Spirituality

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Spirituality Personhood

• Rev David Stroud

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Spirituality

• The root from which spirituality springs is the
  Latin noun Spiritus
• drawing on the Hebrew and Greek words ruach
  and pneuma,
• broadly meaning Spirit, but encapsulating both
  breath and wind .

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Meaning? Significance of life making sense of
situations deriving purpose.Martsolf
Mickley (1998)
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Values?

• Beliefs, standards and ethics that are cherished.
• Martsolf Mickley (1998)

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Transcendence?

• Experience and appreciation of a dimension beyond
  self.
• Martsolf Mickley (1998)

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Connecting?

• Increased awareness of a connection with self,
• others,
• God/Spirit/Divine and nature.
• Martsolf Mickley (1998)

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Becoming?

• An unfolding of life that demands reflection and
  experience includes a sense of who one is and
  how one knows.
• Martsolf Mickley (1998)

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The Royal College of Psychiatrists

• In healthcare, spirituality is identified with
  experiencing a deep-seated sense of meaning and
  purpose in life, together with a sense of
  belonging. It is about acceptance, integration
  and wholeness.
•  

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The Royal College of Psychiatrists

• According to one definition, The spiritual
  dimension tries to be in harmony with the
  universe, strives for answers about the infinite,
  and comes especially into focus in times of
  emotional stress, physical and mental illness,
  loss, bereavement and death. This desire for
  wholeness of being is not an intellectual
  attainment, for it is no less present in people
  with learning disability, but lies in the essence
  of what it means to be human.

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The Royal College of Psychiatrists

• How is spirituality distinguished from religion?
• Spirituality, described as linking the deeply
  personal with the universal, is inclusive and
  unifying. It naturally leads to the recognition
  that to harm another is to harm oneself, and
  equally that helping others is to help oneself.
  It applies to everyone, including those who do
  not believe in God or a higher being. 

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The Royal College of Psychiatrists

• The universality of spirituality extends across
  creed and culture at the same time spirituality
  is felt as unique to each and every person.

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• (1) Spirituality is that inner dimension of the
  person called by certain traditions the spirit.
  This spiritual core is the deepest centre of the
  person. It is here that the person experiences
  ultimate realty (Encyclopedia of world
  spirituality)
• (2) Spirituality concerns the quest for a
  fulfilled and authentic religious life, involving
  the bringing together of the ideas distinctive of
  that religion and the whole experience of living
  on the basis of and within the scope of that
  religion (McGrath. A. 2002 Pg2)

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• Lectio Divina

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Michael Downey, Jean Vanier Recovering the
Heart, Spirituality today 38 (Winter
1986339-40)

• the term spirituality refers to the spirit at
  work in persons 1) with in culture, 2) in
  relation to a tradition, 3) in memory of Jesus
  Christ, 4) in the light of contemporary events,
  hopes, sufferings and promises, 5)in effort to
  combine elements of action and contemplation, 6)
  with respect to charism and community, 7) as
  expressed and authenticated in praxis

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Elizabeth Dreyer, Christian Spirituality, The
Harper / Collins Encyclopaedia of Catholicism,
ed. Richard McBride (San Francisco Harper /
Collins, 1995)

• Christian spirituality is the daily, communal,
  lived expression of ones ultimate beliefs,
  characterized by openness to the self
  transcending love of God, self, neighbour, and
  the world through Jesus Christ and in the power
  of the Holy spirit.

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Alistair McGrath, Evangelicalism and the future
of Christianity. (Downers Grove IVP, 1995125)

• In its fundamental sense, spirituality is
  concerned with the shaping, empowering and
  maturing of the spiritual person(1Cor214-15) -
  that is, the person alive to and responsive to
  God in the world, as opposed to the person who
  merely exists within and responds to the world.

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Philip Sheldrake, Images of Holiness
Explorations in contemporary spirituality. (Notre
Dame Ave Maria, 19882)

• A friend once described spirituality to me as
  theology on two feet. In other words,
  spirituality (at least in a Christian context)
  is a useful term to describe how, individually
  and collectively, we personally appropriate the
  traditional Christian beliefs about God,
  humanity, and the world and express them in terms
  of our basic attitudes, life style and activity.
  On a personal level, spirituality is how we stand
  before God in the context of our everyday lives.
  For Christians, this involves two complementary
  dimensions our tradition and our experiences of
  the culture and the world in which we live, by
  which we are influenced, and to which we respond.
  The question of how these two dimensions relate
  to each other is a complex one.

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Rowan Williams, The wound of Knowledge Christian
Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of
the Cross. (Boston Cowley 19911)

• And if spirituality can be given any coherent
  meaning, perhaps it is to be understood in terms
  of this task each believer making his or her own
  that engagement with the questioning of the heart
  of faith which is so evident in the classical
  documents of Christian belief. The questioning
  involved here is not our interrogation of the
  data, but its interrogation of us.And the
  greatness of the Christian saints lies in their
  readiness to be questioned, judged, stripped
  naked, and left speechless by that which lies at
  the centre of their faith.

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Key Questions

• what are the common features that identify this
  as being a Christian spirituality,
• What texts are being emphasized here.

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Gutierrez

• a) Human experience of the spirit. A powerful
  religious experience is received by somebody
  which brings with it a new incite and change
  within the individuals understanding.
• b) This revelation is developed and shared with
  others. People pay a great deal of attention to
  this new incite, building and developing a way of
  life around them
• c) These experiences are developed and become
  absorbed into the Christian tradition.

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Extreme Pilgrim
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Rowan Williams

• This is where the desert monastic's have an
  uncompromising message for us a relationship
  with eternal truth and love doesnt happen unless
  we mend our relationship with Tom, Dick and
  Harriet. The actual substance of our relationship
  with eternal truth and love is bound up with how
  we manage the proximity of these human
  neighbours.

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St Augustine

• "God is the only Reality and we are only real
  insofar as we are in His order and He in us" (USL
  139).

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Summary

• History and tradition,
• Life community
• It is because of who I am,
• Prayer
• in the midst of life

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Swinton, 2004 Paper Summary

• Spirituality is an overlooked dimension of the
  lives of people with learning difficulties.
  Carers, support workers, policy makers, managers
  and religious communities often overlook
  spirituality, feeling that they are not trained
  to deal with this area of peoples lives or that
  there simply isnt time to incorporate it
  effectively

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(Foster, 200016-19)

• Despite the body of literature which suggests
  that spirituality is a fundamental human need and
  indeed a human right, carers and support have
  similar difficulties learning how best to
  understand and enable the spiritual development
  of people with learning disabilities