Radical Spirituality's Holy Trinity
Self, Sacred, and Other as the path of transformation
The past weeks have marked almost 60 straight days of Jewish holidays, beginning in August with Tisha B’av, the saddest day of the year as a collective day of mourning in remembrance of the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the Second Temple and the countless other calamities the Jews have experienced, followed by The Days of Awe, the opportunity to change course, and ending this past week with Simchat Torah, the joyful celebration of the Torah and the beginning of a new cycle of reading it. In between, there was Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; Sukkot, the harvest festival of gratitude; and perhaps what is now a new Holy Day of Grief and reflection for many Jews, the one-year anniversary of the massacre of October 7 (which fell on Simchat Torah last year).
Taken collectively, this intense holiday period outlines a path of personal and communal transformation from destruction to creation, grief to joy, the past to the future. But more interestingly, it points to the way transformation is actually achieved.
There are three words that form the actionable basis of these transformational holidays and are central to the Jewish religion. In Hebrew, they are T’eshuvah, T’filah and T’zedakah. Roughly translated into English, they are Return, Remembrance and Reciprocity, or “The Three R’s.”
At their root, these are actions that focus on Self, Sacred and Other (where other includes all beings and the earth itself). Return is a practice of the Self; Remembrance is a practice of the Sacred; Reciprocity is practice of the Other. Throughout the year, but especially during this holiday period, Jews everywhere focus on the practice of these words through self-reflection and atonement, prayer and worship, and giving to others.
Though these words (in Hebrew) are specific to the Jewish faith, they actually describe universal active principles of transformation embedded in every spiritual path. Whether we are Jews or Buddhists, Hindus or Christians, “Spiritual, But Not Religious,” or None of the Above, we are tasked with looking deeply at ourselves and where we have strayed from the path, returning to our true self and becoming better people; we spend time in contemplation, prayer or meditation reflecting on and remembering our connection to whatever it is we call Sacred; and we all do our best to be kind to others and build a better world. It’s a combination of Me, Thee and We. These are the pathways by which we transform ourselves and our world.
If we are to call ourselves spiritual, we must turn our attention to these three principles and their practice. In other words, we must pay attention to Self, Sacred and Other through specific practices of Return, Remembrance and Reciprocity.
For that reason, I call Return, Remembrance, and Reciprocity or Self, Sacred, and Other the Holy Trinity of Radical Spirituality; they are the overarching, universal spiritual practices for becoming better people in a better world.
Like the Trinity, these cannot be separated. True spirituality is the exploration of the Self, Sacred and Other, as well as of the intertwined relationship between them. Some might think of it as looking Inward, Upward (Beyond), and Outward simultaneously. All three are necessary and interconnected. You can’t just focus on yourself and call it “spiritual.” Nor can you chase enlightenment without caring for others. Service without connection to the Sacred or self-cultivation is hollow. You have to have all three.
But how you focus on Return, Remembrance and Reciprocity or explore your relationship to and between Self, Source and Other is where the distinction lies. Each tradition has its own practices and rules. However, there is a common set of practices to guide you that aren’t limited to one tradition or any.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t have this specifically linguistic understanding when I wrote TEN WORDS, but I sensed that any genuine spiritual path had to offer a way to cultivate the personal, communal and the Sacred simultaneously, or explore who we can be and how we can behave with others, and what ties them together.
Now that I see the connection clearly, I can safely say that TEN WORDS offers an interspiritual way to practice all of “The Three R’s.” You don’t have to subscribe to any one tradition – or any tradition at all—to explore your relationship to Self, Sacred and Other or practice Return, Remembrance and Reciprocity.
You just need TEN WORDS.
Here’s how it works. The first five words – Attention, Acceptance, Authenticity, Benevolence and Balance—are internal basics – the Self/Return part, or things we need to look inward for and work on to become better people. Yes, these words have an outward expression, but are primarily self-cultivation practices. Contemplation, the sixth word, is the fulcrum between Inward and Outward, in which we look Upward (or Beyond or Deeper, depending upon how you see it) to remember and deepen our connection to whatever we call Sacred, and explore how that affects our everything in our lives from the personal to the communal. The last four words – Creativity, Collaboration, Celebration and Care—, are the Reciprocity/Outward/Other practices: the ways we show up in the world and relate to others, or how we can behave with and towards others to build a better world. All three primary principles are there.
Just like “The Three R’s,” or Self, Sacred and Other, the TEN WORDS aren’t actually separate. You really can’t have Care if you don’t give Attention. You can’t have Celebration without Contemplation. You can’t be in Collaboration without Balance. In other words, the qualities we cultivate in ourselves show up in the way we treat others, and our understanding of the bigger picture – whatever you want to call it or however you experience it – informs all of it. Self, Sacred, Other.
So, yes, during these past weeks of holidays of transformation that celebrate and explore our relationship to and between our personal selves, our spiritual selves and our communal selves, I have been exploring how to bring the Holy Trinity of Radical Spirituality to the forefront in my own life and for others. How can we return to our better selves, remember our relationship to the Sacred, and treat others as we would want to be treated?
As we move into the next batch of transformational holidays, from the festivities of All Souls/Samhain/Diwali, into Thanksgiving in the US, Christmas, Chanukah and New Years, (with a very tense, possibly painful and difficult election coming up in between), let’s see if we can focus on Return, Remembrance and Reciprocity (and the TEN WORDS that help us do them) with us as we come together to celebrate and transform ourselves and our world.
