It has been almost a year since I last submitted a reflection column to the TDB, but after many requests from people around town, and from the newspaper staff as well, I offer you these thoughts.

I retired from formal pastoral ministry on April 1, 2013 after more than seven years of full time church work as lay person and 23 years as an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church with 12 of those years in Tryon.  I have a bachelor’s degree in studio art, education, and psychology and two advanced academic degrees in theology, religion, and church studies. I have now come full circle in my seventh decade and have returned to my roots as an artist, in wood now rather than paint, but during that roundabout journey I have gained some insights and objectivity, and I have learned a great many things about our hearts and souls as human beings.

The biggest thing I have learned is that there is a great deal of difference between spirituality and religion, and community and politics. Over the past few weeks we have seen how dogmatic religion and sectarian politics are at their very heart divisive and destructive to the life of our community and the sincere efforts of many to live out their personal spiritual relationships with God.

Institutional politics, whether civil or religious, give primary consideration to the self-perpetuation of entrenched entities which push forward agendas aimed at maintaining power and control, no matter what the cost to individuals of good faith.  Partisan politics, denominationalism/sectarianism, and the egoism of persons in power or seeking power are usually ruthless in attaining their ends, and often leave many people broken and disheartened in their wake.  There is presently a steep decline in trust in religious and political institutions simply because the behaviors of those who claim to be leaders to unity are actually divisive in their thinking and actions.

Spirituality and religion are not the same thing.  Spirituality is the essence of our relationship with God; religion is how we act out that relationship – for good or ill.

Community and politics are also not the same thing.  Community is the relationships individuals form to build up one another and the environment in which everyone resides; politics is the power brokering through whatever means necessary to make a group of individuals conform to the particular behaviors and beliefs chosen by a few.  Spirituality and community take the divine purpose of God and seek to build up the whole body into the purposes of love, tolerance, kindness, mutual support, and forgiveness.

Religion (as developed by human beings through doctrinal enforcement) and politics (which is always sectarian and adversarial in nature) operate unilaterally and together to force and enforce the will of a certain few on the whole through absolutism, manipulation, gossip, lies, and any other means necessary to create a dependency on those in authority.

In the end two things invariably happen, as history has proven; religious and political institutions change and fall (sometimes with devastating effect) while in genuine spirituality the divine gifts of God will always draw a community together in harmony for our mutual well-being.

Jesus summarized this best when he was asked what was the greatest commandment.  He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment; and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”