A continuation of our series on spirituality – and lack of it – in Unitarian experience. Explores how some of us adapt and adopt cultural metaphors, including considering “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” as a kind of journey.
Speaker & Worship Leader:- Alix Geard
Video to come
Audio to come
Read below, or download the PDF – to come
Alix Geard © 7 June 2026
When we were planning this service, I gave it the title Travel Tips for Spiritual Journeys.
If I’m honest, I chose the title somewhat flippantly, and then never got around to changing it.
Partly that’s because I have a slightly complicated relationship with the word spirituality. Ruby mentioned recently that some of us here have complicated relationships with religion and spirituality. I’m certainly one of them.
I’m looking for something. I’ve spent most of my life looking for something. But I don’t usually call it spirituality.
And perhaps that’s where I’d like to begin.
As Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists, we affirm both the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth, and a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
Those two ideas have always mattered to me.
Not because they tell us where we must arrive.
Because they give us permission to travel.
I’ve done a fair amount of travelling in the ordinary sense.
I’ve travelled through most of Aotearoa. Overseas, I’ve spent much of my time in Europe and Australia. I’ve made pilgrimages of a sort: to places that mattered to me, places that shaped my family, places connected to my ancestors.
But I’ve also spent much of my life wandering intellectually.
I began university studying engineering.
I finished with degrees in philosophy, English, and library and information studies.
That’s not a straight line. It’s not even a particularly sensible line.
But it taught me something important.
The best thing we know today may need to be revised tomorrow.
The map is not the territory.
Certainty is often temporary.
One of the most valuable skills we can learn is how to sit with ambiguity.
That lesson seems increasingly important in the world we’re living in.
Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock, published almost as long ago as I have been alive, described the experience of too much change in too short a period of time.
I think many of us know that feeling.
I’ve spent most of my working life doing jobs that didn’t exist when I chose my first post-school education.
Now the foundations of those jobs are shifting again.
Technology changes.
Institutions change.
Entire professions change.
And our personal landmarks change too.
Growing older sometimes feels like watching the landmarks of your life disappear.
My childhood homes have been removed or demolished and replaced by townhouses.
Churches that shaped my early life have been desanctified or demolished.
Employing organisations that once seemed permanent have been merged, renamed, or dissolved.
Places that once anchored my understanding of the world no longer exist in the form I knew them.
If we’re waiting for a stable map before beginning our journey, we’ll be waiting forever.
The Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote:
“Traveller, there is no path. The path is made by walking.”
I think that’s one of the most profound descriptions of a spiritual journey I’ve encountered.
Because many of us imagine that spiritual growth means finding the correct destination.
The correct doctrine.
The correct belief.
The correct answer.
But perhaps the journey is not about arriving at certainty.
Perhaps it is about becoming the sort of person who can continue travelling.
Who can continue learning.
Who can continue responding with courage and kindness when the map changes.
The sources of Unitarian Universalism support that idea.
We draw wisdom from many traditions.
Religious traditions.
Humanist traditions.
Earth-centred traditions.
Science.
Reason.
Direct experience.
Prophetic voices.
We are encouraged to learn from all of them.
There’s a saying attributed to Abdullah ibn Mas’ud:
“If you’re given truth, accept it, even from an enemy;
if you’re given evil, reject it, even from a friend.”
I like that.
It reminds us that truth is not owned by any one tradition.
Wisdom can arrive from unexpected directions.
Part of our task is learning how to recognise it.
For me, that has involved exploring traditions that weren’t part of my upbringing as well as getting deeper into traditions that are.
Listening to Jewish scholars discussing the Tanakh.
Learning from Buddhist teachings.
Reading philosophy.
Studying psychology and human behaviour.
Paying attention to science.
Learning from people whose assumptions differ profoundly from my own.
Not because I expect any of those sources to provide a final answer.
But because each may illuminate part of the landscape.
I also find myself reclaiming language that I once thought belonged exclusively to religion.
Words like ritual.
Words like sacred.
Even words like spiritual.
Human beings are ritual-making creatures.
We gather.
We share meals.
We sing together.
We tell stories.
We mark transitions.
Whether we explain these practices through theology, psychology, neuroscience or culture, they matter.
Ritual is a technology older than writing.
Not every ritual works for every person.
But human beings have been using ritual for thousands of years because it helps us navigate uncertainty, grief, joy, change and community.
One thing menopause has taught me – rather more vividly than I expected – is how much of what I think of as “myself” is influenced by biology.
Chemistry matters.
Brains matter.
Bodies matter.
The boundary between the physical and the spiritual turns out to be much less clear than I once imagined.
Perhaps that’s another travel tip.
Pay attention to the vehicle you’re travelling in.
You are not a mind dragging around an inconvenient body.
You are a whole person.
Another travel tip is this:
Learn from other travellers.
You don’t have to walk every path yourself.
The experiences of people who came before us are maps – not perfect maps, but useful ones.
The world’s religions contain many things, among them accumulated observations about what helps human beings flourish and what causes suffering.
The sciences contain accumulated observations about how the world works.
Literature contains accumulated observations about what it feels like to be human.
All of them have something to teach us.
And finally:
Don’t be surprised if you end up where you started, but seeing it differently.
T. S. Eliot wrote:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
I think that’s often how spiritual journeys work.
We leave home.
We explore.
We question.
We lose certainty.
We gain experience.
And eventually we discover that the point was never simply to arrive somewhere else.
The point was to become someone capable of seeing more deeply.
So if I were to offer a final list of travel tips for spiritual journeys, it would be this:
Travel lightly.
Carry curiosity.
Pack humility.
Accept that your map may need revision.
Learn from fellow travellers.
And keep walking.
Because whether we call it spirituality, wisdom, meaning, growth, or simply becoming more fully human, the path is made by walking.
Amen.
Meditation / Conversation starter
- Is there a travel tip that you’ve taken to heart for your own spiritual journey?
- What tip would you share with someone else?
Discussion ‘rules’:
- Keep your comments brief
- Ensure everyone has a turn (or passes)
- Listen, but do not comment (you can affirm with a very brief comment during your own speaking time)
- You can add a further comment if everyone has had their turn to speak
Links
Chalice Lighting:- “To Be a Unitarian Universalist” by Erika Hewitt, inspired by Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen’s chapter, “Our Work for Social Justice,” in The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide.