“The Spirituality of the Tangible”

I'm reminded of what Vine Deloria Jr. said about religion and spirituality: "Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there."

Now, there are different kinds of hell: The most well-known one is the hell of the afterlife, that religious people fear as some kind of punishment for a life ill-lived.

...but the other hells: addiction to drugs and alcohol, abuse, mental illness--those hells are far more prevalent and real.

In my experience, the interesting thing about people who have survived these kinds of hell --abuse, addiction, and mental illness-- are the people who have an interesting view of spirituality: They don't identify with any particular type of religion, so much as they believe in more tangible things: Good people, warmth, charity and friendliness, and the reality of how people treat others. That in itself is a type of spirituality--the spirituality of the tangible.