The Both/And of Spirituality: Personal Spirituality and its Dialogic Expression.

INTRODUCTION
In a nutshell, spirituality seems to be most often defined as a human relationship with something larger than the mere individual, then even existence as a whole. It is a way for a person to understand her life, her self, within the context of something larger than it. It is a way for her to come to terms with what happens in her life, come to terms with her own self, her actions, and the actions of others. Or even just to come to terms with life and existence itself. It is a way for her to answer the big questions in life, those that can’t be answered in any other way. Spirituality, in this regard, is an integral and vital element of every person’s life. It is a way of making priorities and judgments, decisions and actions. It is a rule and guide for organizing life, a way of understanding the particulars of existence in a world that is much larger than any one individual.
With this very general understanding of spirituality, there are two very important factors: it has a deeply personal character but must also be expressed and voiced to others. The deeply personal character of spirituality is something that is expressed by Soren Kierkegaard, in his thoroughly religious existential philosophy. The necessity of expressing spirituality can be illustrated by understanding it in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory, Dialogics.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my own context through which I understand spirituality. I am hoping that the insights in this paper will be useful to mostly everyone; I have tried to make it as general as possible. But I am aware that my own context will shine through, no matter how much I try to keep it out. Thus, if I at least acknowledge my own understanding, then it can more easily be identified and worked with.
My understanding of spirituality is predominantly Christian. I was born and raised in a Christian church, and that faith and belief system has defined me as much as I have defined it. I understand mostly everything in terms of my Christian faith, and in this way, even if I try to generalize the insights I have regarding spirituality, I am still working from a Western Protestant Christian context. However, it seems to me that if we discuss the very basic substance of spirituality, then it can be understood in different ways, without detracting from the discussion in a largely significant way. In this way, the insights that I, as a Christian, can gain from understanding spirituality in terms of Kierkegaard and Bakhtin, can hopefully be useful to those that do not have a Christian understanding of spirituality.

KIERKEGAARD
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, and one of the forerunners of existentialist philosophy. He did most of his writing as a reaction to Hegel or the Church, writing many pseudonymous works. He is arguably one of the most literary of the philosophers, which also means that the meaning or message of his texts is ultimately quite rich. His insights into the realm of spirituality are no exception. What can be learned from Kierkegaard in this matter is closely connected to three aspects of his thought: his knight of faith, his insistence on the One Idea, and his view on the inner being. Not that these three areas are the totality of what Kierkegaard has to offer, but for the purposes here, these areas are the most useful.
As an existential philosopher, Kierkegaard is concerned with the existence of the individual, his or her life as it is, so that is where we should begin. The inner being that Kierkegaard discusses is the core of the person; that which enters into a relationship with that which is outside, or beyond.

Not until the moment when there awakens in his soul a concern about what meaning the world has for him and he for the world, about what meaning everything within him by which he himself belongs to the world has for him and he therein for the world—only then does the inner being announce its presence in this concern. (Kierkegaard Discourses 86)

And since, to Kierkegaard the relationship is between the person and God, this is the only way to have such a relationship, because “God is spirit and therefore can give witness only in the spirit; it is in the inner being.” (Kierkegaard Discourses 89) This inner being is the interrelationship between the world and the person, a relationship which has something to say and something to do within each part. The world changes the person, and the person acts in the world, and changes it. It is a way in which every person makes sense of the world around his or her self.
How the person acts in, or towards, the world is a very important element of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. In Either/Or he posits two different world-views, the Aesthetic and the Ethical, and shows how each acts within the world and out of their inner being. The Aesthetic individual is concerned with passion and possibility, while the ethical individual is concerned with duty and commitment. The most important world-view which Kierkegaard posits, though, is that of the Religious which he discusses in Fear and Trembling. What makes this world-view ‘better’ than the Aesthetic and the Ethical is that it incorporates the essence of these, but surpasses them, goes well beyond what they themselves could ever accomplish. But at the same time, this spirituality that Kierkegaard searches for is incomplete insofar as it is wholly personal, wholly subjective. Its reliance on the ridiculous, on the Absurd necessarily causes this world-view to be unvoicable, only subjectively experienced.
What is important to the Aesthetic way of life is not that one lives a life of only pleasure, but that one is not bored. This is the driving power behind the Aesthetic, that one should not be bored. Passion and Possibility work with this to create a life full of feeling and alternatives which will keep human beings occupied, maybe not always be entirely happy, but in a deeper sense, content with the way things are, even if they are not entirely pleasurable. Pleasure in itself is not the goal for life, but taking pleasure out of the depth of feeling, out of the options and alternatives that one may have, that is what makes for a ‘good’ life, one full of meaning for the Aesthetic individual. Commitment to one moment or event is considered the worst movement a person can take, because that extremely limits her alternatives, her possibility, and so could possibly curtail her passion, and so take all pleasure out of the experiencing the whole of life.
Instead of this working against boredom, and taking pleasure in the whole of life, the Ethical stresses duty and commitment, and in that sense, it stresses the marriage relationship, conjugal love rather than romantic love, as the more beautiful kind. This difference comes from the ideas of time that the Aesthetic and the Ethical entail. In the Aesthetic, the moment is the most important element for the individual. The Aesthetic individual says “what is is rational” (Kierkegaard Either/Or 42), and so the moment that she is in at one particular time is all that matters. If there is no passion or joy in the moment, they move on to the next one, a different one. But if the moment gives joy and pleasure, they stick with it for as long as it does give pleasure, and as soon as it turns to boredom, they move on. The Ethical individual, however, does not live for the moment, or merely for passion and possibility. The Ethical individual sees the moment in eternity, not as eternity. In other words, the Ethical individual sees each moment as a progression from the moment before (Kierkegaard Either/Or 91), and so each moment builds on the previous and leads into the next, while the Aesthetic individual sees each moment as a unity unto itself (Kierkegaard Either/Or 26), and so the moments are unrelated to each other, and so no more or less important than any other.
The Ethical individual, in viewing time as a progression, views human beings not as a type of ‘blank experiencer’, like the Aesthetic might, but the Ethical views human beings as a something which experiences, but has some unchangeable, or ‘core’ element to its being. In this way, it would be a kind of denial of this state to live life merely for passion and possibility, and move merely from one experience or moment to another. The Ethical life is one in which there are possibilities, but the person will choose one of the possibilities and then live it, commit to it. Even if this choice later on becomes something to which the individual is no longer passionately committed to, there is a sense of duty, of obligation to continue on the path that she had chosen. In the discussion of love and marriage, in which Kierkegaard uses the characters of Johannes the Seducer and Judge William, this idea comes out as the ‘everydayness’ of the marriage life, in which the Aesthetic individual, Johannes the Seducer, no longer sees any beauty, but the Ethical individual, Judge William, sees great beauty; beauty in the fact that the married couple has decided to stay together, even if there is no passion of ‘romantic love’ any longer (Kierkegaard Either/Or 94-7). In a sense, duty is what saves the relationship from possessing too much passion, and so burning itself out, or having not enough passion, and so making the couple drift apart and destroy what they had.
The Religious individual, though, does what both and neither of these two world-views stress. The Religious world-view does not live for the moment, but lives in the moment, does not live for passion, but in passion. The Religious individual does not live by an external duty, but lives in that duty, does not live for commitment, but in commitment. It incorporates the passion of the Aesthetic, while confirming the commitment of the Ethical. It does this not by itself but through this notion of the Absurd. And for Kierkegaard this absurd, this ridiculous, is the fact that spirituality is essentially a striving with God. (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 50), or in other words it is a paradox in which “the single individual as the particular stands in an absolute relation to the absolute” (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 144). The Religious individual, then, is at peace with the world around her, has made sense of it to herself and lives in that state.
The first step to coming to this point, however, is to renounce everything, to resign one’s self, and everything that one has, to a state of loss. Abraham, Kierkegaard’s ideal example of a knight of faith, the religious individual, relinquishes his hold on Isaac, resigns himself to the fact that Isaac, when God asks him as a sacrifice, is lost. In this step he becomes a knight of infinite resignation. Infinite, because everything must be relinquished, everything must be let go of, or the step is not taken. Isaac was this everything to Abraham, since he and Sarah had lived for the day that Isaac would be born, had held firm in their faith that God would provide them a son, and defined their lives by this. In this way, the knight will make a number of movements:

In the first place, have the strength to concentrate the whole of his life’s content and the meaning of reality in a single wish… Secondly, the knight will have the strength to concentrate the whole of the result of his reflection into one act of consciousness… So the knight will remember everything; but the memory is precisely the pain, and yet in his infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 72)

The knight does not forget what she counts as loss, for that would deny the importance of the step taken. She must remember in order for her to resign ‘the one single wish’, or it will still continue to have a hold over her.
The knight of infinite resignation is a knight at peace, a knight that no external calamity or pressure can disturb, since all of the external has been resigned to a loss; it ceases to matter. This is possible for the knight, since his movement, his step, has been the step to the infinite.

In the finite world, there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 73)

Abraham could travel for the sole purpose of sacrificing Isaac because this was a spiritual event for him. He had renounced the finite, claimed the infinite, and could do things that the finite person would be unable to do, or even to understand. It gave him great pain, but in spiritualizing that pain, in resigning himself to it, he could overcome it, and perform the task. Abraham spiritualized the pain of having to sacrifice Isaac by giving this particular experience a universal context. While it still gave him great pain, it still was a trial, Abraham made as much sense out of it as he could by understanding it in different terms.
But that is not the extent of Abraham’s deed, his movements. The vitally important movement that Kierkegaard draws attention to, the central movement that Abraham makes is that of the leap to faith. It is not enough that Abraham renounces the finite world, and makes all things possible. If that was all that Abraham had done, then his actions would have not had the significance that they now do. What Abraham did, and what the knight of faith does, is to move into a knowledge of the fact that what is impossible had become possible, but what is possible is not just merely possible but actual. Abraham renounces Isaac, and goes to offer him as a sacrifice. This impossible act becomes possible to him though that first movement. In this second movement Abraham knows that Isaac will be restored to him, will suffer no harm. He believes, “on the strength of the absurd” (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 75) that what was impossible, becoming possible, will not only be possible, but will happen. Abraham will sacrifice Isaac, but in so doing, will lose nothing, gain everything, and keep Isaac.

The moment the knight resigned he was convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking; that was a conclusion of the understanding, and he had energy enough to think it. In an infinite sense, however, it was possible, through renouncing it [as a finite possibility]; but then accepting that [possibility] is at the same time to have given it up, yet for the understanding there is no absurdity in possessing it, for it is only in the finite world that understanding rules and there it was and remains an impossibility. On this the knight of faith is just as clear: all that can save him is the absurd; and this he grasps by faith. Accordingly he admits the impossibility and at the same time believes the absurd; for were he to suppose that he had faith without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he would be deceiving himself, and his testimony would carry weight nowhere. (Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling 75-6)

What the knight of faith does is to travel completely through resignation, through the infinite, and breaks back out in to the finite again, but having changed its control, its influence on her. The knight is infinitely finite, a particular that has become, in some sense, a universal. In expecting the impossible, Abraham strove with God, and so his ‘power’ over the world around him is a power from God. The world, then, has no hold over Abraham, and he can have a faith which sees the possibility of the impossible; by virtue of the ridiculous, the Absurd.
And this is a faith which is focussed on the One Idea. The knight of infinite resignation concentrates her consciousness on a single wish. Kierkegaard uses the example of a peasant falling in love with a princess. Knowing that he cannot have her, he does not work against this love. He works to uphold the love that he has for her, and uses it to define his life. This love for the unattainable princess becomes his meaning, and nothing that she or anyone else does can ever tear that love away from him. But for the religious individual, this One Idea must be something more, something less ‘worldly’. To Kierkegaard, this is the Good. Insofar as a spiritual person is to will anything, that must be an unchangeable thing, something beyond mere humanity. “The Good without condition and without qualification, without preface and without compromise is, absolutely the only that that a man may and should will, and is only one thing” (Kierkegaard Purity 54) He never gives a clear definition of the Good, but since it is eternal, and always One thing, it is not something that humanity contains, nor is it something that humanity can really express. If it could be expressed, it would become something tangible, and thus changeable. The Good can never be changed, can never be altered, thus the only way to define it (as little as humanity can) is to experience it. And the only way to experience, as particular individual entities, something that is eternal and therefore universal, is through the strength of the Absurd.
This is what makes Kierkegaard’s spirituality so subjective, so personal. It is one person’s striving with something that is beyond her. If a person was to remain in her material existence, they would not become spiritual, would lack a useful, personal spirituality, they would only strive with themselves, and nothing would be gained. But to become spiritual, in a Kierkegaardian way, a person must strive with what is beyond her, what lies both outside and within her, and to continue to strive. She must transcend her materiality, her day-to-day existence, and see life in a new way, a way that gives meaning and purpose to her life. Spirituality is one person’s particularity in relationship with the universal, with that which is beyond mere particularity. In this way it is relationality, but a relationality with something that is beyond a mere other, a something that is just the Beyond.
This is not to say that spirituality is something that remains static and the same throughout a life. Like most things, spirituality must grow and mature, must develop with the person that holds it. This is where Kierkegaard fails, and Bakhtin shines, so to speak. Kierkegaard's spirituality is a very, deeply personal spirituality, but because of its nature, because of its relationship with the Absurd, it is unvoicable. The person who holds their own personal spirituality on the grounds that Kierkegaard argues cannot express it to another person, since the whole spirituality is the relationship that each individual person has with that which is beyond. Bakhtin, on the other hand, requires a relational life; a life lived between a person and the other. As we will see, to Bakhtin there is no understanding without relationship. What this means for Kierkegaard’s spirituality is not that it needs to be rethought, but that it needs to be considered in a relational context, a relational context which includes the other.

BAKHTIN
Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) did most of his writing in the area of literary criticism. He developed a theory of the novel that gave the novel a much wider territory in terms of usefulness and literary importance than any other literary thinker had done before. Out of this 'theory of the novel', created largely with the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky in mind, he posited a 'theory of language' that stressed relationality and the other in order to find meaning in language, rather than an abstract 'general meaning' in language and words. This theory, Dialogics, can be useful in understanding spirituality, as it demands expression and voice, demands that the people involved must verbalize their ideas, in order to give them life and meaning. And if we place Kierkegaard’s spirituality into this system, we can come to an understanding of spirituality that is more whole, more complete.
To Bakhtin, dialogue is necessary since "the word is not a material thing but rather the eternally mobile, eternally fickle medium of dialogic interaction" (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 202), which exists only in relationship with other words, other ideas, other people. To speak, to actually say something means to exist in a relationship with another person.

Language—like the concrete environment in which the consciousness of the verbal artist lives—is never unitary ... Actual social life and historical becoming create within an abstractly unitary language a multitude of concrete worlds, a multitude of bounded verbal-ideological and social belief systems; within these various systems (identical in the abstract) are elements of language filled with various semantic and axiological content and each with its own different sound. (Bakhtin Imagination 288)

Without some sort of other, whether that is another person or another idea, there can be no language or meaning, since without a context, there is no real language. Words only have a life when they are spoken, and to have meaning, they must be spoken in a meaning-laden context.
It is the same with ideas, since they are, arguably, only real ideas when they are given form through language. Ideas, as thought, are impotent until they are voiced (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 88), for it is only then that an idea can 'work', when it is put into the realm of the spoken, placed into a relationship with other ideas or people. Without this relationality, it is impossible for people to really have ideas, to really speak. Bakhtin calls the kind of discourse that he discusses "living discourse" since it exists, and only exists in dialogic relationships.

The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile. (Bakhtin Imagination 276)

In other words, "the living utterance ... cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue" (Bakhtin Imagination 276). A word, an expression, a dialogue, if it is a living dialogue, must exist in a context which will both shape and be shaped by its particular meaning.
There are two senses in which the word, the dialogue, can be a living discourse; in the fact that life, without discourse, is not really life at all, and in the fact that it is not static; that it changes and grows once it has been spoken and during its being spoken. To Bakhtin, dialogue is essential to human existence, since dialogue is what reveals, but also delineates the character of the person speaking:

It is not a means for revealing, for bringing to the surface the already ready-made character of a person; no, in dialogue a person not only shows himself outwardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is—and we repeat, not only for others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically. (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 252 – italics my own)

To exist as a person, as a rational, thinking, speaking human being, to have one’s own identity, is to put that identity out into a relationship with other identities, and so come to understand what it is that makes one’s identity one’s own, and unique. In this same way, “two voices is the minimum for life, the minimum for existence” (Bakhtin Dostoevsky 252). Without another voice to dialog with, a person does not really exist, does not really have a character or person, since if there is nothing to act towards, or react to.
In this view, people, like words, do not exist as abstract, objective entities. They exist as others to some one else:

The word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own. (Bakhtin Imagination 294)

This is living dialogue, the living word. It is a language that “lives on the borderline between oneself and the other” (Bakhtin Imagination 293) It does not truly exist as an entity on its own, but must exist in a state of relationship with other words, with other utterances or ideas. This is how it shapes, and is shaped:

The word, breaking through to its own meaning and its own expression across an environment full of alien words and variously evaluating accents, harmonizing with some of the elements in this environment and striking a dissonance with others, is able, in this dialogized process, to shape its own stylistic profile and tone. (Bakhtin Imagination 277)

Without other words, no word has real meaning or shape. To Bakhtin, it is the context that shapes words; it is the context out of which meaning and significance are pulled. Thus, since it is words and ideas that people use to communicate, and even know their own ideas and selves, people must come to know themselves in much the same way; by putting themselves into the world, by reacting and acting within that world, and forming their understanding through these relationships.

SPIRITUALITY
Spirituality is no exception. To make one’s spirituality a living spirituality requires that it be placed in contact, in relationship with some other, whatever that other may be. If spirituality is understood in terms of Kierkegaard’s explanations and ideas, then it is a deeply personal undertaking. Indeed it must be, even without Kierkegaard’s insistence. There can be no ‘passing on’ or sharing of spirituality. One person cannot experience the spirituality of any other. That, in a nutshell, was Kierkegaard’s point. In his historical setting, he thought it of great importance to make the people around him, in their Christian setting, to understand that just because one is a Christian, does not mean that the work is done. It is only beginning. One must take the meaning and message of the Christian text, the Christian world-view, and make it one’s own, appropriate it. In the same way spirituality must be understood in this way. Each person has their own spirituality, and this cannot be explained completely to any one else. In fact, there are probably as many spiritualities as there are people on this earth. For everyone’s context and personality, character, is different. And no matter how slight, this difference will translate into a different take on the world and each person’s relationship with that world or with what we have been calling ‘that which is beyond’.
But to make this spirituality mature, to enable it to grow with the person, there must be some way of placing it into contact with other spiritualities. This is an insight we can gain from Bakhtin; that in order for an idea to be useful, both to its holder and the world around, it must be voiced, and an idea that is not voiced is impotent and does not truly exist. So no matter how personal a spirituality is, it must be expressed to others and allowed to mingle, mix, and interact with the ideas of others, and other ideas. Just as a human body needs exercise and a proper diet to be healthy, so do ideas, and spirituality exists in the realm of ideas. And to properly exercise spirituality, it needs to be given a body; it needs to be let out and expressed. If we understand the two together, then, they compliment each other nicely. A Bakhtinian-Kierkegaardian spirituality is one that is personal enough, subjective enough, to be an authentic element of a person, but is universal enough, objective enough, to be voiced and expressed in the world. It is a difficult balance, but spirituality is not an easy thing.

PROPER CONTEXT FOR GROWING SPIRITUALITY
As we have seen Bakhtin state, dialogic relationships occur within an objective, abstract world of language and language-meaning. There can be no language without some sort of objective guideline for understanding that language. Any utterances, any words, have to be understood by the other in order for there to be a dialogic relationship between them. While Bakhtin stresses the importance of the creative and meaning-producing aspects of the dialogic relationship, it cannot be forgotten that the objective backdrop of these relationships must exist, or there is no meaning possible at all. While dialogic discourse shapes and is shaped by the words placed into it, both are themselves shaping and shaped by the contextual backdrop, which determines what words and meanings can be used or created.
With this in mind, it seems that the religiously spiritual, those that position their spirituality under the guidance and rubric of an organized religion or group, would be more likely to develop their spirituality, to 'grow' it, rather than those that position their spirituality in a unitary way, as a subjective and unique way of life. Insofar as spirituality, as we have seen, is personal, then all spiritualities are subjective and unique. But those that are not positioned within an organized context are much 'freer' and ultimately necessarily subjective. This is because of language and imagery.
In an organized religion, such as Christianity, there are images and vocabulary that are used from Christian to Christian, from church to church. There is an anchoring point for the believers; there is an objective discourse that they must enter into, whereas in an unorganized setting, there is very little of this objectivity.
Without this objectivity, the spiritual language and images that a person holds, that a person believes in, while having meaning and significance for themselves, may very well have little or no meaning for another person, or at least have a different meaning altogether. From what we have understood through Bakhtin, it is in the relationship that words and ideas have with other words and ideas that there is meaning. There must be some relationality in a person's spirituality, in order for it to be voiced, and through this voice, to be developed. Without this expression, there is very little of an anchor for the spirituality, and safeguarding, so to speak, against 'flights of fancy'.
Kierkegaard, in a work published late in his life, tells a parable about wild and tame geese (Muto “Solitary Bird” 93-4). The tame geese, he writes, even though they have 'lost' all of their wildness, still recognize the call of the wild geese as they migrate south in the fall, and try to follow. They cannot follow very far, though, as they have become fat and lazy. If a wild goose, however, were to land among them, it might try to teach them to fly, to migrate with the rest of the geese. It would be a long process, but the wild goose would succeed to a certain point. But as soon as the going became difficult, the tame geese would stop and return to their life of luxury. The wild goose here would have two choices. That goose could either stay with the tame geese and coax them on again, or return to the rest of the wild geese, and migrate. If the wild goose left on its migration, it would be free. If, however, it chose to stay with the tame geese, it could potentially loose its wildness, and become a tame goose as well. The moral that Kierkegaard places in this parable, is that tame geese can never become wild again, but a wild goose can easily become tame.
The moral for our purposes, though, rests mostly on the migratory instinct of all geese. If a person is constrained too much in their spiritual life, their personal spirituality made to mirror the objective spirituality of the crowd, they can become 'tame', they can become spiritually hollow, following along docilely. If, however, a person's spirituality does not anchor itself to an objective discourse, an objective spirituality, it runs the risk of becoming flighty, of having no guidance whatsoever.
This is the role, then, of the context in which a person has their spirituality. A spiritual community, such as a church group, can be either the ideal place to grow and develop spirituality, or it can become a hindrance and a mold for spirituality. It is a difficult balance to make, and to uphold, but it is to the benefit of both the individual and the group to find this balance. Because of the objective discourse that exists within an organized setting, spirituality can find words and images to use to define itself, while at the same time, in appropriating these words and images, it will give its own individual meaning to them. With an entire group of spiritual people doing this within the same context, the words and images will remain living and dynamic; they will be viable methods of expression for generations of people to use in understanding their spirituality, and in expressing it to others.
At the same time, through this flow and interchange of meaning, each person’s spirituality, provided that they partake of this interchange of words and images, has the potential to grow and develop, and so become more useful and viable for the individual. It is, so to speak, a place of rest for a spirituality, a place it can be comfortable and strengthened; whereas in a setting which does not have this community aspect, the spirituality will still be in a relationship with other spiritualities, but not in the same way. It might either be a setting of discovery, to find out what other spiritualities exist, what other images can be found. Or it might be an antagonistic setting, one in which the spiritualities define themselves and each other by what they are not, rather than by what they are, and what they can come to be.
Using Kierkegaard and Bakhtin to come to insights about spirituality, we can also come to the conclusion that the ideal context for the purpose of strengthening and maturing spirituality is a context with similar, yet still authentically personal, spiritualities. The strength of this approach is that each person will be required to engage every aspect/level of their spirituality with others, and inspect even the smallest details, while at the same time feeling the wholeness and acceptance of the group. To be too completely an individual is to lose an avenue of expression. To be too completely a universal is to lose the authenticity that makes spirituality truly work. A balance is always needed, a balance between the particular of each person, and the universal of the group. Too much of either is not a good thing, but too little of either is as equally unwholesome.