Can You Be Spiritual Without Being Religious?

People use 'spiritual not religious' to escape institutions that hurt them, and also to escape obligations. Both motives exist. A private practice of attention, kindness, and wonder is real. So is the risk of a spirituality with no one who can tell you when you are lying.

Religion at its best is a community that remembers when you forget. At its worst it is a machine for shame. Spirituality at its best is interior honesty. At its worst it is a shopping bag of other people's sacred objects.

Freedom from a creed is not freedom from courtesy.

This house will host both the affiliated and the unaffiliated. It will not host the raiding of traditions for parts. Take a thread. Leave the temple standing.