Hello MIT! My name is Adam Reynolds and I’m one of the MIT chaplains. The fun part of writing stuff that no one will read is that you don’t have to censor yourself all that much. I’m not really the blogging type (I can’t even manage to read blogs), but this seems like a good venue for me to espouse my spiritual musings and my hopes for MIT.

I’m new as a chaplain, but I’ve been very connected to the MIT community since first coming here as an undergrad in 1997. And I’ve been pretty involved in spiritual life here for nearly the past decade.

First a word about the title of this blog. We’re all familiar with MIT’s motto: Mens et Manus, Latin for “Mind and Hand.” Well, in what is surely brash irreverence, I am advocating that we augment the motto with “…et Spiritus!” to emphasize the importance of the spiritual dimension in life in addition to the physical and mental. Now of course “spiritual” is one of those slippery amorphous words that can rankle us science and engineering types. So I’ll at least define it a little while still keeping it just vague enough to suit my purposes. Borrowing a couple of lines from the Wikipedia article on Spirituality:

Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issues of how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things… An idea or practice is “spiritual” when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.

You might note that this is a wonderfully inclusive definition, allowing for both “faith-based” and secular spirituality; so everyone can participate in this kind of spiritual discussion.  Or here’s another similarly inclusive definition of spirituality I like that I found on Nature.com a few years ago:

An inner sense of something greater than oneself. Recognition of a meaning to existence that transcends one’s immediate circumstances.

So if we want to tackle questions of meaning and significance, I think that puts us in the spiritual realm. And I think questions of meaning are particularly important for us here at MIT.  If we’re going to be working so dam hard, often pushing ourselves to the limit, shouldn’t we know why we’re doing it and what’s motivating us? Don’t we want to have a deep alignment between our vocation and our sense of identity and purpose?

But don’t take my word for it. I think Socrates hit the nail on the head with this one with his famous statement “The unexamined life is not worth living.” A direct corollary would seem to be “the unexamined academic career is not worth pursuing.” (Perhaps this is the wonderful thing about PhD programs and advanced degrees—it’s so hard and so tedious that these students are litterally forced to ask themselves “Why on earth am I doing this?! Is this really worth it?”)

And while it is called self-reflection, I’m convinced that we’re well-advised to involve other people in this process. Trustworthy friends can be an invaluable sounding board and help bring perspective. Plus, who wants to engage in one of life’s most important journey’s alone? It’s more fun with friends.

So, while it is certainly present in many forms, how can we make this sort of spiritual discussion and reflection more of the norm at MIT? I’ll attempt to throw out some ideas (which I’m sure will be all too naive and oversimplified for a community as complex and diverse as ours) in upcoming posts, but “crowdsourcing” is the hip way to tackle these things nowadays so what do you, oh hypothetical readers, think?