The first was his mention of “non-believers”. Considering that about 13% of Americans are non-theists, it is about time that we were acknowledged. It will be a long time before being non-theistic will no longer be a political liability. But that journey starts with the understanding that we exist and that, unlike popular misconception, we are not minions of Satan, we are not morally rudderless, we are not withering in existential misery (at least not more than anyone else), and we vote.

The second was his statement that science will be restored to its proper place. It has been painful to watch the last administration treat science as an inconvenience at best, tossed aside whenever it conflicted with conservative ideology. But as many are now finally realizing, ignoring scientific data doesn’t make reality go away. Having a president who actually respects science is a huge breath of fresh air, indicated by Obama’s excellent appointment of Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. Let’s hope that this is but the start of a grand revival of science in America.

Since it is safe to assume that his prayer (and those of the other religious speakers) will again call on a personal Father-God, I wanted to write my own benediction from a naturalistic orientation. The following is hardly poetic or memory-worthy, but I will be reading it during Warren’s invocation, dreaming of a time when supernatural beliefs no longer have a place in our secular life.

On this historic day we inaugurate our new President and Vice-President, that solemn ceremony epitomizing the secular process of our enduring democracy. We offer our gratitude to those great minds that courageously embarked upon the American experiment, who had faith in the essential goodness of humanity and envisioned a country whose every citizen might equally enjoy the freedom, security, and opportunity that the rule of law might provide. We further give thanks to all those individuals, both civic and military, who have sacrificed all they have to forward the fortunes of our nation.

On this day, we grant unto President-elect Obama, Vice-President-elect Biden, as well as their families and members of their administration our support and our hope that they will find the strength and wisdom they will need in the coming years. In light of the challenges we as a nation face, may they never fall short of the fierce courage, unwavering integrity, compassionate beneficence, and broad open-mindedness they must have to fulfill the potential of their profound duties.

Despite the darkness of these days, we recognize that this can also be a wondrous time, a time of great renewal and revitalization. We must now reaffirm our dedication to a culture of social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Once again we must look to our own resources to refill the national vault, not only with economic prosperity, but just as importantly with our wealth of humanity—education, the arts, science and green technology, health care, and a new age of justice, liberty, and progress. The world is ready to look to us once again, not only as moral leaders, but as a partner in the struggle for a healthy planet and a lasting peace, and we must not, we shall not fall short of these sacred obligations.

Let us mark this day as a turning point in the journey towards the splendor that is our potential, a potential measured by our dedication to a world without poverty, injustice, or fear. A world where all humankind can embrace each other as the Great Family we truly are, and live as one on this divine earth as virtuous and responsible citizens.

The Second Virtue within Sacred River is Integrity. One aspect of integrity is genuineness, which can be interpreted as embodying one’s most authentic self. Of course, this “self” is not an unchanging relic, but an emergent process of being. There are many keys to achieving this flow of genuineness, but perhaps the most salient is self-knowledge or self-awareness. It is no small thing to be able to pay attention to the self, to one’s quiet motivations, expectations, beliefs, assumptions, fears, values, and all the obscured habits of the mind, to follow the tangled thread in the cognitive labyrinth that leads to our manifested actions and feelings. Any increase in such awareness can be considered another step in the journey of personal growth.

It is true that there is value in the knowing alone, but the true value is in using awareness of the self to change. One metaphor for this is Michelangelo’s description of sculpting, when he said that a statue is already fully formed within the stone, and that his job was merely to chip away the remainder. If it is true that a genuine self exists within each of us, then our job is to chip away at those things that prevent fully authentic expression.

Now then, all of these things are potentially disruptive—self-knowledge, chipping away at the inauthentic, and even genuine expression. By disruptive, I mean that processes within ourselves, our daily lives, and our social systems are interrupted and become more chaotic or unpredictable, often resulting in anxiety. For most people, disruption isn’t pleasant. This makes perfect sense—our survival has long depended on our (assumed) ability to control our environment and to predict outcomes. As such, well-being cannot be long maintained in a disruptive environment.

Considering how life is already chaotic enough without our intentionally throwing a wrench in the works, it makes sense that the idea of harmony, balance, peace, or tranquility would be a common theme in nearly every religion. Sacred River also supports these basic aims and recognizes their many values; after all, another aspect of Integrity is maintaining an optimal balance between all elements of the self. Outside of oneself, harmony in the social and ecological environment is vital to establishing fairness and sustainability. It goes without saying that finding peace and contentment in one’s life can be a source of great spiritual satisfaction.

The core aims of Sacred River are meaning, fulfillment, and joy. You may notice that tranquility is not on that list. This is because, regardless of its many positive virtues, tranquility is not an effective tool to achieve the kind of world for which we are working. Now then, one might experience tranquility as a byproduct of fulfillment, and no one here would begrudge that. But we are progressives here at Sacred River—we hold that things can always improve, and sustained contentment often inhibits the motivation needed to bring about change.

To be clear, I am not proposing we need to live a life of perpetual disturbance, or that it is good to induce chaos for its own sake. What I am arguing is that if we are going to aim for progress—both personally and socially—then we need to make friends with disruption. We each need to find ways to harness the power of disruption. A forest needs fires on occasion to stay healthy, and the same can be said of human life. Fulfillment and genuineness require that we challenge ourselves to break out of unnecessary habits of the body and mind, to learn new knowledge and skills, and to try novel ways of thinking and living. This requires the courage to leap into the unknown, the humility to realize that we don’t have all the answers, and the curiosity to wonder what change might bring.

No doubt about it, we have a mountain of problems to fix—two wars, an economic meltdown, a broken healthcare system, a melting planet, decaying infrastructure, and civil rights under siege. Although so many complex problems cannot be blamed on any one cause, I believe that a major component has been the abandonment of the idea of the common good, replaced by the promotion of selfishness, greed, and radical individualism. In fact, the notion of civic cooperation for secular purposes (religious efforts have been excepted) has been long attacked as communistic and fascist. One must admire the propaganda efforts put forth to convince so many Americans that when a tiny group of wealthy elites do well we all do well, and when they hurt we all hurt. Large cracks have finally appeared in this fantasy, but it will take many hammers from progressive groups and thinkers to shatter the illusion. This must happen, because our problems are so many and so large that only cooperative efforts will effectively address them.

The state of our country was not inevitable; we have the resources and knowledge to address what ails us, but they have been suppressed under the yoke of conservatism. My own greatest hope is that the new administration will make the necessary investments to turn our assets into pragmatic solutions that will benefit one and all. We also have a chance to begin educating people on both the realities that face us and the ways we can better our situation, all without the filter of evangelical and conservative ideologies. Further, we can, if we are lucky and industrious, put forward a new public ethic grounded in empathy and integrity. In some cases this will need to be accomplished legislatively, especially in regards to corporate behavior, but ideally it will happen through example.

Many Americans are waking up from the dream woven by corporations, evangelicals, and conservatives; they are becoming savvy to the lies, fairy tales, and twisted logic. This is an opportunity for Naturalists to offer an alternative, one based in reason, empiricism, and pragmatism that is also guided by compassion, imagination, and wonder. It is an opportunity to remind people of the virtues of cooperation and shared sacrifice in service to the greater good. It is an opportunity to make the switch from throwaway consumerism to sustainability. The pabulum Americans have been given has been attractive and sweet but ultimately without nourishment—it is time for people to find true sustenance, a richer fare that feeds lives of meaning, fulfillment, and joy. That is my wish for this New Year.

In some (not all) immanent systems of thought, the divine can be seen as something injected into or living within the stuff of the universe. In these cases, even though there is a strong relationship between matter and the divine, the two are nevertheless separate “substances”. It is even possible to see sacredness as a kind of material property.

There exists, of course, countless argument and conceptions of the divine and its relationship to humans. But I would like to offer a completely different view of divinity (of which I certainly do not claim ownership). If you, like me, accept that spirituality is a biopsychosocial phenomenon, then perhaps you might agree that sacredness can be defined, not as a property (whether transcendent or immanent), but as a lived experience. In other words, something becomes divine because one experiences it as divine.

In this view, the source of divinity is us. As such, sacredness does not require a force or transcendent personality. Neither does the process of sacralization change the nature or essence of an object (even when that object is the self). Rather, what changes is the relationship between the person and the object. My primary area of interest in all this is in the nature of that relationship—its causes, consequences, scope, sensations, and meaning. These are things I hope to explore for, well, the rest of my life, not just intellectually, but personally.

This is the grand adventure of spirituality. There is no end goal out there, no Ultimate Truth to ascertain, no perfected state of being to accomplish. There is only the creative, dynamic flow of life, each person being an integrated part of the Universal All, unique and yet one with everything. In the religious naturalism, pantheistic view, being spiritual doesn’t mean altering one’s essential self, it means developing an ever more complex, mature relationship with the self and the world in a way that is highly meaningful, fulfilling, and joyous. This is the divine journey and what it means to swim the Sacred River.

The allegorical position is one way to prevent such religious insanity while maintaining a spiritual orientation. It also has the advantage of allowing for a maturing state of mind that doesn’t have to be cordoned off from the everyday world. This is important because maturity is an aspect of the progressive perspective. By maturity, I essentially mean a state of mind that is increasingly complex, flexible, and cohesive. Non-allegorical religious beliefs tend to reduce all three. But the allegorical perspective allows for multiple points of view, a changing environment, and an ever-shifting understanding of the universe that allows for a spiritual path to be deeply integrated with the natural world.

The allegorical and progressive orientations also encourage a less vitriolic view towards out groups and even helps to break down the concept of in and out by promoting a view of connectivity. This is also a sign of maturity; the ability to grasp the reality that all beings and things are integrated parts of the natural world is both reflective of and promotes a complex, flexible, and cohesive mind.

A mature mind is a rational mind, at least in its every-day state. It is able to tolerate and absorb new information, even when that information goes counter to existing prejudices about reality. The immature mind behaves differently—it is intolerant of new ideas (especially when those ideas do not conform to religious beliefs), it attacks instead of questions, it blocks out rather than takes in, it separates and denounces when it could connect and embrace. Such a mind is provincial rather than ecumenical. It is irrational—it must be, because too often the world refuses to conform with its assumptions, and only by abandoning reason can it square beliefs with reality.

A mind that is open to and curious about the world as it is is by definition a progressive mind. Such a mind recognizes that our knowledge is imperfect, that there is always more than meets the eye, and that truth is filtered by one’s bias. This perspective is not incompatible with a spiritual path. However, there are only two basic ways to possess both: either they have to be separate and compartmentalized (resulting in reduced cohesion and flexibility) or the religious worldview has to be in harmony with the laws of the natural world as we understand them using the best tools at hand. This latter choice is, of course, one benefit of religious naturalism.

But the degradation of mature, rational minds is all too often the great cost of unbending supernatural belief or religious ideology. This world has long suffered under the yoke of such thinking, and only by promoting and developing a maturity of mind can the world escape the chains of ignorance, cruelty, and fear.

In a very general sense, progressivism is a worldview that recognizes the worth of human life and seeks to maximize freedom, opportunity, and fairness in society. Further, it aspires towards improving the well-being of all—via education, the arts, technology, social justice, health care, economic opportunity, et cetera—while also balancing human interests with those of the natural world. A progressive vision, therefore, seeks to enhance the liberty and fulfillment of both individuals and groups while simultaneously cultivating social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Progressives seek to manifest this vision through the promotion of diversity, empathy, pragmatism, critical thinking and debate, innovation, and cultural participation.

The above outline is very broad, but Progressivism can also by applied to religion specifically. There is, of course, a huge amount of information out there regarding progressive spirituality. I agree with the basic outline given by UU theologian James Luther Adams:

(1) Revelation and truth are not closed, but constantly revealed.
(2) All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion.
(3) Affirmation of the moral obligation to direct one’s effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community.
(4) Denial of the immaculate conception of virtue and affirmation of the necessity of social incarnation. Good must be consciously given form and power within history.
(5) The resources (divine and human) that are available for achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate (but not necessarily immediate) optimism. There is hope in the ultimate abundance of the Universe.

I can string these together to say that a progressive spirituality recognizes the emergent nature of reality, promotes liberty and social beneficence, and aspires to meaningful change. At the root of all this is the idea that things can and should improve. While the world will always be imperfect, we have a moral obligation to make it better however we can. Yes, there will always be disagreements about what “better” is exactly and how to get there. But there is nevertheless an underlying agreement that change and improvement is both possible and desirable. Further, I would posit that a progressive vision of spiritual improvement would be a desire not to force a single way of being on everyone, but rather to create the conditions necessary to allow unique personal and cultural differences to thrive.

Now then, I take all this one step closer—I maintain that a progressive spirituality applies equally to the self. As such, I believe that I am an emergent being, flowing from the unchanging source of my being, yet constantly in a state of change (just as the Sacred River is and is not the same river from moment to moment). I have a moral obligation to improve, mature, and grow as a human being. As it happens, I have some firm ideas of what that means.

The first thing is what I call the Three Domains of Health, which include the physical, the psychological, and the characterological. Physical health is pretty straightforward. By psychological health, in broad terms, I mean the development of cognitive coherence and flexibility; adequate emotional self-regulation; the ability to form healthy relationships and experience social attunement; having a stable (but not rigid) sense of self; and the capability to be inwardly and outwardly aware (i.e. mindfulness). As a budding psychotherapist, I of course have more details on this, but will leave it as it stands for the sake of brevity. I have reduced characterological health to what I believe are four irreducible yet interconnected traits: courage, integrity, beneficence, and openness. Every one of these “health domains” are amenable to change and improvement, a goal geared not only to lead to a happy life, but to enable optimal functioning, to become the most you that you can be.

Other areas of improvement include knowledge acquisition (both experiential and didactic), agency (the ability to be effective in the world), and what can be called “mystical attunement” (I dislike this phrase, but lack a better one at the moment), the increased perception of connection/union between one’s deepest self and Nature/God/The All. I will try to explore each of these and other categories in future posts. The takeaway here is that changes in each of these areas do more than add knowledge and abilities—they profoundly change the very nature of the person.

And so we now have a basic spiritual scaffolding consisting of religious naturalism, allegoricalism, and progressivism. The first looks to the natural world and our place in it as the source of understanding reality and developing meaning; the second supports the development and use of religious objects (icons, rituals, texts, etc) while acknowledging that they are ultimately symbols for human ideas, values, principles, experiences, and desires; and the third insists on personal and social evolution by promoting liberty, opportunity, and fairness in society and health, education, agency, and mystical attunement in individuals. There are, of course, as yet unspoken philosophies embedded in this scaffolding, such as emergence theory, sacred humanism, process theology, and so on. But now that we have a basic outline, we can begin to fill in some details. I hope you will continue to join me.