The day often begins with ritual. Steam rises from a cup of coffee, its aroma lingering in the stillness of morning. My cats circle my feet, waiting for their meal, and I turn on the lights before opening a book. None of this is spiritual, not in the way our culture typically imagines it. There is no invocation of spirits, no appeal to divine presence. And yet, there is order, rhythm, grounding. These small acts anchor me to the day ahead. Many people might call such moments spiritual, but I call them religious. That distinction is deliberate.
We live in an age where the phrase “spiritual but not religious” has become a shorthand for those who reject organized religion while still yearning for transcendence, personal growth, and connection to something larger than themselves. My path has led in the opposite direction. I am not spiritual; I do not believe in the supernatural, in disembodied souls, in miracles that suspend the natural order. If God exists, then God exists within the universe, not outside of it, and is therefore not supernatural. What I claim instead is religion—ritual, structure, tradition, symbol, and the shared myths that knit human communities together across time. My life is framed by rhythm and repetition, not by ethereal spirituality. To be religious, not spiritual is to embrace ritual and tradition without making any claim to supernatural truth.
This project, then, is first and foremost for me. I write as a way of clarifying what I believe, not to convince or convert others. The audience is myself; anyone else who reads does so as an observer looking over my shoulder. Writing in this way is part memoir, part philosophy, and part historical reflection. It is also a pedagogical exercise, shaped by my years as a teacher and student of history. I want to understand how my practices, values, and worldview fit together into a coherent whole.
The central question guiding these essays is simple, though its answers are complex: How can a person live richly, meaningfully, and communally without belief in the supernatural? My position is grounded in naturalism. Everything that happens has a cause within the framework of the universe. Death is final, consciousness is a product of the brain, and moral truths are shaped by societies rather than imposed by divine command. Yet even within this naturalistic frame, I feel the draw of ritual, the power of symbols, and the beauty of traditions that stretch back centuries. My task is to reconcile these impulses without betraying either honesty or longing.
This series of ten essays does not claim to be systematic theology, nor is it a manifesto. It is instead a collection of lenses. Each essay focuses on a theme: naturalism as my foundation, death and what survives us, morality without absolutes, the making of meaning, ritual without belief, symbols and myths, teaching within pluralism, history as pilgrimage, the place of mystery, and finally, a living credo that ties them together. They are arranged in sequence, but they need not be read as a linear argument. Rather, they are fragments of reflection, each one circling back to the central phrase: religious, not spiritual.
The tone of these essays is deliberately personal. I write not as a detached philosopher but as a human being reflecting on a life shaped by belief, disbelief, and the spaces in between. Memoir is a kind of archaeology, uncovering the layers of childhood faith, academic formation, and adult practice. As Michel de Montaigne (1580/1993) once wrote, “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics” (p. 503). In the same spirit, I offer these essays as self-study, neither exhaustive nor final, but provisional and open-ended.
This is not a cathedral of certainty, but a garden of reflection. Gardens are never finished; they are tended. So too with belief. Over time, weeds grow, plants die, new flowers take root, and paths shift. To say I am religious, not spiritual is not to declare a fixed identity but to describe the garden I am tending now. Ritual, tradition, history, and human connection form its soil. What grows within it is meaning—not eternal or absolute, but grounded and real.
In the essays that follow, I will walk through that garden in ten different ways, pausing at certain corners, examining the shapes of old stones, and noting what blooms in the present season. It is an act of care, of attention, and of honesty. And if others wander through, they are welcome. But the tending, always, is mine.
References
Montaigne, M. (1993). The complete essays (D. M. Frame, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1580)