Earlier this year when people were still making, and not yet breaking, their New Year resolutions, some of the national papers were publishing good advice on healthy living and life styles. At the end of an article for the over 60s, this paragraph appeared:
      “Spirit. With age comes a deeper understanding of our inner workings. This is also the time for deeper reflection on our spiritual life. At this age you will have been through all – or some – of the obvious stages that life seems to lay out for us. You will have had and cared for a family; you will have (or had) a caring relationship; your career will have been satisfying; and now you deserve time to look into your spiritual needs. Take this time to explore religion or spirituality.”
This is admirable and well may reflect the experience and aspirations of many. It also raises important questions.
What do we mean by spiritual? A simple answer is that the spiritual involves something more than the physical and material. It will be concerned with the emotional and aesthetic spheres; things that move us to a sense of wonder beyond what we see or hear or touch. Music is more than dots on lines on a page; beauty is more than paint on a canvas; a sunset is more than a combination of colours in the sky.
Is spirituality the same as religion? The simple answer is: no. Spirituality may be concerned with the personal. Religion implies some reality, some authority, some force or power outside ourselves. It is not purely subjective or individual. A physicist may not find God in the formula he proposes, but he may find that it reflects some of the character of God; astronauts may not have found God in space, but they may have felt a sense of awe or creatureliness in the context of such a vast universe.
Religion is concerned with values, morals, truth, which have their own authenticity and do not depend upon our own perception or state of mind. Meaningful religion will not be just a set of uninspiring rules, but will have a personal dimension inviting commitment. It should also offer a context for understanding ourselves and the world we know. C S Lewis said that he believed in God in the same way that he believed in the sun. Not only could he see the sun, but by its light he could see everything else.
In talking about religion, we must all at some point come to terms with Jesus and whether he was who he said he was. This month Easter is remembered, suggesting that there is life after 60 and even beyond.
But there is another question raised by the article. Why do spirituality and religion acquire a special importance once we reach 60? Surely by their very nature, if they are valid at 60, they are applicable at every other time in life. The person who enjoyed the life described in the article will have followed throughout values and principles that have a moral or religious basis, whether she or he was aware of it or not. If they are valid and effective at 60, they should apply to the rest of life because they deal with essentially the same sort of people and situations.
John King, Churchwarden St Paul’s