Allowing for the spiritual

Life seems very one-dimensional if there is no allowance for the spiritual. There is now a sense in which the rational has to prevail and everything is black or white or any shades of grey are more about a best-selling book than about ambiguity. The spiritual is both ridiculed and denied; and without it the world is a disenchanted place. The church is largely discredited and there are many good reasons why that has happened but it is still somewhere where people can go to allow for the mysterious. At Sung Eucharist this morning we acknowledged our place in the mystical body of Christ – outside there’s the sound of the secular world going about its business but inside as we drink Christ’s blood and eat his body something else is going on. And experience is all and who is to deny what happens in this feast? For something is going on and something that feels so ‘other’ from the norm. Allowing for the spiritual allows for the expansion of our psyche and our self and mystery. There is also the sense that we are part of something bigger than we can imagine and something so much more than ourselves: indeed this morning we welcomed the saints and the cloud of witnesses that surround us all the time. The non-rational need not be something that we are ashamed of but rather it is the stuff of life and needs to be understood as contributing to ourselves as at least two-dimensional or if not three-dimensional beings.