I don’t watch a lot of television, but I
have been recently enamored with the situation comedy “Parks and Recreation” a
biting satire about life in a small town Indiana Parks and Recreation
department, complete with an under functioning, arch conservative director, Ron
Swanson, who would just as well like to see government privatized and an
erstwhile assistant director Leslie Knope played by Amy Poehler who wants
nothing more than to make her department a paragon of public virtue and
service. At one point in the story,
Leslie, heartbroken asks Ron why her current love interest is so interesting
but so emotionally distant. Her boss, in
a moment of uncharacteristic sensitivity explains it all this way:
‘He’s a tourist, Leslie. He vacations in
people’s lives, takes pictures, puts them in his scrapbook, and moves on. All
he’s interested in are stories. Basically, Leslie, he’s selfish. And you’re
not. That’s why you don’t like him.’
The problem with tourism, whether it is
visiting a destination, having an experience or searching for life’s deeper
meanings is that it lacks authenticity and commitment. After all we just go there, we don’t live
there. A tourist isn’t invested in the outcome of what they are visiting; they
are just consuming that experience. There is no authority in just visiting
anyplace or experience. It is empty of the larger meaning that comes from being
a living part of where you are. Like all tourists, we vacation in other’s
people lives and traditions but we don’t live there.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually love
being a tourist. I love to travel and visit places I have never been before.
But I am very clear about my role in a new place or new experience; I am there
to learn and appreciate. I am there to spend my money which their economy
depends on. I am not there to change their world to what I think it should
be. I have a hard time with the so
called eco-tourism idea. You can and should be a responsible tourist, but to
pretend that your cleaning up the jungle is actually making a difference is
ethnocentrically arrogant. Rarely, do
these eco tourist companies actually ask the people who live there what they
want. Instead they make assumptions
about what we, the well healed tourists wants.
Our desire for a certain outcome while self-satisfying and perhaps even laudable
lacks the conviction and authority of the people who live and experience that
part of the world.
So it won’t come as surprise to you then
that I am not fond of anything that resembles spiritual tourism either. Even
worse than assuming what people need by those who don’t live their lives are
those who sample from the spiritual buffet and dabble in Buddhist Chanting,
Christian Taze, Sufi dancing, gospel singing and any number of traditions to
which the tourist has no intention of learning more deeply and committing their
lives to.
Sadly, this is what America’s religious
life has largely become. We visit a
shrine or a church or a temple and we partake in the gifts of that experience
but we are unwilling to stay especially at the first sign of difficulty. Such consumerism borders on voyeurism; a sort
of looking in from the outside without owning the inside. It lacks depth and
meaning. It lacks the authority that comes from actually diving in a little
deeper. I was thrilled to have the
Tibetan Buddhist group here two years ago as they spent a week making a
beautiful sand mandala. I thought it deeply powerful to witness the ritual
destruction of that mandala during a Sunday morning service. But how many of
the 240 people from our neighborhood who came to that ritual sweeping away
actually came back to our church? I wonder how many became Buddhists.
The power of any religious practice lies
not in what you “get” out of it in the short term, but what meaning it gives
your life, how it changes you in the long term.
I have known hundreds, perhaps even thousands, who have come through the
doors of our churches hungry for spiritual nourishment. That is, after all, one
reason why we exist; to nourish the spirit. But sadly, they don’t understand
the give and take of spiritual practice. It’s not just about you, in fact, it’s
really not about you at all. You are
just the recipient of a by-product of participating in a religious
community. And then, at the first
disagreeable moment, a congregational meeting, the minister says something you
don’t like, the music disagrees with you, or they aren’t serving sushi for
lunch, you leave. It’s like spiritual
pornography, all images, no real love.
No, my friends, the real love, the
authority of a spiritual practice, comes with the commitment. And it becomes
the very bedrock of what holds you through the storm and brings you out the
other side. Do you think Martin Luther King could have done what he did if he
did not have the faith of Christian and the blessing of his church, who he
served faithfully for years behind him? His authority came from his spiritual
practice, his committed spiritual practice, not from being baptized the day
before he marched on Selma. Meaning is
made from the authority of our spiritual commitment.
With Grace and Grit, John
