Conscious and deliberate acts of caring are a unique human attribute. The need to care and to be cared for is essential to the survival of all human groups. We create communities, cultural norms, ethical frameworks, social constructs, and beliefs that help guide our choices, to make our lives meaningful and understandable. We make commitments, form families, and care for family members by nurturing their growth and development. We develop shared interests and identities with other families, seeking to sustain our wellbeing, survival, and flourishing. Yet, when we are baffled, suffering, scared, fearful, or engulfed in physical pain or moral dilemmas, we have traditionally sought care from religious and spiritual institutions. It is here, that we bring the full palette of our human spirituality to be acknowledged and addressed, seeking love and authentic relationships. We bring our desires for forgiveness, mercy, and autonomy. We bring our claims of faith to help us make meaning in the midst of the limited and fragile security of a human life. We bring our need for hope and vision, to satisfy the self-consciousness of our finitude. We want to be ethical and honest, humble, and grateful in a world where justice is fleeting and duplicity and evil are gratuitously on display. We bring our broken, ill-formed, halting questions and curiosities to religion and spiritual sources to be tended to, laid bare, and cared for.
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