Get Socially Involved!

Those incline to spirituality sometimes slip into the attitude that once spirituality is a personal matter that has no social dynamic. Are they never mistaken? Big time.

 Any authentic spirituality related to any western religious tradition, if you check into it, has a clear thrust towards the wider world. Spirituality is not just you and the divine mystery of in a cozy corner together. That’s called spiritual narcissism.

          Nothing will nourish our happiness by serving other people who have special needs. Nothing will nourish your soul like regular time spent working in a soup kitchen, or helping the homeless, or volunteering sometime to work with physically challenged people or children who are hospitalized. Nothing.

          Ask anyone with any experience. They will tell you that serving others who have special need thus good for the once you serve. But it thus better or you it’s a mystery feed the hungry and you nourish your own happiness. 

There is nothing as important as this. Judaism and Christianity have some basic differences but they both share a thrust toward serving once neighbor. Authentic Islam too, is neighbor oriented and compassionate. There is nothing in the human soul that needs to reach out to the needs of others .something.

          In each human being there is spark of the divine and this spark seeks its own kind in others. You might say that this is why we are here, knocking elbows on planet earth, in order t care for one another. 

So when you leave for others you fulfill something deep in yourself. When you live for yourself or live for yourself with nobody else in mind, focusing on your self centered wants and desires, then you gravitate toward meaninglessness and the void.

          Let there be in your life a regular time and place when you share not just some money but yourself your body and your soul at the service of others. Its easy to send money to worthy causes and that’s good. 

But think of the former television sitcom celebrity, plenty of money in retirement, who goes once a week to a place for homeless man. There she picks up a large laundry bag of socks with holes in them. She repairs the socks and launders them in her own home. The next week she returns the laundry bag filled with wearable clean sock and picks up another bag filled with socks that need to be laundered and repaired.

          This has been going on for years. The former celebrity has not done a thing to rid the world of any big time social problems. She simply meets the need of some homeless people for clean socks with no holes in them.