How important is spirituality in your life?

LIVING ESSENCES COUNT

The question of spirituality within one’s life and how that is manifest has engaged me in different ways from the time I was in my early teenage years.

When young, it was pointed out to me by my parents and reinforced through their example, that church attendance was important and that the manifestations of religion, including compliance with church requirements, were very important. How you were seen living your life was an attribute encouraged in me by my parents and elders. In that context my parents, particularly My Mother, encouraged me to emulate the example displayed by various members of our church and faith.

My departure from the church group came in my early 20s, and was based on disillusionment and wondering About the context in which I found myself. It came to the point of where the life I was leading differed very markedly from the way I felt about the church and display of spirituality through formality and religious ritual.

I came to feel like a hypocrite because the religion I was practising was increasingly distant from my inner feelings.

I worried them about whether leaving the church would come back to bite me hard. That was reinforced by the fact that those within the church who made decisions talked about people who felt like me as “ apostatising” and becoming ungodly. I have never replaced what I left with any other form of religious manifestation and wonder to this day whether this will count against me in any ultimate judgement made upon my life.

Over the years and decades it came to me that “spirituality“ was really about living a good life, being upright, moral, setting a good example in what I did: Defining and living by values espoused as being a part and parcel of decent living.

Those values have become my spirituality. I have tried to live by them, reflecting principles I hold dear through my life and example. As a Father, a school principal and as someone with a degree of community prominence, I have tried to live and to be a worthy example to others.

But I still feel at times that my depaeture from ritualised faith was a let down to my parents and a disappointment to others.