Religion is an unfashionable word at the moment; many people prefer the word spirituality. The problem is that spirituality is a nebulous term: what does it mean, really? And religion is perhaps not much better, in that it has too many definitions. Today I found this definition on Inner Light, which I think is helpful. It comes from the closing chapter from Beside Still waters  – Jews, Christians and the Way of the Buddha, by Norman Fischer -

The word religion, it seems, stands for established traditions; it stands for doctrine and belief, rules and proscribed practices, rites and rituals, the authority and sanction of tradition and the past. Religion is weighty; this is good – weight brings gravity – but it is also bad – it pulls you down, making it harder to fly.

Spirituality is something else. It’s about experience, about feeling. It’s personal and heartfelt. It involves practice and belief to an extent, but the emphasis is on what happens and how it feels rather than on what is supposed to be performed and how that is supposed to be understood and interpreted. If the centre of religion is the church, the scripture, the doctrine, the structure, the centre of spirituality is the person, the feeling human heart. The strength of spirituality is the lightness and sensitivity of its reality – if you are open to it, it’s there for you, as real as a breeze. But its lightness is also its weakness – yes, it helps you fly, but you might just keep going. Lacking the ballast of tradition, spirituality tends to float us off high into the clouds, where we can easily lose track of ourselves. Clearly then what we are after is a combination of these two elements. We want a religion that holds us and deepens us, along with a spirituality that lifts us and feeds us the food we need.