A couple years ago, a curator at the Cantor Arts Museum told me that the fact that Memorial Church is in the center of the Quad, which is in the middle of campus, signifies how spiritual life is at the core of a Stanford education. I remember feeling strong resistance to her idea at the time. When I reflect on it two years later, however, I have a lot more sympathy for what she said.

 

“Spirituality” is a strange and uncertain concept, but it is a mistake to view it as restricted to religion or belief in the supernatural. People who neither belong to a religion nor believe in the supernatural can live very spiritual lives. The best conception of a “spiritual” person that I can think of is someone who believes that questions about meaning and purpose are worth asking. This does not include all students – there may be one or two true nihilists among us for whom nothing in life is in any sense or at any level meaningful. To you stalwart disbelievers, I’m afraid we must part ways.

 

To the rest of you, I want to think about why we avoid the brand of “spirituality,” forgoing the more reflective lives the brand would encourage us to lead.

 

One big reason seems to be that “spirituality” is strongly associated with being religious. Many liberals and non-believers at universities wish to avoid that association like the plague. Despite the fact that pursuing a spiritual life tends to lead the religious and non-religious alike to many of the same important themes – friends, family, the arts, travel, vocations, learning, morality and service all come to mind – the non-religious dislike the category.

 

Perhaps part of the problem is that “spirituality” does not just include the religious, but tends to highlight them as the biggest success stories, as those who believe most fervently in the meaningfulness of their life course. Under this hierarchy, the non-religious are more often the people with something to learn. At higher institutions like Stanford, where there is often more than a tinge of liberal snobbishness toward religion, this reorientation might sting.

 

The non-religious can point to many reasons why they would not want to be associated with these spiritual pioneers. Many are rightly angry to see religious arguments with no secular appeal play such a huge role in the American culture wars. They are frustrated to hear school boards threaten the sanctity of history and science in education textbooks. They are repulsed – as they should be – by the recent Catholic abuse scandal and the meager (and un-Christian) immediate response from the Vatican.

 

But to point only to these aspects of religion is a huge mistake, one that often reflects an underlying and less rational antagonism. We can see this in the wish to deny all the good that religion does, not just in the intimate aspects of people’s lives, but also in the public sphere. The religious are so often the shining models of human kindness on the micro and macro levels.

 

Columnist Nick Kristof of The New York Times has written a couple terrific articles on this topic, talking about how America’s biggest relief organizations are faith-based and how so many of the unsung heroes he meets in impoverished corners of the world, people devoting their lives to helping the least fortunate, are individual priests or nuns. I hear so many Stanford students echo this message after seeing the selfless work faith-based organizations and individuals do around the world. Even evangelicals in the U.S. give far more than those who look down upon them in our society. And it would be a mistake, as Kristof points out, to assume that faith-based relief organizations work in order to entice converts: groups like the Christian-based World Vision (the largest international relief organization in the U.S.) ban the use of aid to lure anyone into religious conversion.

 

All this awe-inspiring selflessness of many of the faithful should, in our most honest moments, humble us to the core. To some extent, it reflects their faith that good works are essential to a meaningful life. This is a faith that the non-religious community would exhibit more often if they actively pursued more spiritual lives. And such lives would probably be more satisfying to boot.

 

A friend once told me that the tiny circle in the middle of the quad is called the “epicenter of knowledge” – a fitting paradigm for understanding much of what Stanford is about. Another is to think of the central role spirituality should play throughout our lives and particularly when we make so many crucial choices during our college careers. I never fail to think of these two paradigms when I walk in between the epicenter of knowledge and Memorial Church – they enrich each day I have here and make my education a more meaningful enterprise.

 

Think there is any meaning to it all? Given up hope? Send Aysha your comments at [email protected].