Spirituality blog I wrote
Finding information on meditation and techniques is quite easy today. Classes are taught at Buddist sanghas, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, yoga studios, health clubs, gyms…just about any place where people can gather. In metropolitan areas, there are often large outdoor meditation sittings where people of various traditions gather. From the… Read More »The Uniqueness of Christian Contemplative Prayer
Faith. It’s trust and confidence in someone or something. It’s a conviction about something that’s not based on objective evidence. While we usually think about faith in terms of religious beliefs or the existence of a deity, we actually have faith about a great number of things in life. For… Read More »Faith: Moving Beyond Dogma
Over the weeks following Easter, Gospel stories recounting the appearances of the risen Christ to the disciples are read in Christian churches. Of these stories, perhaps the most striking to me recounts two people and their encounter with Christ on Easter evening. This story is commonly called, “The Road to… Read More »A Warm Spring of Refreshment after Tragedy
Growing up during the Cold War Era in a family proud of its Eastern European heritage and belonging to an ethnic Eastern European church, there was a story I heard periodically around Easter time. The story made its way into sermons and was sometimes repeated in family gatherings. As there… Read More »Making Sense of the Resurrection of Jesus Today
Sometimes I attend services in an Episcopal Church. Before people share the bread and wine known as communion, the priest makes a dramatic gesture. Holding the circular bread-wafer so that all can see, the priest exclaims: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” In unison, the response comes from the… Read More »A Progressive Christian Minister Reconsiders Atonement
I’ve spoken with many people who wonder what spirituality is all about. What leads one person to say, “I’m a spiritual person,” while another isn’t so sure. I believe that to be a spiritual person means to live in a way that recognizes that there is more to life than… Read More »What Is a Spiritual Person?
As I scroll through the postings made by friends on Facebook, I see familiar kinds of postings — status updates, as they are called. One may comment about a parent’s death, another on the passing of a cousin, another on the anniversary of a loved one’s home-going. While people often… Read More »The Tapestry of Life and Death
Spirituality. While it’s a word commonly used today, “spirituality” is often confusing to people. This confusion arises from the wide variety of definitions and connotations of spirituality, some of which are misleading or simply wrong. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines spirituality as “the quality of being concerned with the human… Read More »Spirituality: The Air We Breathe
