Spiritual Foundations

By Volodymyr Kish

I am at that stage in life where I have far more past behind me than future in front of me.  This understandably has a profound effect on both my priorities in life, as well as what tends to occupy my thoughts on those occasions when I pause in my overly busy existence to reflect on the meaning of life and how I shall spend what remains of it.

Part of that has involved a re-examination of what I would loosely call my spiritual beliefs. To be frank, for most of my life, I was too busy to delve into this inner transcendent miasma that has confounded philosophers and theologians for millennia.  As a youngster brought up under the rigid catechism of a Catholic upbringing, I simply absorbed what was fed to me unquestioningly, accepting it as the self-evident truth it was held up to be.

It was not until my late teens and university years that I realized that my so-called “faith” had no real foundation except rote memory filled with a confusing mishmash of rituals, words, biblical passages, archaic prayers, clich beliefs and unexplained guilt complexes that I found hard to reconcile with my real life.

It was at that point that I undertook to educate myself on the spiritual or philosophical aspect of my existence.  I read and researched all the main currents of philosophical history and thought.  I read various versions of the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, the Hindu Vedas and Buddhist texts.  I attended the services of most of the many variations of the Christian religion.  They all proved illuminating from an intellectual point of view, but none really satisfied either my spiritual curiosity or gave me the inner peace and satisfaction that being in sync with one’s life purpose brings.

Eventually, the practicalities of real life pushed my spiritual quest on the back burner, as for the next three decades or so my focus was on career, marriage and raising a family.  Those demands left little time for contemplation. This is not to say that my life was without a spiritual foundation.  The combination of my early religious exposure, the role models that my parents played, the philosophical and theological research I had pursued, and the life lessons I had absorbed, all gave me a basic moral and ethical foundation which governed the way I led my life, dealt with family, friends and strangers, and raised my three children.  On balance, though my life has been far from perfect and I have more than a few regrets, by and large, I think I have led a reasonably productive and moral life.

Nonetheless, in recent years I have come to realize that my spiritual quest remains unfinished.  The biggest frustration comes from the fact that I do not even really understand what it is I am searching for.  No doubt, my friend Fr. Hladio at the Ukrainian Orthodox church that I attend here in Oshawa would say that I am searching for God.  I wish it were that easy. Even he would admit to the fact that it is beyond mortal comprehension for us to know or understand what “God” is.

I do know and believe in a few fundamental things that I can be sure of.  First and foremost, is the fact that I believe that we human beings have both a physical and a metaphysical component, or in simple terms, we have both a body and a soul.  Further, the soul is the seat of what can be called our conscience, our sense of self, and the repository of the moral and ethical values that govern how we live and interact with the universe. Lastly, I believe that there is a universal life force or energy that animates our souls, and gives life and existence to us and the universe around us.  I am sure that Fr. Hladio would say that this is just another way of saying God.

Some may say that we are playing with semantics here, but that is precisely the biggest challenge that today’s organized religions face in demonstrating their relevance and getting their message across to increasingly more educated and sceptical generations of young people. As much as the older generations may cherish long-held traditions, ceremonial rituals and biblical metaphors, young people today see little connection between these and their day-to-day lives and issues.  And, to be clear, it is not the core message that is the problem, but the delivery, or the “medium” to be specific. This “medium” consists of the entire structure and process of how churches operate to bring people closer to God.

Over the last several years, I have been pursuing my spiritual quest through my involvement with the local Ukrainian Orthodox church and the assistance of an understanding and enlightened parish priest.  Although I can’t say that I subscribe unquestioningly to all the “rules”, dogma and requirements of the Orthodox Church (and I make a deliberate distinction here between the Church and the Faith), I have found great comfort in the fact that Orthodoxy generally is more concerned with the human – God relationship than in the conformance to the numerous strictures and regulations that most faiths tend to demand of their followers.  I respect the reality that most people have a need and find comfort within such structures. However, my belief is that these should be seen more as useful tools to help one gain spiritual peace rather than an absolute pre-requisite to “salvation”. All too often, the outer trappings of many religions become so complex, demanding and ritualized that the essential teachings become lost to the average person.

My journey towards spiritual enlightenment continues and as I do so, I am reminded of the old Confucian adage that true knowledge comes from a realization of the true extent of one’s ignorance.