Beyond the None Zone

Fully a quarter of Americans, in recent surveys, identified with no formal religious affiliation at all. Instead, given the choice, they selected the option “none”. This led to interpretation of the data for its political implications, famously in the book “Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone”, Patricia O'Connell Killen and Mark Silk, editors (AltaMira Press, 2004). Nowadays we may not say that religion does not matter in public life or politics. Indeed, people are religious, it’s human nature; what changes is how and whether they express their beliefs in eternal verities. We may no longer or may never have expressed our deepest values and most profound convictions in conventional denominational or communal terms. We do however find ways to show, to reveal, and to act upon what truths we hold most sacred, in our public life and private expressions. The challenge is how to match them up, and to expose them to scrutiny. Lent is a good time to do this. So is the daily practice of examining how our lives show our values. We might ask: Where does God show up in my life today? Where is God in this moment, this interaction, this experience? What have I done to provoke myself into holiness? Holiness, I take it, is the goal beyond which we dare not go, even dare to aspire to: but in small moments of daily life, it can come upon us unawares. Perhaps not in ourselves, perhaps not in others, but in the shape of the clouds lofting across the face of the mountains, the sun on the peaks, the dew on the grass, the coo of the doves. The kindness of neighbors, and strangers. Maybe this is where we need to look, for God, for the spiritual, to show presence in our lives.