“Will you go to heaven? Answer these two questions and find out.” The words were painted on a piece of cardboard and taped to the front of a card table set up on the grass. A gray-haired man and woman sat on folding chairs behind it. I said hello. They did not respond, remaining motionless with frozen smiles. Had they answered the questions and were pleased with the results? It is comforting to think things are in our control.

I had a free day. I didn’t have a plan and wasn’t looking for one. I was free. I seized the day. I walked with step-by-step, breath-by-breath deliberation across the mammoth expanse of Chicago’s Grant Park. My felt moment-by-moment sensations—rich, textured, and intense—made the expanse of the park feel intimate. I mentally counted the seconds of my inhales. The seconds of my exhales. Someday my breathing will stop. Every second counts. Everything that happens happens right now. What was happening? Everything. How else to explain being alive?

My walking and breathing were my current state of affairs in life.

A windy day in the Windy City. A bracing baptismal breeze of cool moisturizing mist swept over me in vertical waves at irregular moments—refreshing on a muggy July day. I was a considerable distance from proud Buckingham Fountain, with its computerized dance of playing water jetties, but could still catch the humidifying drift as it suffused the air. Children near the fountain would squeal and run to avoid being captured by it. I watched the teasing approach and avoidance dance of the youngsters with delight. It was as if they had just discovered water—or the potentiality of it. Adults near the fountain stood still and quiet, as if they were asleep.

I stopped and let my small black backpack slowly slip along my arm to the ground and lowered myself down to the carpet of grass. I felt my body contact the earth.

I focused my attention on a tenor saxophone overplaying the eighties disco hit, “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” Amicably chatting people on the sidewalk with disengaged looks ignored the plea. An occasional explosion of laughter from a private joke would disrupt the moisturized air.

The intensity and clarity of the cloudless, cerulean sky domed the unrestrained cityscape. My eyes swept up and down from the intensity of the color overhead to the paling of it at the edging horizon line of Lake Michigan.

I fanned my hand across the recently sheered blades of lawn in front of me, and noted the dozens of shades of green making up the living carpet. Only my sweeping arm cast a shadow under the high noon sun.

As I looked up I saw two men approaching. They appeared to be zeroing in on me across the green lawn. Their poised bodily movements and confident eyes gave them away—self-assured, not self-effacing. They were making a stand as they walked. They traversed the ground with a commissioned compass that pointed to an empowering letter “T” “Truth.” I would not call it a natural cadence. It was an affected walk—shaped, influenced. Each man carried a single book.

The space between them and me shrank. I looked at them cautiously. They looked at me as if I was not one of them.

“Every person is the creation of himself,
the image of his own thinking and believing.
As individuals think and believe, so they are.”
— Claude Bristol (1891–1951)

I gave the motorcyclist the horn as he swerved with perilous bravado from a side street into the lane in front of me. He gave me the finger in response. An alarmist, blaring horn and an assertive, quiet hand gesture. We both got the message.

After the billowing, brownish exhaust fumes swept over my car like a swelling wave engulfing a seawall, I decided to enjoy the show.

I found myself to be the caboose of an artistic creation of pure, attention-grabbing drama. Something was being spoken in unharmonious pulses of form and color. The biker was wearing severe-looking black leather gear. His jacket was peppered with macabre and messianic memorabilia. He was wearing his religion on his sleeve—with background noise from esoteric slogans, symbols and decorative accessories. He looked to be saying a fusion of feelings. On the back of his bike, above a glittering bumper, an unconvincing, sixties-era peace symbol pleaded to be noticed among competing religious emblems and Earth-centered identifications—problematic contradictions that designated him as a Christian and a pagan. The cyclist tribal look was intimidating, but I reminded myself that looks are deceiving. Was he simply an energized spirit, hungry for attention—or the prisoner of a consuming identification?

A roadway intersection was coming into view. The biker, confident and cool, doubled his speed, elbowed his way through the traffic, and high-tailed it through the juncture. I watched his pestering fumes dissipate into the landscape.

The traffic signal changed from a cautionary yellow to an adamant red as I approached.

My eye was drawn up to the radiance of the red light hovering from the heavens.

STOP.

My attention then shifted from the commanding red light above to the reminding red taillights below on the two cars in front on me. Motionless, serenely in place, they parked perfectly parallel with each other—one in the right lane, the other in the left. Both drivers sat rigid behind their steering wheels, appearing from the back as identical replications of each other: male, same hair color and theme—heavy on gel—begging to be noticed.

My eyes dropped to the bumper stickers on each of these white sedans. Bumper stickers—begging to be noticed. This is the silent, deliberate work of these sticky-paper appendages: Pleading to be paid attention to … announcing … declaring. Some even command you to honk if you agree. The goal is to be influential. They are not interested in open-minded conversations. Both stickers were stuck on the right side of their respective bumpers. Both stickers were stuck tilted to the right. Both stickers were right—just ask the drivers.

Directly ahead of me in the left lane, on the Subaru, in black and white: “Know Jesus, Know Peace; No Jesus, No Peace.”

Across the delineating line, in the right lane, on the Chevrolet, in green and white: “Find Peace with Islam.”

Each man was wearing his religion on his bumper. Each was making a case that “peace” can be found in the belief of a particular, singular, religion.

I held the words close with my eyes. I read the words out loud with solemn enunciation, and then listened to the answering silence inside my vehicle. I looked at the words again. What was I seeing now? Verses. Holy books came to mind. Christians believe the Bible is the true Word of God. Muslims believe the Koran is the perfect Word of God. The Bible says those who do not believe Jesus is the Son of God are condemned (John 3:18). Mohammad said that anyone who believes Jesus was divine will spend an eternity in hell (5:71-75; 19:30-38).

The assumptions now in my face were familiar. Still, I pondered the silent, coincidental “collision” of religious vehicles before me. Both these faith-labeled vehicles, heading in the same direction and endorsing the same direction, found “peace” from two different directions. Both worshiped the same deity, but from different routes. Both categorically put the kibosh on questions or doubts. The two drivers were fastened to beliefs … beliefs in no uncertain terms.

In my mind, Faith was about merciless uncertainly … about hazy things … a specified blurriness. Organized belief makes life completely understood. Be gone ambiguity! All matters of the world are put in their proper place.

I think it is natural to wonder about things. Life is ambiguity. Life is questioning. What would happen to me if I did not live with doubt? I would disappear into belief. Where is that? In the topography of the land called security. Security is comforting. But in this safety-zone, could my true self emerge?—not my dedicated, aspirant self—my valid self? How would I know if I was I working things out for myself?

Peace. They were sitting ten feet apart, and it was safe to presume both drivers had found it—however they each defined it—no yardsticks to measure it.

The traffic signal turned green.

GO.

The Subaru and the Chevrolet proceeded on their way. Neither driver had ventured a curious look at the other during the pause while facing the light.

I watched them as they accelerated. They remained shoulder-to-shoulder. I wondered who would defer to the other when the road merged into a single lane up ahead. I wondered if the follower would then note the other’s sticker and ponder … anything.

How to wring every trickle of meaning out of this unexpected cathartic experience? Was peace the substance of something or the absence of something? I then remembered myself as a youngster at wakes or funerals hearing my older relatives, in calm voices, describe the deceased as, “at peace”.

I listened to my heart beat—softly steady, cleanly calm. My right hand left the steering wheel and I ran a finger across my brow. My heartbeat spoke again. I would call this voice Peace.

I was in motion. As I passed under the traffic signal I looked and pondered the compelling and commanding green light—and what I would look like if I had hair heavy on gel.

The light evoked associations of power, control and order—with an angelic glow. We unconsciously obey even a light bulb. Towering above me, the light grounded me. A seagull lingered overhead—holding its own in the articulating airstream. He or she was in the midst of noisy traffic and looked to be untroubled.

“Passion and peace can never live together”
—Source unknown

I fell into my religion by accident: I was born into it.

As for my birth, I was a cesarean baby; I waited for someone to come and get me. I did not arrive with a splash but immediately responded to life as most of us do: I cried and sought solace. When I felt comforted, I regained my composure. Comfort brings security.

We can become emotionally caught up in what brings us comfort. As an infant, this comfort may have been primarily physical: food; human contact; warmth. As I grew older these pacifiers were superseded by a need for involvement with others and affirmations by the significant people in my life. Growing older still, the greatest need was the establishment of “security operations”—an unconscious system working to seek approval from others and the prevention of anxieties. The result: a mode of living less concerned with making sense of what was going on around me, and more focused on a pursuit of identification with others. My individuality went underground.

When you are young, winter does not seem so cold, summer not so hot, and articles of faith not so blunt. As I grew, I was indoctrinated into a belief system—before I could understand what a doctrine was or question why I needed one. I just followed the program.

We are not born mature. We need shaping. We are influenced. We begin as a human silhouette and hopefully develop into an embodiment by way of the formative forces that surround us: family, culture, society, education. These authorities and persuasions become my roots. Roots help us feel we are not alone. Roots give us the strength to incorporate changes in our lives. Roots can also govern our lives unconsciously.

“Religion is like holding onto a rock in the middle of a raging river; spirituality is learning how to swim.”
—Anonymous

My room was the size of a narrow walk-in closet and absorbed me in a matter of seconds. I felt confined—Alcatraz came to mind. If I stood in the middle of the space with outstretched arms, I could almost touch the unpainted cinderblock walls on both sides. My cell contained nothing more than a bed, a wooden desk, a chair, a lamp, and a small sink in the corner. There was one faucet—cold. A simple wooden cross was hung on the wall. There could be no concerns about running out of hangers. There was no closet. There was also no mirror in the room. To look at yourself was vanity.

The slow, somber toll of a bell proclaimed bedtime. It was 7:30 according to my wristwatch—no clocks in the rooms—a timeless look. I was wide-awake.

I laid in bed listening to the overflowing silence. It was loud and clear.

The bed was the width of a surfboard and just as comfortable to lie on. It was a row of pine boards with a three-inch foam pad on top. My tailbone was parked on the planks. The edges of the thin sheet covering me were frayed.

I felt my heart beating as I lay there silent and still. I listened to it. It rocked my entire body as if I was on a freight train riding over the rhythmic glitches of an old track in a repeated endless swayback. Like riding gentle waves on my surfboard. What were the beats saying? Some day they would stop. I would stop. I was at the right place. Monasteries are about stopping.

I caught slivers of light out of the corner of my left eye. Turning my head, I noticed two-inch wide, eight-foot long, horizontal bars of gold on the wall of my room.

Speaking in silence, the bars of light illuminated the landscape of my room, bringing clarity to the intentional emptiness.

It was not a religious vision. There was no mystery. The setting sun was shyly sinking behind the winter hills. The light entering my room was filtered through half-open plantation blinds hanging from the single window.

In less than five minutes, the golden bars were gone from sight, but still visible in my mind.

It was a spiritual experience because I paid attention to it.

Spirituality is rooted in being awake. Listening. Observing. Personal enlightenment can’t be put into words. The language of spirituality is silence. I wondered if words were ever helpful in discovering truth. When people start using words, the result is not necessarily enlightenment, but often, argument.

Morning. 3:15 AM. I had fifteen minutes to make it to Matins in the monastery chapel. Matins is the first of the eight “offices” that make up the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the church that consecrated the day to God. Lauds was then at 6:45 AM. The remaining six were spread throughout the day with Compline to call it a day before the monks retired at 7:30 PM. In summer, the day starts in the dark of the night and ends in the light of day. The idea was to “flow” with the timetable of the day—and night. An intense preoccupation with structure here. It was a repetitive daily schedule that was a nonstop journey. The days did not finish with a period or even a semicolon. There seemed to be no beginnings or endings. Sleep was a comma, a pause.

“All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by silence.”

— Herman Melville (1819–1851)

I wondered as I listened to the woman converse with her friend, what made “a crisis of faith” an emergency? Thinking did. Thinking can be dangerous because it can open up that can of worms called feelings. Feeling your feelings is not debilitating when it leads to self-understanding. I have come to believe that many people think questioning matters of faith causes it to shrivel up. To think and feel is to practice the art of life.

Shifting her voice out of overdrive, she paraphrased her minister, “doubts about faith should be ‘expelled’ from my mind. He told me I should just not think about these things—just believe—and I will never lose my way, and that God doesn’t want me to feel confused.”

Her minister had told her how God doesn’t want her to feel.

“I immediately felt back on the road,” the woman now said softly. “We ended with a prayer, and he told me I was good to go.”

Her religious grounding was now, apparently, stable again. However, I discerned a cathartic spiritual portal to her self had been sealed shut. I was a witness to someone held captive in an elusive assemblage of convictions reinforced by a leader of a particular opinion.

Confinement became her. All the paperwork and conducted operations of her faith were handed to her. I did not hear an evolving stage of spiritual maturation taking place. She was being steered by a belief configuration she knew next to nothing about, and reading a deeper perspective on the origins and evolution of it threw her into a spin. Her identity—how she defined herself—was being intimidated.

What I perceived as an observer compelled me to pause and examine my own needs, patterns of reactions, fixations, identifications and self-definitions. What comfortable mantles did I still bundle myself up on that could be closing my consciousness? Keeping that question ever in mind is vital for me. I believe we have to get out of ourselves to know ourselves. It takes courage to take hold of your life in your own hands, burn your own inner light, and look fearlessly at the truth of your Truth. Belief systems can be barriers.

There will always be someone in your life telling you what you should or should not feel. You won’t die if you don’t listen.

I stepped out into the unfiltered sunlight. My car awaited. The sky: simply brilliant.

“Doubt is the key to knowledge.”
— Persian Proverb

Looking into the Light is an outgrowth of my professional and personal experiences during the past 40 years. My work as a pastoral minister, jail chaplain, psychotherapist, addictions treatment program director, high school and college instructor, and visual artist, radically altered my thinking about spirituality–how to define it; how demographic, social, and cultural variables influence it; and the meaning and consequences of religious cruise control. Where there is understanding, growth is possible.

Being spiritual is living mindfully—being conscious of one’s consciousness.

To be spiritual is to be grounded in perceptions gleaned from one’s own experience, not in standardized opinions on the essence of reality. A spiritual state of mind requires no prerequisite beliefs, structured claims, or historically systemic contexts for entrance. A framework of specific claims about the universe and the purpose of human life steers one’s thoughts, and can be a constraint to a free and self-responsible inner self quest. These personal explorations and understandings are how we get to know ourselves, and realize our universality with others.

To foster a mature spirituality is to understand the human condition without desires or fears—nothing can disturb your peace of mind. It is the capacity to be silent and at ease with the unknown; to be aware of what you are, and what you are not; what is real and now, and what is ideal and longing. Contemplating mystery is a source of strength. Spiritual growth requires living with the questions that arise from the inscrutability of life.

What matters is simply the intention in your heart, the awareness of your mind, and the quiet of your soul. The sensing heart lives in wonder. The conscious mind lives in questions. The receptive soul lives in silence.

I invite you to be open to thinking about your beliefs and to not be fearful of questioning, exploring, observing. The result: intellectual integrity and the discovery of dazzling reality. If the entire planet practiced this approach, the whole world would be on the same side.

“We are constantly invited to be who we are.”

— Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

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