Oh, spirituality...?

In modern times the emphasis is on subjective experience and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", incorporating personal growth or transformation, usually in a context separate from organized religious institutions. Spirituality can be defined generally as an individual's search for ultimate or sacred meaning, and purpose in life. Additionally it can mean to seek out or search for personal growth, religious experience, belief in a supernatural realm or afterlife, or to make sense of one's own "inner dimension".

@wiki

I grew up catholic. But I think I was what fundies would call 'light' catholic: I went through all the steps (baptism with godmother and godfather, confirmation, first communion, mass over the weekends with my grandma, the works) and on top of that, I went to a De La Salle school during most of my schooling (both primary school and middle school and almost all of high school) with mass twice a week and even a stint as an altar boy for four years. Talk about the full experience.

But yet, I was a 'light catholic'. I never got the fire and brimstone feeling that some of my friends got (well, they grew up more on the protestant side of religion and some had very fundie foundations) and even though I loved the imagery and pageantry that come with catholicism, I never really felt that I would be in 'sin' for the things I did (like fucking men when I was 14). For me it was all mostly venial sins and white lies. Nothing that a good confession and some act of contrition with some hail Marys and a good Our Father with a dose of the Nicene Creed would not fix. 

Eventually, I totally left the religion. I have not been in a catholic church for mass in the last ten or fifteen years (I think I went to a friend's child's first communion ten years ago? I don't even remember now) and I do not really care about what the Pope has to say (he seems cool, though...). So I don't really have a connection to anything religious or religious-related to mark my moral compass. But the teachings I think have stayed with me: help the people in need, treat others as I want to be treated, empathy is paramount and the common good is the goal to have. I did not have a child, like Madge, to make me question my ways. But I am also not the most famous female pop superstar in the world with a career that spans more than forty years. So there's that.

And I think there's a lesson here: it is important to have a philosophy of life, something that anchors us and that allows to practice self-reflection and project us into the world that surrounds us in order to become better human beings. We do not need religion to do that, IMHO, just a functionig moral compass.

Much has been written about Madonna, but most everything is mostly very superficial (the work she may have had done, her age, her sexual persona, her adoptions, her love life, the works. All boring, all low-hanging fruit). She was not supposed to last this long, then? How has Minnie Mouse on Helium outlasted and outsmarted all those stars from the eighties? I think what has saved her from becoming Michael Jackson or Prince (or Taylor Dane or Jody Watley) or a complete has-been is that she found something that tethered her to the ground and made her think about the world outside herself.  Maybe it was spirituality? It may be, according to what she says here. Not that the 'real' Madonna is gone. Is she still a bitch? Thankfully, yes. But a bitch with a good head over her shoulders. If that's what a bitch makes, sign me up. I'd love to have her retirement plan.

Some people need religion (with all its trappings) to achieve things in their life. Hence all the late-to-the-party Born-Agains. Some people need spirituality (like Madge mentions here), some people need a good moral foundation (like some skeptics and atheists I know) to get there. But whatever it is, I believe it needs to be free of dogma. Because if what we need includes dogma we are just another version of Mike Johnson. 

Don't you think?

XOXO