Spirituality is beyond the ordinary and yet can only be found in the ordinary daily life; it is extraordinary and yet it’s extraordinary simple and tangible. Spirituality it’s not spectacular, it’s spectacularly simple. The profoundly simple often has no words and it is appreciated by anybody. Spirituality is an essential part of being human.
At the beginning Christians chose as Saints people who showed great heroism in the face of torture and death, later on believers searched for new saints and they found one in Nicholas (today known as Santa Claus), someone ready to help others anonymously. His “miracle” was that constant kindness in everyday life.
Once a monk met a Zen novice who had just finished his first year in a monastery and asked him what he had learned, half expecting to hear of discoveries of enlightments and altered states of consciousness. The novice replied that during his first year in the contemplative life he had learned to open and close doors. The discipline of not running around slamming doors of not hurrying from one place to another was where this novice had to begin and perhaps end his spiritual percourse.
Agi quod agis “Do what you are doing”, doing the ordinary at our best, intensely and utterly absorbed in it.“Spirituality cannot be learned it can only be followed”(W. James).
We all have to find what feeds our spirit, what intimately most matters to us, what we are here for, what we have to offer. Without a spiritual basis for living, we are dead before this life has ended.
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