What is a Spirtual Warrior?

A while ago I received a cute card from a very old friend that said this:

Bee A Spiritual Warrior

"A spiritual warrior..." What does that mean?

I don't feel like I have a good definition from the secular world for this label, but in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism (sometimes referred to as Tibetan Buddhism) there is a term called: Bodhisattva.

A bodhisattva is an individual who is dedicated to a spiritual path or enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. 

Or, in other words, a bodhisattva is someone who believes their life is inextricably tied to the lives of all others so that s/he cannot find true or ultimate spiritual freedom without others having the same experience of liberation.

These folks wholeheartedly believe the old saying: No one is free when others are oppressed.

This devotional path resonates very deeply within me, but sometimes I have a hard time conceptualizing what this path would actually look like in the concreteness of our human world. 

Therefore, sometimes I find it helpful to educate myself vicariously through the biographies of others in order to grow in my own wisdom. (This was something I learned from my mother.)

So when I try to think of a model for this type of personhood and life commitment of "spiritual warrior," the person who comes to mind is 19th century American abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.

For those of you around the world who may not know this great American, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in the state of Maryland, and Ms. Tubman's own mother was captured in Africa and brought through the Middle Passage to slavery in America. 

However, at the age of 27, Ms. Tubman escaped slavery to the city of Philadelphia, and for most people that could and would have been enough.  That is already a heroine's story. 

But not for Ms. Tubman.

Though still a fugitive herself, standing only 5 feet tall (just like me!), and with a sum of $40,000 on her head for anyone who caught her, she made at least 19 raids into the south to rescue other enslaved men, women and children, and then led them, literally through the woods/wilderness, to freedom in New York and Canada.

Ms. Tubman's biography is of course already compelling and awe-some left here.

But for me, when I look deeper into the aspect of her faith, her spiritual life, there is another dimension of her path to enlightenment  that is revealed.

In Stephen Cope's 2012 book The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, Mr. Cope writes:

Tubman came to believe that she would be guided by God at every step along the way. The images she used in talking about her 'journeys' were saturated with spiritual archetypes. She used bible stories of the Exodus to create a context for her journeys. She used the great spirituals as cues for 'troops' to move or stay put, to show themselves or hide themselves away.  She prayed regularly with her fugitives...

Tubman viewed herself as an instrument of God. She trusted in the power of prayer, and in the individual's ability to seize her own destiny. She believed that any person who sought to could be guided by God's hand- just as she had been.


Any person who sought to could be guided by God's hand. 

I love the egalitarian idea of this model that anyone can be a spiritual warrior, or bodhisattva, or in the case of Ms. Tubman, a Christian based in Black theology.

Anyone.

And thinking about Ms. Tubman's profound connection to god, and it's role in her life as a renegade abolitionist, has led me to consider what my relationship with god could be in  my own life as I strive to be present in this world with the same sense and embodiment of interconnectedness with all life around me.

Perhaps you may as well.

May it be so.