What Kind of Spirituality Do You Have in Mind?

If you are “spiritual, but not religious,” what kind of spirituality do you have in mind? One possibility comes from Jewish thinker, Martin Buber (1878-1965), and his classic book I and Thou. This is spirituality between people, what Buber called the I-Thou encounter. In contrast to turning inward for reflection or meditation, Buber’s spirituality is interpersonal. It is not in the “I” or in the “Thou” but in the dash, in the events between people, in candid, honest, and respectful interactions. Buber wrote, “In the beginning is relation,” (1) to emphasize the universal and eternal importance of relationships from the first breath throughout life.

Buber’s interpersonal spirituality has deep roots in Judaism and in the Hebrew Bible, which instructs three times to “love.” The first is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18). The second is to love the stranger, as in “When a stranger lives with you in your land, you shall not oppress that person. That stranger shall be as one of your citizens to you, living with you. You shall love that person as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am Adonai your God.” (Leviticus 19.33-34) By loving one’s neighbor – another member of the community – and loving the stranger – an outsider or someone new, – a person comes to love God, in “You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6.5) In sum, by loving one’s neighbor and loving the stranger, a person loves God at the same time, as the essence of spirituality between people.

Buber came to this approach after a tragic experience. One day, as World War I raged, Buber was meditating at home, when an unexpected visitor seeking personal guidance knocked on the front door and interrupted the session. Buber invited the visitor in to talk but was distracted by the afterglow of the meditation and failed to respond wholeheartedly. The guest eventually left with his concerns unaddressed. Some months later, Buber learned that his visitor had died at the warfront. Buber was shocked and blamed himself for the death, thinking that, had he been less self-consumed and more engaged with the person in front of him, had he been more present with his feelings, thoughts, and questioning, his guest might have lived. Buber described this experience as a life-changing “conversion” as he went on to write I and Thou to underscore the spiritual significance of being responsible in conversation as an I to a Thou.

Buber proposed that the I-Thou interpersonal encounter can be simple or deeply engaged, in an exchange of smiles with a stranger in an elevator, or in an extended conversation with a lifelong friend. It can be in heated words over a matter that remains unresolved or in the back-and-forth that brings disagreeing parties closer together. It typically rises unexpectedly, has no set time limit or minimum duration, and can happen anywhere. And each I-Thou encounter is destined to end; the finality is built into the beginning.

Buber presented this interhuman exchange as the basic building block for his utopian vision. Buber took the term “Hebrew Humanism” to express his ideal of a just, equitable, inclusive, and caring nation under the Hebrew Bible’s teachings to love one’s neighbor, the stranger, and God. “In the beginning is relation” between a parent and child at birth that flows to all corners of the inhabited earth through I-Thou. Moreover, when we engage one another as I-Thou, we simultaneously meet God in the Eternal Thou, where every I-Thou abides in perpetuity.

As so many people today self-identify as “spiritual but not religious,” Buber’s interpersonal ideal provides a notable spiritual opportunity.

1. I and Thou, (Ronald Gregor Smith, trans.), Scribner, 2000, 38.

2. Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Early Years 1878-1923, Maurice Friedman, Dutton, 1981, 187-190.