Spiritual versus religious

Almost every couple I interview will tell me they are spiritual, but not religious. This statement has deep meaning for me, but I don't question further, as this is good enough for me to move ahead in our interview.

In an either/ or discourse community, this is heard as people who may have left religion, or religious practice, but think they are still good people. I hear something altogether different, and it may not be accurate about them, but it represents my world view.

Religion is an established set of rules, rituals and customs organized by human beings to honor God as they understand God to be. We can choose to participate or not in this activity. Spirituality is not so easy. Spirit means breath and as living human beings, we cannot escape our breath except when we die. We cannot choose to breathe. In short, we are doomed to be spiritual until we die. So what are we saying about ourselves as spiritual but not religious?

In many cases, at least among those wonderful couples I've interviewed (and most of whom I've married), their spirituality is their commitment to compassion, forgiveness, an idea or even a practice of service, an understanding of the need for humility, a generosity of spirit, of self, that looks to a place of peace, and that knows the only worthy test of their lives is in how wide and how well they love.

The only real difference between the spiritual and the religious person is that the one has no label and the other does. One has integrated a set of practices and the other prefers to be reminded. Both are called to the same end.

To deny our spirituality is to deny our humanity. Neither the spiritual nor the religious owns spirituality. It's the conscious knowledge and practice of choosing the highest good, the road less traveled, that puts us together in the same circle.