A new brand?

Because I usually hear ‘sustainable’ in relation to resource consumption (and discussions of environmental impact) the phrase is pretty satisfying in drawing together ideas of health and growth rather than destruction, of careful balance, work toward a goal, or even, to mention the sort of free word/image association that the term creates, of something biospheric. I think it’s an attractive phrase.
With that said, I do wonder to what extent the idea of sustainability is really fitted for talking about our spirituality. Perhaps to the extent that ideas from the natural world are useful. It does make sense that we want to bring our spiritual lives a stability, and because something sustainable is something that is able to last, it would seem to express that longing, but in our spiritual lives the idea that some things aren’t meant to last is also important. Don’t we often advance through phases? Don’t we often hold to things and learn things that, while useful, helpful, or encouraging for a time, can then be let go, as they should? I don’t feel that we’re meant to come to one final solution to our questions and our problems, one state that we can call stable (sustainable?) and remain in it.
The idea of sustainability, of course, is not the same as the idea of stability. Instead, if we talk about the seasons, if we talk about growth over time, if ‘sustainability’ retains the ideas of flux, then I think it’s pointing toward something really valuable, not just attractive but meaningful. Even in a sustainable system there are linear progressions through life into death. Detritus becomes the fuel of further life. Bodies and relationships change and develop, are sometimes destroyed, are left behind, and it’s all to the good. Sometimes the climax community burns, and the fire clears the way for the environment to carry on.
When I think on sustainability this way, trying to tease out specific aspects of the concept and playing them against each other, I find myself wondering whether it is too general a term, or at least to big, to give grounding or helpfully specific descriptiveness to ideas of spirituality. It’s a term that is really culturally charged (we’ve been told its good so much that it almost seems to me to be one of the spin-words that is now used more because it carries a feeling of being ‘right’ than because of what it actually means), which is what makes me cautious of it. Because it’s a current buzzword I would want to dodge it, but reclaiming it wouldn’t be bad either.