I’m really enjoying (and nearly through) the book “Holy Envy” by Barbara Brown Taylor. It’s challenging to any of us from Christian traditions who’ve grown comfortable with our own set of answers. And there are many quotable bits in it, but I’ll settle for sharing just this one I just recently read.
From her chapter: “The God You Didn’t Make Up”
…Maybe “spirituality” was another of those words we use without thinking very much about what we mean. So I started asking people what they meant by it, building a list of definitions that included everything from “Spirituality is an escape hatch for people who would rather live in heaven than on earth” to “Spirituality is anything that helps you feel closer to God.”
Finally I asked my friend Judy, who spent many years as a student of Sufism and who embodies fana - the self-annihilating love of God - as well as anyone I know. When I asked her to define spirituality for me, she thought for a moment and said, “Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn’t make up.” I loved that. I also did not know what it meant.
That’s a mediocre quote from her book. There are lots of even better ones that I should have noted in chapters back when I ran across them. It will be worth re-reading later.