While I had some trouble understanding what Tillich meant regarding vitality and intentionality when I first read this book many years ago, my appreciation for and at least partial understanding of this remarkable passage has increased over time. I find that I am energized and excited about working with colleagues on a new project or book; my time tending to my mother during the final years of her life brought me great joy and contentment; time now being spent with my wife, children and grandchildren here in Maine (where we all live) is truly a “blessing” for me. I am finding my priorities (intentionality) during these last decades of my life and am living an active life (vitality) that is directed toward these priorities. My ultimate concerns are manifest in what I do and not just in what I think. Perhaps, this is the kind of spirituality that has been promoted by Parker Palmer when reflecting on his own life.
Breaking the Barrier
At another point in The Courage to Be, Tillich (1952, p. 82) proposes that: “in every encounter with reality the structures of self and world are interdependently present.” He seems to be aligning with the notion of spirituality as requiring a breaking of the barrier between our internal and external life. For Tillich, this capacity to break the barrier is central to the human capacity for transcendence—and it is in this transcendence that we find our freedom and our vitality. For me, this means that I have been free to make choices regarding priorities in my life. I have been free to teach, write, tend to those about whom I care, and spend quality time with members of my family. Most people in the world are not privileged with this opportunity to make choices. Perhaps my vivid purple chakra portrays something about my being “blessed” with choice and freedom. This might be an element of my actual spiritual life.
Tillich (1952, p. 82) goes on to relate vitality and freedom to courage (the primary focus of this book):
“Certainly courage is a function of vitality, but vitality is not something which can be separated from the totality of man’s being, his language, his creativity, his spiritual life, his ultimate concern. One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man’s spiritual life was that the word “spirit” was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in “spirit” was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped.”
I wonder if I (like many “secularists”) have been a casualty of this loss of spirit. Even during my years attending Divinity School, I was writing about religion rather than engaging it in any meaningful manner. It is in the active life I have led since leaving Harvard that the “spirit” might have become manifest. Tillich (1952, p.46) might have been telling me something about the vital life I have been blessed to lead since Harvard:
“Everyone who lives creatively in meanings affirms himself as a participant in these meanings. He affirms himself as receiving and transforming reality creatively. He loves himself as participating in the spiritual life and as loving its contents. He loves them because they are his own fulfillment and because they are actualized through him. The scientist loves both the truth he discovers and himself insofar as he discovers it. He is held by the content of his discovery. This is what one can call “spiritual self-affirmation.” And if he has not discovered but only participates in the discovery, it is equally spiritual self-affirmation.”
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