A great quote in today’s NSS Newsline:

Defining spirituality is like shovelling fog –
Jim Barksdale, The Big Think

One of our members is keen to “reclaim” the word from the religionists and demonstrate that Humanists aren’t mere “materialists”. He persuaded us to have five minutes of reflection on a piece of music, a poem, a picture, or something else at each meeting, introduced by individual members in turn. This is a good idea, but some of us are less happy about describing it as a “spiritual” interlude.

I prefer not to use the words “spirituality”, “spirit” or “spiritual” in a Humanist context, because they’re used in ways that are so vague as to be meaningless, they’re commonly associated with religion, and because there are better ways to describe those aspects of our lives that make us more than materialists. I don’t think that there’s any need to prove that we’re not materialists. I have no wish to “reclaim” them, because this involves wasting time arguing over definitions with religionists.

See the OED for definitions of spiritual and spirituality, and spirit.

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