In my “quest for spiritual, devotional, and mystical realism in fiction” (the tagline of Deus in Fabula) I’ve been reading a wide variety of fictional works not only to (hopefully) find examples of what I’m looking for, but to also better understand what, exactly, I’m looking for. As I mentioned in Mystical realism: Motivations, inspirations, and opportunities, this search began with the question of whether anyone today was writing “spiritual novels” and “simple, devotional stories that inspire people to seek God.”
In previous posts, too, I’ve hopefully made clear what I mean by “mystical” (see Mythical, Magical, and Mystical) and “devotional” (see Emotion, “Inpletion,” and Devotion, part 2) as used in the tagline. What I haven’t yet done, however, is delve into the “spiritual” part.
It’s time to open that proverbial can o’ worms, then. I refer to it as such because various ideas about what constitutes “spiritual” and “spirituality” seem to be all over the map. Much, of course, relates to religious sensibilities, as I’ve understood “spiritual” to mean for all of my adult life. But then there’s also such a thing as “secular spirituality” (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), arising, I think, from the growing number of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” Similarly, I’ve also heard that there are atheists who yet consider themselves “spiritual.”
Clearly, the term has become rather muddled, which is why I hesitated to even include it in the Deus in Fabula tagline at all. Yet I can’t just dispense with the word either, because there’s much of value that yet shelters under its wings.
It’s necessary, then, to delve into the matter and find a genuine spirituality that is neither too restrictive in the religious sense nor denatured in the secular sense. True or genuine spirituality, in my mind, should be a powerful, life-altering quality or experience, not something that’s watered down to the point where it’s merely decorative.
I’ve titled this post with “part 1” not knowing exactly how many parts will be involved, but I know it’ll be more than one!
“Spiritual” as defined by publishing categories
As a starting point, let’s consider how the publishing and bookselling industries categorize different books that might be termed “spiritual.” In Mystical realism: Motivations, inspirations, and opportunities, I mentioned that when I first began looking around for spiritual novels I found that sources like Goodreads, Amazon, and WorldCat have lists of “spiritual fiction” and also books they classified as “spiritual but not religious.”
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