From Bobby Charlton to Halloween we can't help ourselves it just slips out. We try to live our lives under the belief that there's nothing beyond what we can see but we fail again and again. We need to come clean and just say it out loud; "we believe in a spiritual world". Did that not feel good to get it off your chest? In truth most of the year we wear a mask, at Halloween it slips off. Revealing a belief in an unseen reality. Now come on you may say, all this talk of ghosts and spirits, witches and zombies is just for a laugh so the kids to get dressed up and fill up with sweets. We've grown out of all that old fashioned nonsense.
But have we really? Do we no longer 'touch wood' for fear that some unseen force will do us harm? Do some of us not have lucky socks or stick to a specific routine so that a that a certain outcome is arrived at? Our hopes and fears are caught up in something beyond what we can see. If you think it's just a laugh, try and stop doing it.
But there's more.
Our belief in a world beyond can be seen in our wide eyed wonder of a sunrise. There was a beautiful one the other morning, did you see it? The colours were so bold and beautiful against the black darkness that it was awe inspiring. When were caught up in moments like that the natural reason that it formed doesn't seem enough. There has to be more.
Our belief in a world beyond can be heard in the heard in the sports commentary. (Now we get to Bobby Charlton) Man United won a crucial Champion league game the other evening, To everyone surprise Harry Maguire scored the only goal of the match (in the other team's net not his own teams). Here's what the commentator said, "Wow, wow...what a night...Just maybe, just maybe one of this football clubs icons were looking down and might well have played a part on a night Old Trafford said goodbye to Bobby Charlton."
Do you hear the life beyond assumptions (or at least hopes). Others have said about the great reunion there'll be with Bobby and Jack (his brother). We hear this all the time in our conversations around the recently dead.
Now let me be clear I'm not saying people shouldn't say this. That's not my argument here. I'm just saying we should come clean and openly confess.
"We believe in a spiritual world".
Or at least we hope there's something more. We hope this world isn't all there is. We long for there to be something that lifts us beyond the mundane to the magical, beyond the horror to the hope. When the mask we wear slips, it reveal assumptions that we carry in our very soul. Yes soul. There we go again. We are more than just brains on sticks, we are spiritual and physical beings. We just need to say it out loud, "We believe in a spiritual world". And from that place, an honesty conversation can begin.
Take the mask off permanently, don't live in the lie you're being sold. "We believe in a spiritual world because we live in a spiritual world". Ahh! That felt good to say.