30 Real Religious Moments

Take a moment to ponder the most religious moments you’ve experienced in your life.

I’m not talking specifically about a moment in nature, at a shrine, or anything like that — but rather, events that made indelible impressions on you spiritually. Moments when time stood still, when you were in that thin place between the ordinary and the divine, when you knew you were a part of something greater, holier.

I’ll give you an example from my own life.

One of the most profoundly religious moments of my existence was when my son needed stitches. He had hurt himself badly at the playground and was taken to the emergency room.

Understandably, he flipped out when the doctors mended the tender cut near his eye. They used wipes, syringes, and needles to clear away the wound.

Emmett thrashed so wildly on the emergency room table, I had to hold him down.

(This isn’t exactly true. The technicians were the ones to hold Emmett down. But in my revised version of reality, I needed to be the one holding my boy.)

I had to physically restrain him with all the strength in my upper body as the doctors performed their medical work.

Emmett looked at me, screaming in terror. He was beyond delirious. I could do nothing but hold him down and look back at his sobbing eyes.

That was one of the most religious moments of my life!

(Just writing about it now, I feel myself taken back to that touch of holiness I encountered. There is something inexplicable about it. It may have to do with the fact that Emmett felt close to death, or that I thought I might lose him.)

Another religious moment occurred for me while I was listening to a woman talk about her past. She was in unbelievable pain as the words came out — her distress evident in all parts of her body. Being there, being a witness to her pain, watching her dealing with it right in front of me, was a truly religious moment for me.

How about you? Have you experienced deeply profound moments in your life, where you witnessed something holier?

It’s always challenging to talk about these kinds of things with words. To describe something unlimited, like a religious experience, with the medium of language, feels like trying to taste the sweetness of a peach based on a mere photograph of the fruit.

Real religious moments don’t always come when we’re doing what we think we should be doing. They just happen.

Jason Siff, a meditation instructor, defines meditation as what happens when you are meditating. I would like you to think of religious experiences similarly — that they are simply those things you define as “religious experiences.” After all, you are the foremost authority on what a religious experience is for you.

This brings me back to the mission of Religion-Outside-The-Box — to empower you in your spiritual-religious life.

Spiritual-religious advice: Contemplate your religious moments.

Thin Places - Sparky Jamison

My friend Sparky Jamison is one of Annie's Godparents. Jane and I admire her and her husband Jeff's relationship and the relationship they have with their children – both of whom are now off in college. ¶ A while ago, Sparky read a phrase of Marcus Borg's and was excited about it. I asked her to write it as an article. Here it is. Thank you, Sparky.

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Every now and then, as I seek God in the everyday, I’m astonished to find that there is the thinnest of membranes between us, God and me — a time or place in which I can sense a nearness of spirit that’s hard to describe. Those moments are likely to leave me with inadequate words, for it’s an experience of profound comfort and grace and, dare I say, understanding of my place in God and God’s place in me. It’s not ecstasy. It’s quieter. But it’s so intense that it can’t be sustained for very long.

Marcus J. Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, uses the term thin places to describe this nearness.

[Thin spaces are] places where the boundary between the two levels [ordinary experience and the sacred] becomes very soft, porous, permeable. Thin places are places where the veil momentarily lifts, and we behold God, experience the one in whom we live, all around us and within us…A thin place is anywhere our hearts are opened. To use sacramental language, a thin place is a sacrament of the sacred, a mediator of the sacred, a means whereby the sacred becomes present to us. A thin place is a means of grace….sometimes our hearts are broken open by such experiences.

Borg goes on to say that thin places can be a literal place, or an experience. It can be music or art, joy or suffering. It can be worship or prayer. It is “the opening of the self to the Spirit of God by spending time in thin places – those places and practices through which we become open to and nourished by the Mystery in whom we love and move and have our being.”

The most profound such time was just after the death of my mother a few years ago. When she took her last breath, just before her heart stopped, a single tear slipped out of the corner of her eye. Just one very small tear. It might have simply been a physiological response to a body shutting down. Or it might have been something else. It stayed with me, and still does. It was a message to me of sadness and relief and love and surrender. And comfort. In the days after her death I talked at length to those closest to me about God’s nearness in that moment. Words tumbled out of me, into willing ears and onto pages. I described the gift of bearing witness to her death, and her passage to God– where? - as a moment during which a window was open wide. And it remained open to me for many days. I had a sense in the days that followed that I needed to stay by the window and pay close attention to God as long as possible because I knew it would gradually, necessarily, mercifully, nearly close. And it did.

A prayer: Our hearts long to be broken open in this way. Mine does. When it happens, God make me willing to remain by the open window while I can.

Employment Opportunity: Self-Hate Required

Imagine the following on an advertisement:

Are you overly critical of yourself?

Do you invest in misery?

The Bank of Self-Hate is looking to hire!

Hopefully, you are not overly qualified.

The idea comes from the book There Is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate by self-proclaimed teacher and student of Soto Zen, author Cheri Huber. She explains that many people do "good deed" after "good deed" depositing "credits" into a proverbial bank account. When they decide to treat themselves well and attempt to make a metaphoric withdrawal, the banker at "the Bank of Self-Hate" informs them that they haven't done enough.

She advocates the seemingly insane notion of self-love.

How about you?

Do you feel you haven’t made enough deposits in your proverbial bank to warrant you being kind to yourself?

Spiritual-religious advice: be kind to yourself simply because you are you.