Many years ago I had a conversation with a young man on his way to the Burning Man Festival in the desert of Nevada.  At the time, I happened to be in South Dakota, working on an Indian reservation.  As we talked, it became clear to me that even though this young man didn’t appear to have any use for conventional religion, Christianity in particular, he had decided to journey to the Festival because he had “to find my spiritual roots.”  Although he wasn’t sure what those roots were, he was pretty much convinced that the Festival was the place to look for them.  He was persuaded that amidst the cacophony of cultural expressions he would see there, he would eventually step into a place, a place of spirit, however he defined it, he had not been before.

     As we talked, I thought often about the opening pages of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  The person before me seemed a mirror of the young man Joyce so insightfully describes, a person alone and apart, untrammeled and free, someone standing on the cusp of his destiny, poised to find his path forward.  Rather like, I thought, German painter Casper David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”:  poised on the edge of his calling.

     In the end, however, this young man told me that although he had definitely heard a call, a deeply compelling internal directive to find himself, he didn't want to learn about it in the framework of the Christian God.

     It was that fact of framework, he said, that held him back:  spirituality, he said, has no boundaries.

     Fair enough.  If an infinite God is there, then, yes, spirituality has no boundaries.  On the other hand, if an infinite God is there, it seems as if whatever spirituality we encounter will be grounded ultimately in him.  And how will we know either way?

     We will only know if God makes himself known in ways we understand.

     Ever heard of Jesus?