As education broadens from a focus simply on intellectual achievement, the concepts of EQ and SQ are increasingly mentioned as part of a well-rounded education. Education is not just of the mind, but of the whole person. This Speech Day address at Canberra Grammar School in 1999 addresses the question of SQ.
Even when I went to school the IQ test was a central feature of education : it allegedly tells you how intelligent you are in terms of a somewhat narrow range of criteria. We also hear today of EQ, the Emotional Quotient, which is a measure of your emotional state, and how much you feel at ease with yourself and with others.
Today I want to talk about the SQ, or spiritual quotient, which might make you think you better now settle in for a long and boring speech on religion. I hope it won’t be like that, because spirituality is much bigger than religion, although good religion should help us discover a healthy spirituality for living. Spirituality is to do with life, what we believe, what we value, how we relate to others, how we see ourselves as one very small part of this planet and beyond, and to what in life we devote our energies.
I would like to address the subject by way of ten brief cameos, or snapshots, of what spirituality looks like in real life.
- Spirituality is to do with sharing with others : a journalist once interviewed a farmer and asked him what he would do if he had two farms. The farmer replied he would keep one and give the other to someone who needed it. The journalist next asked what the farmer would do if he had two houses, and received the same reply. “And what”, said the journalist, “would you do if you owned two horses?” “I’d keep them both for myself,” said the farmer. “Why?” said the journalist, “what makes the difference?” “You see,” said the farmer, “I own two horses.” I would suggest that spirituality is sharing whatever we have, be it in terms of possessions, time or human compassion, with others.
- Spirituality is to do with using the gifts we have to serve others : A friend of mine used to lecture in Law at Auckland University, and she would try to talk to the students in class about justice. But she found the students profoundly uninterested in justice. “Look, Miss,” they said, “we’re not really interested in justice; we’re just here to get a qualification to enter a prestigious and highly paid career.” The same dynamic can be true of any work or profession.
By contrast I think of the famous New Zealander, the late Sir Edmund Hillary, a humble beekeeper who was the first to conquer Mt Everest (with Sherpa Tensing Morgay) in 1953. So grateful was he for the support of the Nepalese that he devoted much of the rest of his life to building schools and hospitals for the people of Nepal. A similar story can be told of the great Australian, Fred Hollowes, in his work to restore sight to the poor in this country and abroad. Spirituality is using the gifts we have received from God not for our own enrichment, but in the service of others. - Spirituality is making sure the organisations we work for serve others : a large motor company some years ago produced a new model of car that often burst into flames in a collision. Management asked the engineers to investigate, and found there was a chassis bolt close to the fuel tank which, upon impact, ruptured the fuel tank and caused the fire. There had been many people burnt, some fatally. The engineers recommended that the company recall the vehicles and, for a few hundred dollars per vehicle, remedy the fault.
The accountants, however, had a different idea. They figured that the cost of paying compensation to the burnt and deceased victims was actually less than repairing thousands of vehicles. They recommended compensating the victims rather than remedying the problem. Spirituality is sometimes a choice between increasing profits or serving customers well. The emerging wisdom is that these two are not mutually exclusive. Companies that look to the well-being of their customers, staff and the wider community often find they prosper not only this year and next, but for years to come. - Spirituality recognises that the economy exists to serve others : A British economist, the late E F Schumacher wrote a book entitled Small is Beautiful : Economics as if People Mattered. That’s a revolutionary idea, isn’t it? Two quotations make his point :
To the extent that economic thinking is based on the market, it takes the sacredness out of life because there can be nothing sacred in something that has a price. Not surprisingly, therefore, if economic thinking pervades the whole of society, even simple non-economic values like beauty, health or cleanliness can survive only if they prove to be economic.
We need a nobler economics that is not afraid to discuss spirit and conscience, moral purpose and the meaning of life, an economics that aims to educate and elevate people, not merely to measure their low-grade behaviour. - Spirituality acknowledges the importance of commitment in relationships : Once when I was a parish priest a woman asked me to officiate at her wedding, She did not want, however, to use the traditional words “until death do us part”, but wanted instead to substitute “for as long as doth last”. Now I don’t believe people should be locked together endlessly in a loveless relationship, and I know the pain of those who have suffered a breakdown in a relationship, and am not judgmental about that. But if there is no mutual commitment in a relationship then we miss the chance to find the deep enrichment of the spirit that comes from a dynamic unity characterised by love, commitment, trust, and a willingness to walk together through times of pain. That is part of spirituality.
- Spirituality is having the capacity to carry on in the face of unimaginable suffering : In 1989 in Zimbabwe I visited some refugee camps on the Mozambique border. A civil war was raging in Mozambique, displacing thousands of people across the border into Zimbabwe where they lived in grass huts eating food sent by overseas aid agencies, and living with no knowledge or hope of when they might ever return to their homes. In 1998 I attended the Lambeth Conference in England and heard the end of that story – the war had concluded, the refugees went home, but found their houses burned, family members dead, and their fields sown with landmines rather than corn seed. Yet in the face of that the local church choir of women sang with a strength and joy you could not believe after all they had been through. They knew a spiritual depth that gave them the capacity to rise above what they had endured.
- Spirituality is having a passion to preserve the environment in our generation and for all the generations to come: Stephanie is the daughter of a New Zealand bishop. After taking a degree at university and studying journalism, Stephanie joined Greenpeace. She was on the Greenpeace when it sailed inside the forbidden nuclear testing zone at Mururoa. Hers was the scream heard on international radio as a marine boarding party climbed on board and started smashing windows and heads. Since then she has been all over the world protecting rivers and oceans, forests, animal, bird and fish life. Whether you are a farmer, business-person, industrialist, miner, or consumers as we all are, spirituality means doing what it takes to preserve in all its beauty the Earth which is God’s gift to us all.
- Spirituality is sitting alongside the ancient peoples of this land and drinking deeply of their culture and their experiences of the Dreamtime : A Scottish priest, Fr Gerard Hughes, visited the Pilbara one Lent in the early 90s and sat with the local people, recognising that God had been present in Australia long before the Europeans arrived. He compared his experience of Christian faith with their Aboriginal spirituality, discovered many points in common, and came away having received more than he had been able to give. A healthy spirituality recognises the presence of God in the lives and cultures of people very different from ourselves.
- Spirituality is being able to dream dreams beyond the conventions of ordinary life, and make them happen : John Passmore of the ANU distinguishes between the clever and the creative. The clever students at school, he says, were excellent in examinations, and scored high marks in intelligence tests. The essence of cleverness lies in a certain kind of rapidity of response, a quickness in picking up rules, skills and procedures, and in giving the right answers to questions. He says it is the unimaginative clever who have made a mess of our environment, the centres of our cities, our economy. The clever are often particularly weak in sympathetic imagination.
By contrast the creative thinker moves outside the range of problems we can solve by the application of known principles. The creative thinker looks beyond, beneath and around, taking into account the long-term, and not merely the immediate consequences of an action, looking at the underlying swell rather than the surface agitations. The clever person is concerned merely with keeping the grass tidy, whereas the creative (and spiritually aware) person encourages fresh growth. - Spirituality is knowing that we are but one part, but yet we have a place, in the vastness of the universe that surrounds us : Many of you will have seen the ABC programs with Philip Adams interviewing Paul Davies under the great canopy of the stars out in the South Australian desert. If we can reflect as they did on the meaning of life against such a backdrop, we come to understand that neither you nor I can be the centre of existence, but that our lives are lived out in relationship with each other, and with the Earth, and that ultimately we are held in the hands of God, by whatever name this God is known.
These are but some of the elements of what we might know as the S-factor in human life, and by which we might measure our SQ, the Spiritual Quotient of our life. May God bless you each one, as you seek not only to work on your IQ and your EQ, but also as you develop in all its richness the SQ which gives life and meaning to everything you will ever do.
To Discuss
Spirituality is very much in vogue as part of the 21st century search for meaning in life. What versions of spirituality do you see on offer in society’s market-place? How would you distinguish healthy from unhealthy spirituality?
