Rabbi Lerner's sermon available as audio download.

[mmaestro]

The audio for the sermon I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is finally available. Clickie, then click on sermons, and do the download thing. You should all listen to it (but bypass the painful 1:30 introduction first), but I'd be especially interested to hear the thoughts of

Comments

[itchyfidget]

I listened to this the other day, thanks. Quite enjoyed it - Rabbi Lerner is a good speaker. I'm not brilliant at taking in auditory information but I think I got the point of the whole thing, and I think I agree with him about the state of things. Mr Itchy and I had an interesting discussion about the extent to which employers are overlooking their employees' emotional (spiritual, if you like, though being atheist, we wouldn't necessarily frame it in those terms) needs.

Incidentally, I was amused how very like a Quaker meeting the Unitarian order of service is :)

[mmaestro]

I tend to think of talking about emotion as a more clinical way of looking at things. Spiritual is more gut feeling, IMO (one of the problems of religion is defining what is and isn't spiritual or religious, an almost impossible task, but I do think the two things are distinct) - an employer may look out for an employee's emotional wellbeing, but that will generally only be to ensure greater productivity. Spiritual concern almost by definition has to be person to person - through government we may be able to prevent business from wrecking such a sense, but I don't think we can really foster it much through government or business. Thankfully, I think most people naturally feel this way, so all you need to do is create an environment where that can shine through.

I've always felt that there's a shared sense of... spirituality ( :-P ) between the UU and Quakers.

[itchyfidget]

Oh, I would never say that religious and spiritual are the same thing, any more than I would say that emotional and spiritual are the same thing. I would avoid using the world spiritual to refer to my non-material needs, because I think it has overtones of religiosity ... *shrug*

I'm trying to think of a more appropriate word (one that doesn't have any theological implication) than 'emotional' ... social, maybe? Personal? I dunno.

[mmaestro]

I think the problem you'll run into is that until recently, spirituality has almost always been directly connected to religion. So despite their being distinct things (as Lerner noted, atheists can be spiritual too), we tend to think of the word as a religious one. I don't think that's necessarily accurate, although of course many individuals (myself, for one thing) foster their spiritual experience through a religious framework.

Random connected question: would you consider humanism a religion? I know I do.