what I long for
Holiness is what I need
Holiness, holiness is what you want for me
So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love
Righteousness, righteousness is what I long for
Righteousness is what I need
Righteousness, righteousness is what you want for me
So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love
Purity, purity is what I long for
Purity is what I need
Purity, purity is what you want for me
So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love
To yours, oh heart of Love
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