What is it to be spiritual?

And how many, many times have I found myself pondering that question with friends? Answers I heard tended to center around the expression, “spiritual but not religious.” As a teacher of English lit, I would talk about how a poem conveyed an attitude on an issue in a certain spirit. I still like that idea.

Today I take spiritual to mean having to do with spirit. As in this photograph taken by a woman in Prescott at the time of her husband’s death, when the cat that had lain with him until then got up to leave:

Spiritual questions for me nowadays have a lot to do with death and how we live our lives in view of our death. And while spirit still refers to that special quality we all know and recognize in, say, our rugby team or our favorite public figure – maybe Groucho Marx – it refers as well nowadays for me to that special entity we may call soul. Or spirit. And this makes a difference in my talk with friends.

On the right are links to the sections on this topic that I have made to date.

Click here for details about this picture.