Looking For Answers ‘Spirituality’ - Is It A Yearning For Heightened Meaning Or Simply A Trend-Of-The-Day?

“Spirituality” has become a blurry buzzword.

It’s everywhere these days. And it has come to mean many things.

It surfaces in discussions of stress-reduction programs and in articles about quantum physics. It shows up in books describing macrobiotic diets and in conversations about alternative health care.

And, yes, the S-word seems center-stage in virtually every public exploration of God and faith - especially when the participants are queasy about uttering the term “religion.”

Spirituality is hot and getting hotter. Just check out the best-seller lists and the top-10 ratings for that TV show about the adventures of an angel.

America has become one big Spirituality Blow-Out Sale.

But does this reflect a genuine cultural yearning for deeper and more meaningful understandings of life or is this just one more faddish obsession of a shallow society?

Both, observers say.

“It’s just another chapter of the human engagement with the big religious questions,” said Jerry Sittser, associate professor of religion and philosophy at Whitworth College.

He said alternative approaches to getting in touch with the sacred have an understandable appeal to those who regard the traditional church experience as authoritarian and irrelevant. But he suspects that the widespread suspicion of and hostility toward “organized religion” often has little basis in thoughtful analysis.

“I think it’s more of a kind of cultural assumption that becomes pervasive and begins to fill the world-view of people, even when they themselves have not had a negative experience with religion,” said Sittser.

In addition, he suggested that some who cite the oppressive burden of freedom-denying rules as their explanation for turning their backs on mainstream churches subsequently do something that might be viewed as ironic. They embrace a restrictive list of rights and wrongs somewhere under the umbrella of alternative spirituality.

“Inevitably, any kind of religion is going to become institutionalized in some fashion,” said Sittser. “It can’t just be infinitely individualized.”

Still, just as many look askance at traditional religious tenets and practices, some ‘90s-style approaches to finding truth and enlightenment have their critics.

“I look at a lot of the stuff that’s selling as spirituality, and it’s garbage,” said Joy Milos, an associate professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University. “It’s the hokiest. It’s the quick-fix.”

Say what you will about the major world faiths, she said. They are all rooted in religious experience, not marketing.

But according to the director of a Spokane organization that books speakers and puts on programs dealing with spiritual, metaphysical and holistic topics, traditional churches have for too long served up an off-putting menu of guilt and denial.

“Those teachings and doctrines haven’t worked for us,” said Conscious Living’s AnneMarie. “They’re too black and white.”

She said interest in alternative approaches to faith is “exploding,” driven largely by baby boomers’ desire to find explanations that make sense to them.

“We are the group of people that went through the ‘60s,” she said. “So our minds tend to be a lot more open. We want to know what actually links the idea of spirit and energy and matter.”

She said that search partly explains the popularity of authors such as mind-body guru Deepak Chopra.

Others point to bulges in the population among younger people - the boomers’ children, for instance - as being a factor in all this.

“There are a lot of people at transition points as far as life questions,” said GU’s Milos.

They tend to be looking for answers. And there are a lot of choices. The offerings out there range from “The Celestine Prophecy” to books about Goddess worship to what some have described as spiritual comfort books such as “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

“We’re really a society that’s living in despair,” said AnneMarie. “We need anything that will lift us out of that and give us some control over what’s happening around us.”

And she said it is no accident that this avid and expanding interest in spiritual matters is heating up as we approach the new millennium.

“This is a special time,” she said.

Books and tapes addressing spiritual themes constitute a big chunk of the lineup at Spokane’s Suntree Books. And owner Darlene Turner believes she knows why they sell.

“Our whole society is so totally focused on making money,” she said. “But a lot of people who have made a lot of money find that they’re still not happy. They find that there’s an emptiness. They ask ‘Is this all there is?”’

Others have suggested that the recognition that science and technology do not have all the answers tends to nudge some of us toward consideration of God and religion. The next steps in that journey, however, head off in many different directions.

Whenever Spokane author Mitch Finley uses the word “spirituality” when addressing a group, he always stops to tell people what he means.

“It’s a word that has been hard to pin down for a very long time,” said Finley, author of more than 20 religious and inspirational books. “A lot of people assume that when you use it, you are talking about something other-worldly. So I have to stop and say that I am talking about the real world here.”

Catholic theologian Michael Downey, currently a visiting professor at Gonzaga University, said it’s no mystery why people are attracted to explorations of spirituality.

“We live in a culture that is so profoundly dehumanizing and so profoundly depersonalizing that people are deeply wounded, even though they appear to be clever and robust and strong and self-determined,” said Downey. “So it’s not odd that people are looking for help, for healing.”

Where to turn for that help is a personal matter, debated since time immemorial.

But Downey, reflecting his own perspective, cautioned against a total reliance on turning inward:

“I think we fool ourselves if we think we can engage in any spiritual quest if our only lights are our own.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Knight-Ridder illustration