- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
What does “Spiritual Strength” mean to you? I’m guessing we all use it occasionally in conversations at church, but sometimes I stop and wonder what it really means and what we are saying…and if there are other sides of it that we sometimes ignore or don’t think of…and just limit it to some cultural or tribe thing that we think all it means is you do your home teaching or visiting teaching. I mean…I guess doing HT/VT does take spiritual strength and many increase spiritual strength…but that isn’t all there is to spiritual strength.
If your answer is “Closer to God”…maybe you can explain that further…that in and of itself is a equally vague answer to “spiritual strength”…maybe we need some examples of what it looks like, what people do to exercise it, how they do it or how they feel if they are lacking it.
I heard this on the radio the other day:
Quote:Move from 90% of experiencing love at home to 90% of love outside the home. Those we work with, nature, art, music, church…when we have spiritual strength we experience it out in the world.
The more points of connection we have, the stronger we are, and the more god-like we are.
Do you agree with that?
Do you have better ways of describing what Spiritual Strength is to you?
If Church is bothering you, do you find other sources outside church that maintain or increase spiritual strength?
Please share ideas and any good quotes or anything you come across on this subject (this is like a sunday school class
Spiritual Strength is Soul Strength to me. It’s the well source of my resilience. It has a bundle of emotions connected to it. - empathy
- sensitivity
- wisdom
- generosity
- perception
Even before FC – I drew deeply from multiple sources to enrich my spirit.
- Holocaust survivor stories
- Tuesday’s With Morrie (very personal favorite)
- Max Lucado
- Leo Buscaglia
- Classical music
- Hours by the beach
- Decorating my house
- Star gazing
- Walking in wind storms
- Singing Rodgers and Hammerstein songs
Lastly – I give. I am a giver by nature. I thrive when I give. It can be time, money, ideas, whatever. Giving makes my heart sing.
The ability to worship according to the dictates of my own conscience, in a nutshell – and honor the consciences of those I love in the process. Spiritual Strength = Perspective (the ability to see a specific course of action) + Faith (belief that a course of action is valid) + Perseverance (action towards completing or maintaining a course of action). I see an increase in my spiritual strength as I gain perspective on different points of view and apply them to my life, reflect on times in my life when past things I believed were validated (or were not validated and I am given some understanding as to why they weren’t validated), and as I keep making choices to act on that faith.
EXAMPLES:PERSPECTIVE:I was lucky that while I was growing up without knowing that I might be an undiagnosed Aspie, my father kept teaching me about perspective and how my vastly different perspective was equally valid to my mom’s non-Aspie perspective day after day, week after week for easily 10 years. Now, it is easier for me to see other perspectives and not be hung up on mine being the only one. FAITH:For me, I have had a number of touchstone experiences where I felt that I was given needed inspiration. These are the experiences I remember when I am looking forward in making current decisions. PERSEVERENCE:
When I persevered and acted on it, my life was changed for the better. More to the point, my circumstances changed because I hung in there. My husband and I had a rough few months over the past winter for a variety of reasons (not important right now), and we both had times we were starting to think about what other options were out there. However, we kept talking and listening and showing respect for eachother, we persevered in our faith that we loved eachother and that our marriage was a good foundation for our life. Because we kept at it, our relationship is stronger and deeper – we have a better understanding of eachother. As an academic, I love discussions about what the basic definition of a term means. But in this case, it’s far too vague. It reminds me a bit like the discipline of “communication”. Whenever I take a course in communication, it ends up being a hodge podge of ideas from other disciplines — group dynamics, interpersonal relationships, technology, etcetera. For example, look at the definition of the word “spiritual”
Quote:
spiritual(adjective)
1. of, relating to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or relating to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature:
a spiritual approach to life.
3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.:
the professor’s spiritual heir in linguistics.
4. of or relating to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.
5. characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; ethereal or delicately refined:
She is more of a spiritual type than her rowdy brother.
6. of or relating to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature.
7. of or relating to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred.
The definition if very broad, so “spiritual strength” could refer to being strong in any of these categories – to the point a discussion about what “spiritual strength” means will likely elicit a ton of meanings, all across the map.
I would rather we narrowed the discussion to a subset of the meaning of “spiritual strength” if we want a focused discussion.
For the “relating to the spirit as the seat of moral nature”, I would say spiritual strength refers to the extent to which a person shows integrity, charity, and self-discipline in the face of temptation.
If talking about spiritual as meaning “relating to sacred things or matters”, spiritual strength would mean the tendency to display reverence, regular habits in religious devotion (attending sacrament meeting, observing religious rules etcetera) as well as deep knowledge about religion.
I had an idea of how I wanted to respond but SD’s post changed it a little. It ishard to pin down a definition for “spiritual.” Some people use it interchangeably with being religious, some people use it to refer to someone that’s always talking about Jesus… we all know someone like that, right? (and there’s nothing wrong with that, just as long as it doesn’t prevent me from celebrating Halloween. :angel: )In Mormon terms maybe it would be helpful to approach a definition for spiritual by stating what it is not. LDS canon often juxtaposes the words temporal and spiritual. One definition for spiritual could be “whatever is not temporal.”
Maybe being spiritual is trying to tune into something that operates at a higher plane than what our human nature dictates. This is my lens talking, I think of the concept of justice. The demand for it leaves us with gems like “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” Maybe spiritual strength is required to help us swallow some injustices every once in a while, pump the breaks to a process that would leave us all blind and on apple sauce diets.
That was kind of the point of the atonement, right? Maybe we have spiritual strength when
weatone for others, whatever that means for you.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.