It is important, at the outset, to specify that secular spirituality should not be confused with institutional religion. While religion demands a faith-based commitment to an institutionalised set of beliefs, “spirituality is that dimension of our existence which enables us to experience ourselves as part of a greater, sense-making totality” (Prozesky 2006: 132); in other words, an embodied “passion for the well-being of our world here and now” (Prozesky 2006: 136). Further-more, ‘secular spirituality’ is distinct not only from religion, but also from ‘secularism’ (as the latter term is usually employed in positivistic philosophies, or, indeed, in materialist analysis). Here we touch upon a ‘postmodern holism’ that is sweeping through the global collective con-sciousness: a centripetal force not primarily concerned with material acquisition, but attempting to unify various forms of spiritual experience and fulfilment, “whether traditional or modern, theistic, pantheistic or atheistic” (Raman 2005: 3). This secular-spiritual turn, or secular spiritual-ity, is, paradoxically, therefore, “post-religious” (Prozesky 2006: 138), for it attempts to overcome the pernicious dualism of matter and spirit as the mark of conventional religious discourse. It is when perceiving secular behaviours as spiritual (and, vice versa, when perceiving the spiritual as rooted in everyday life) that people today may speak of “a sense of the sacred without allegiance to religious doctrine” (Botha 2006: 100). It is precisely this sense of the sacred in secular contexts, and specifically the sacred as an embodied experience, that is my concern here. Lakoff and Johnson attempt to describe the notion of secular spirituality as “embodied spirituality”, for it “is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings to it intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. Without all these, spirituality is bland” (1999: 568). Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson view such an involvement as going beyond the self: “embodied spirituality is more than a spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world” (1999: 566). Embodied/secular spirituality covers various aspects of physicality, ranging from ecology, city life, sickness, to “sports, gay/lesbian and gender issues [including] childbirth, distress, sex” (Kourie 2006: 82; 87). Such understandings of secular spirituality go beyond the Cartesian division between mind/spirit and body, and offer human sexuality a new space of exploration. Current research on sexuality as expression of secular spirituality reveals that what were previously considered to be non-spiritual activities (sport or sex) are now viewed as manifestations of the sacred. Prior and Cusack (2008), for example, analyse “sexual explorations through the lens of secular spirituality”, arguing that today’s “transformed religio-spiritual climate makes it possible to characterise sexual exploration as a spiritual identity quest” (271). These various expressions of the spiritual turn have not escaped literary criticism, and arewell captured in the title of the book, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination (Carruthers and Tate 2010). But let us pause. Is secular spirituality that new?Not really. If secular spirituality suggests a “modern diffusion of a spiritual impulse that has survived [Modernity’s] disenchantment” (Mousley 2010: 98), its influence can be traced to what Walter Benjamin in the 1930s referred to as profane illumination: a sporadic immanence, or the ‘auratic power’ of ordinary existence. Benjamin’s concept of “weak Messianic power” (1973a: 246) suggests a dif-fused theology: a theology that, unlike Martin Luther King’s unambiguously scriptural, ‘strong’ messianism, has lost its doctrinal grounding and gestures instead towards sporadic glimpses of sacredness within the mundane. The image of the writer/poet as “ragpicker” is Benjamin’s (1973b: 79) favourite metaphor for suggesting the capacity of the literary imagination to retrieve and re-assemble shards of experience; its power to give the shards a fresh, revelatory, ‘auratic’ power; its effort in “salvaging the concealed significance of phenomena from the ‘throw-away’ mentality of consumer capitalism” (Mousley 2010: 107). This conception of ‘weak theology’ has been revived in current critical thinking, in which an investment in ‘presence’ privileges the aesthetic moment. Outside the structures of intellectual meaning-making, the sacred is glimpsed as an affective experience, an ‘embodied meaning’,

DOI link for It is important, at the outset, to specify that secular spirituality should not be confused with institutional religion. While religion demands a faith-based commitment to an institutionalised set of beliefs, “spirituality is that dimension of our existence which enables us to experience ourselves as part of a greater, sense-making totality” (Prozesky 2006: 132); in other words, an embodied “passion for the well-being of our world here and now” (Prozesky 2006: 136). Further-more, ‘secular spirituality’ is distinct not only from religion, but also from ‘secularism’ (as the latter term is usually employed in positivistic philosophies, or, indeed, in materialist analysis). Here we touch upon a ‘postmodern holism’ that is sweeping through the global collective con-sciousness: a centripetal force not primarily concerned with material acquisition, but attempting to unify various forms of spiritual experience and fulfilment, “whether traditional or modern, theistic, pantheistic or atheistic” (Raman 2005: 3). This secular-spiritual turn, or secular spiritual-ity, is, paradoxically, therefore, “post-religious” (Prozesky 2006: 138), for it attempts to overcome the pernicious dualism of matter and spirit as the mark of conventional religious discourse. It is when perceiving secular behaviours as spiritual (and, vice versa, when perceiving the spiritual as rooted in everyday life) that people today may speak of “a sense of the sacred without allegiance to religious doctrine” (Botha 2006: 100). It is precisely this sense of the sacred in secular contexts, and specifically the sacred as an embodied experience, that is my concern here. Lakoff and Johnson attempt to describe the notion of secular spirituality as “embodied spirituality”, for it “is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings to it intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. Without all these, spirituality is bland” (1999: 568). Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson view such an involvement as going beyond the self: “embodied spirituality is more than a spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world” (1999: 566). Embodied/secular spirituality covers various aspects of physicality, ranging from ecology, city life, sickness, to “sports, gay/lesbian and gender issues [including] childbirth, distress, sex” (Kourie 2006: 82; 87). Such understandings of secular spirituality go beyond the Cartesian division between mind/spirit and body, and offer human sexuality a new space of exploration. Current research on sexuality as expression of secular spirituality reveals that what were previously considered to be non-spiritual activities (sport or sex) are now viewed as manifestations of the sacred. Prior and Cusack (2008), for example, analyse “sexual explorations through the lens of secular spirituality”, arguing that today’s “transformed religio-spiritual climate makes it possible to characterise sexual exploration as a spiritual identity quest” (271). These various expressions of the spiritual turn have not escaped literary criticism, and arewell captured in the title of the book, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination (Carruthers and Tate 2010). But let us pause. Is secular spirituality that new?Not really. If secular spirituality suggests a “modern diffusion of a spiritual impulse that has survived [Modernity’s] disenchantment” (Mousley 2010: 98), its influence can be traced to what Walter Benjamin in the 1930s referred to as profane illumination: a sporadic immanence, or the ‘auratic power’ of ordinary existence. Benjamin’s concept of “weak Messianic power” (1973a: 246) suggests a dif-fused theology: a theology that, unlike Martin Luther King’s unambiguously scriptural, ‘strong’ messianism, has lost its doctrinal grounding and gestures instead towards sporadic glimpses of sacredness within the mundane. The image of the writer/poet as “ragpicker” is Benjamin’s (1973b: 79) favourite metaphor for suggesting the capacity of the literary imagination to retrieve and re-assemble shards of experience; its power to give the shards a fresh, revelatory, ‘auratic’ power; its effort in “salvaging the concealed significance of phenomena from the ‘throw-away’ mentality of consumer capitalism” (Mousley 2010: 107). This conception of ‘weak theology’ has been revived in current critical thinking, in which an investment in ‘presence’ privileges the aesthetic moment. Outside the structures of intellectual meaning-making, the sacred is glimpsed as an affective experience, an ‘embodied meaning’,

It is important, at the outset, to specify that secular spirituality should not be confused with institutional religion. While religion demands a faith-based commitment to an institutionalised set of beliefs, “spirituality is that dimension of our existence which enables us to experience ourselves as part of a greater, sense-making totality” (Prozesky 2006: 132); in other words, an embodied “passion for the well-being of our world here and now” (Prozesky 2006: 136). Further-more, ‘secular spirituality’ is distinct not only from religion, but also from ‘secularism’ (as the latter term is usually employed in positivistic philosophies, or, indeed, in materialist analysis). Here we touch upon a ‘postmodern holism’ that is sweeping through the global collective con-sciousness: a centripetal force not primarily concerned with material acquisition, but attempting to unify various forms of spiritual experience and fulfilment, “whether traditional or modern, theistic, pantheistic or atheistic” (Raman 2005: 3). This secular-spiritual turn, or secular spiritual-ity, is, paradoxically, therefore, “post-religious” (Prozesky 2006: 138), for it attempts to overcome the pernicious dualism of matter and spirit as the mark of conventional religious discourse. It is when perceiving secular behaviours as spiritual (and, vice versa, when perceiving the spiritual as rooted in everyday life) that people today may speak of “a sense of the sacred without allegiance to religious doctrine” (Botha 2006: 100). It is precisely this sense of the sacred in secular contexts, and specifically the sacred as an embodied experience, that is my concern here. Lakoff and Johnson attempt to describe the notion of secular spirituality as “embodied spirituality”, for it “is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings to it intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. Without all these, spirituality is bland” (1999: 568). Furthermore, Lakoff and Johnson view such an involvement as going beyond the self: “embodied spirituality is more than a spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world” (1999: 566). Embodied/secular spirituality covers various aspects of physicality, ranging from ecology, city life, sickness, to “sports, gay/lesbian and gender issues [including] childbirth, distress, sex” (Kourie 2006: 82; 87). Such understandings of secular spirituality go beyond the Cartesian division between mind/spirit and body, and offer human sexuality a new space of exploration. Current research on sexuality as expression of secular spirituality reveals that what were previously considered to be non-spiritual activities (sport or sex) are now viewed as manifestations of the sacred. Prior and Cusack (2008), for example, analyse “sexual explorations through the lens of secular spirituality”, arguing that today’s “transformed religio-spiritual climate makes it possible to characterise sexual exploration as a spiritual identity quest” (271). These various expressions of the spiritual turn have not escaped literary criticism, and arewell captured in the title of the book, Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular Imagination (Carruthers and Tate 2010). But let us pause. Is secular spirituality that new?Not really. If secular spirituality suggests a “modern diffusion of a spiritual impulse that has survived [Modernity’s] disenchantment” (Mousley 2010: 98), its influence can be traced to what Walter Benjamin in the 1930s referred to as profane illumination: a sporadic immanence, or the ‘auratic power’ of ordinary existence. Benjamin’s concept of “weak Messianic power” (1973a: 246) suggests a dif-fused theology: a theology that, unlike Martin Luther King’s unambiguously scriptural, ‘strong’ messianism, has lost its doctrinal grounding and gestures instead towards sporadic glimpses of sacredness within the mundane. The image of the writer/poet as “ragpicker” is Benjamin’s (1973b: 79) favourite metaphor for suggesting the capacity of the literary imagination to retrieve and re-assemble shards of experience; its power to give the shards a fresh, revelatory, ‘auratic’ power; its effort in “salvaging the concealed significance of phenomena from the ‘throw-away’ mentality of consumer capitalism” (Mousley 2010: 107). This conception of ‘weak theology’ has been revived in current critical thinking, in which an investment in ‘presence’ privileges the aesthetic moment. Outside the structures of intellectual meaning-making, the sacred is glimpsed as an affective experience, an ‘embodied meaning’,