Jean Rowe sends in this report from Barbara Brown Taylor’s talk at the Decatur Book Festival Sunday…

A new bumper sticker: Spiritual but not disconnected; Religious but not root-bound

Barbara Brown Taylor came to the podium in her stocking feet after an introduction that included wearing many hats. Theologian. Author. Teacher. Explorer. Master Craftsman. Down-to-Earth worker. To a packed house, she addressed the idea of being “spiritual but not religious” as stated by those whom she described as “church-hurt” people. Religious conjures the ideas of institution, tradition, creed, doctrine. Spiritual encompasses all the things on the “not” list. The not list makes me think of my nephew at age 4 saying he wanted to go live with the Not Nice family after being told “that’s not nice” enough times. I remember thinking that was an honest response.

Examples of spiritual but not religious: feeling closer to God outdoors. No longer being able to make sense of religious teachings.

The talk led to the idea of religious dualism. Dark. Light. Of God. Not of God. Good. Evil. On dualistic thinking, Brown Taylor says this kind of thing causes all kinds of mischief. Both historically and personally. At the heart of that, I think, is the blanketing phrase “in the name of God.” The Crusades stick in my head a lot about decisions being based on that phrase.

Brown Taylor, although admittedly firmly couched in being religious, does not seem to have the motive of changing our minds but to consider a broader view of what spiritual practice means.

Practices bring us closer together. She encourages us to embrace the spiritual discipline of being in relationship, particularly when the relationship includes risking the friction of disagreement, choosing the labor of it rather than resenting it.

Brown Taylor posed the idea that spirituality has a lot more to do with the flesh than we think. She said our bodies make theologians of us all. It seems to me that everything we do is an opportunity to be in spiritual practice. Whether we feel close to God inside four walls with genuflection, incense and formal prayer or in the woods, the earth crunching under our boots or packing lunches for schoolchildren to take home for the weekend or helping build a house, the point is to be together, making the effort to harmoniously live together, differences included, respected. In Brown Taylor’s words, binding the human to the divine, the sacred to the daily, the spirit to the flesh. I find this hopeful and welcoming, particularly in being reminded that my own spiritual practices are always available. All I have to do is show up.

Byran Alexander provides this report from his Sunday at the DBF…

Loneliness was Sunday’s theme for me at the DBF. First up was the Glass Table Collective at the old courthouse venue. The Collective is a group of writers and artists who decided to pool their money to get their own stuff designed, printed, and marketed. Karen Kevorkian said they did this because writing is a damned lonely business, and you don’t need the publishing world to add to the misery. (By the way, the Collective is mostly based in Los Angeles, but Macon’s Kevin Cantwell is a member.)

Next on the loneliness stage were Edward Hirsch and Thomas Lux talking about how to read a poem. Hirsch’s book of that name takes the position that a lyric poem “speaks out of a solitude to a solitude. . . . and one of the great tasks of the lyric is to bring us into right relationship to each other.” Lux agreed that a good poem has the power to break an individual’s loneliness. Lux gets the Guerrilla Prize for this festival: Before the talk commenced, he went along the first two rows removing the “Reserved” tags because, he said, “There shouldn’t be reserved seats at a poetry reading.”

Over at the Decatur Presbyterian stage, Barbara Brown Taylor hit on the irony that we go to church to be with God and end up aggravated by the people we meet there. Some of us then conclude that it’s better to practice “spirituality,” and to do it alone. Taylor’s view is that, in pursuing the divine it is important not to become disconnected from the aspects of this human life that can seem so distracting—aspects such as other people! Was there any irony in her remark that solitude is so important for writing?

If irony was there, perhaps there’s a parallel irony in going to a book festival when you’re an introvert who loves the solitude of the book. But then surely solitude is of a different species from loneliness.