"I was in this store, one that sells crystals and all kinds of new age items, and I found myself picking up a rock, a smooth, round rock. There was a little card with it, about the spirituality of nature and how we need to get in touch with it. So I picked it up and brought it to the cash. Then I stopped. Hang on a minute, I thought. I live on an island and there are literally millions of these rocks all around us. I can pick up any one I want --they're on every beach, they're free! How did I get to the point where I'm actually buying a rock? And buying a rock to bring me closer to God? How did that happen?"
There were about 30 of us in the room when a woman told this story. We were gathered to begin a part-time, three-year program in spiritual mentoring (sometimes called spiritual direction). We were at a centre for Christian spirituality and social justice operated by the Presentation Sisters. Everyone laughed when the woman stopped speaking. But no one was laughing at her (and I think she guffawed the loudest); everyone was laughing with her, for most of us recognized her experience in some form.
How did this woman get to that odd little point in her life? She told her story more than six years ago, but her words still bounce around in my mind.
She was in her late thirties then, I would guess, a few years older than me. She was a Christian, a Catholic, and someone committed enough to those traditions to sign up for the spiritual mentoring program. Yet Catholicism had not, apparently, given her enough of what she needed, at least for part of her life. She had turned to rocks (well, almost); others look to crystals, self-help books, meditation, yoga, and a Hollywood version of Tibetan Buddhism.
We assume, perhaps wrongly, that at one time Catholicism did satisfy the spiritual hunger of its adherents. Knowing little to nothing of average Catholics through the ages, we look to the saints for information. It is easy to think of all those spiritually fulfilled and at-home forebears of ours. But Julian of Norwich, for one, knew despair as well as God's love, and, given the writing of St. John of the Cross, and others, she was not alone in this. Julian stayed with the tradition into which she was born, however, living her life as a cloistered nun in a rural corner of England. In this, she is different from so many modern Christians because we leave, we walk sternly away, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently, and occasionally angrily, largely due to the Church's less than impressive response to the crimes of priests and its archaic and hurtful attitudes towards women. Sometimes when we do this, we are like bitter ex-spouses, still unhealthily attached with no route to resolution.
I don't know enough about religious history and sociology to ascertain if people have always left the church. I suspect they always did, at least in small numbers. But I do know that in my lifetime people are leaving in droves. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese in which I live recently found that only 13 percent of local Catholics attend weekly Mass. Across the pond in England, only 5 percent of Anglicans go to church. It seems then that the en masse abandonment of Christianity is something of a modern phenomenon.
Developmentally, it is probably useful to step back from one's own religious tradition, to rebel a little, and explore other faith paths. Jesus himself did a fair bit of this. Interestingly, Canadian sociologist Reginald Bibby says that Christians are starting to drift back to church. Some of them are approaching their spiritual lives in a twelve-step, smorgasbord manner. For them, this beats walking away and never looking back. Even as some aspects disturb them, they don't want to throw away the richness of Christian thought, ritual, and tradition. Although some of the hierarchy might not like it, this is a respectable form of engagement. It may evolve into interesting forms of worship and community.
Meanwhile, the lessons learned and the comforts offered through Christianity reflect the wisdom of 2000 years as well as thousands of years of Judaism before that. This is the same wisdom that is in Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions but it's presented in a familiar way, and it is ours.
The woman with the store-bought rock knew this. She could not leave it all behind. She knew if she did, she would be left with pretty gemstones, and a deep longing that these new trinkets cannot fill.
Maura Hanrahan is an anthropologist and award-winning author.
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