I like to say I am responsible for my life. Henri Nouwen says it differently, he quotes Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as saying that “everyone has to drink from his own well.”

I like the idea of spirituality as being a well that we drink from, deeply and in a nourishing way.

The thing is, no one really drinks alone. We all drink from wells we never dug and enjoyed fresh water that is not really ours.

Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology, wrote that “spirituality is like living water that springs up in the very depths of the experience of faith.”

When I pause to drink deeply from this well, I am transformed, enriched. It is pure and refreshing.

The Christian theologians, the most enlightening spiritual writers I have ever read,  believed that spiritual discernment – the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure, and what is moral for each of us- was based on a continuous, dynamic careful listening to our own idea of God, and more specifically, the poor and helpless.

It is not one idea that works for all things at all times. For me, the question is where does my own notion of faith lead me? What good does it do me and others?

In my acting class last night, Christine Decker, my teacher, talked about the need for actors to be authentic, the same quality I believe is essential to any good writer.

Writing asks us to be honest, and to show our vulnerability, and to see the worst parts of us. Liberating spiritually for me does not demand that I believe in one God, or embrace all of any religion. I can love Jesus without knowing him to be the Son of God, I can love the mystics of the Kaballah without bending my knees to their God.

My spirituality comes from an active and instinctive faith, not a dogmatic, passive or privileged and dictated experience.

I drink from my own well, a place of strength and safety and purpose.

Spiritual discernment is not an individual or personal gift to me, but part of the struggle to live a meaningful  life. Drinking from the well for me means learning how to love, and how to be loved. It means living in nature, respecting our Mother, the Earth, living among the animals.

One doesn’t have to believe in a single idea of God to recognize the divine presence in the midst of the daily struggle to live, a struggle every one of us faces.

I used to think that all of the troubles of the world were mine alone, I know now that everyone has their own battles, everyone has it worse than me.

In the most spiritual sense, that kind of struggle is over.

I already have that for which I have always yearned. I feed on that which I once hungered for. I accept the call to “come and see” what the world offers me, I am learning that it is possible to have love, joy and peace in my life.

I am drinking from my own well.

Audio. Drinking From My Own Well