How do I make and articulate the connection between my highly personal, individual religious experience and the larger work that I believe springs (inevitably) as a result of reflection on these experiences? How do I, as a religious leader, help move people along the continuum that I believe exists from direct, unmediated experience of the divine to engagement with others to larger prophetic work?
As a result of my recent liberal theology course and other experiences I have had, I now think of myself as a Schleiermachian for the most part. For me, the essence of religion is feeling and intuiting. I cannot explain religious experience, but I can come close to describing or communicating it through poetry and music. Because of the internal nature of this kind of religious experience, religious sharing becomes an exercise in imperfect description that may or may not lead to a perfect understanding.
But, for me, religious experience is something that must be shared. In fact, although my idea of religious experience is highly personal, the experience itself is almost always born in a moment of intense engagement—either with other people or creatures or with the inanimate world. And I believe religious experience of this sort—especially if it is felt intensely—almost always leads to action of some sort.
So, my own experience of religion is a circle in which highly personal experiences of the infinite necessarily lead to sharing with others about meaningful experiences, which leads to more intense interactions with others toward a moral—if not salvific—end, and, to complete the cycle, these intense interactions with some “other” or others inevitably lead to a personal experience of the infinite.
The problem, of course, is that not everyone dances this same dance. And many people will not be interested in learning the steps or even swaying to the rhythm. And yet, I do believe that nearly all people, whether they recognize it or not, have these moments of highly personal religious experience. But, because most of us are trained to abandon our natural creative impulses at an early age, we give up on trying to communicate and share these experiences with others, and, in fact, downplay their significance even to ourselves. Further, I believe that if people give up on this first step, the other steps of possible deep connection with others and movement toward something bigger are severely limited.
For me, unmediated experience of the divine is not in any way supernatural but, rather, is the most natural of experiences available to the human being. I see it in children. I see it in some artists and writers and musicians. And I sense it in nearly every loving relationship that I have known. So, it is a real challenge for me to deal with people who are not as inclined as I am to run with feelings and intuition without an overwhelming regard for rational thought.
I plan to start testing my beliefs in regard to this question. Specifically, I want to really challenge people with whom I work and live to reach inward to their most elemental creative selves, the parts of our being that have been squeezed thin or ordered out as we have grown older. And I want to work with the people who are, in many cases, the hardest nuts to crack (namely Unitarians Universalists) when it comes to setting aside rational thought sometimes in order to do something that has real and lasting meaning. I also want to explore this question actively with others who are trying to do something similar in their congregations and communities.
