Bright stars top Christmas trees in Christian homes around much of the world. The faithful sing about the “Star of Wonder” that guided the wise men to a manger in the little town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
Christmas is literally “the mass for Christ”, the day on which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. The western date for Jesus’ birth is quite arbitrary. It was chosen by Pope Leo I, bishop of Rome...
On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year.
- By Kent Nerburn
In the deepest place in your spirit, the place of wounds and hope, you know that the earth is speaking, and that the time has come to listen to all of her voices. You can only hope that for the sake of your children, and all the children of the world...
Evangelicals are more skeptical of evolution than of climate change, according to new research.
- By Imre Vallyon
Very often people cannot understand why they should live the Spiritual Life. It is a natural question: “What do I get out of it?” It is important to understand that if you follow through with the Path you’re going to get a lot out of it...
How to be happy? When speaking of relationships, the safest thing to relate to is always Buddha. We can address every being we meet — not only human beings but also animals — as essentially Buddha. In Western terms, we speak of being in the presence of God or meeting God all the time.
- By Diana Lang
Opening Meditation: Find a comfortable position. A nice comfortable chair will work, or you can lean against the wall or sit cross-legged on the floor. Whatever will be most comfortable for you.
Death isn’t bad luck, because there is no difference between the living and the dead. The one in the coffin is doing the same thing as the one grieving in the pew: loving and learning.
The Roman Catholic Church will allow priests all over the world to grant forgiveness for abortion. This announcement came from Pope Francis at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy – a holy year dedicated to forgiveness.
- By Sophie Rose
In this age of technology and materialism, when many wonder what tomorrow will bring, the resurgence of spirituality is a normal phenomenon. For centuries, people have turned to religions or other belief systems for support and understanding. So one can wonder why, after centuries of religious or spiritual...
- By Paulo Coelho
Many things we do are imposed on us by necessity, or by the absurd. Why wear a tie? The fact is, many of the rules we obey nowadays have no real foundation. Nevertheless, if we wish to act differently, we are considered “crazy” or “immature”.
Emotions are the lenses through which we experience daily life and inhabit the world—how we love, learn, work, make meaning, and devise solutions to problems we face.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teaches us that what makes the stresses in our life particularly damaging is how we mismanage them. The tendency to resist or willfully ignore our situation, misperceive and have fixed ideas about who we are and the reality we inhabit, is slowly replaced with mindfulness...
- By Karen Casey
Our lives feel complicated at times, or stressed; oftentimes we even feel unable to handle whatever is heading our way, certain that this time it may be beyond our capacity to withstand or understand. However...
Part of letting go into the flow of life lies in realizing that you have never really been in control of your life, at least not from the perspective of the conscious mind. You simply have been making choices based on a very limited scope of awareness dictated by...
- By Itai Ivtzan
Every meditation technique has its unique characteristics, and invites you to experience meditation in a different way. They all invite you to direct your attention at one focal point, but these focal points may be essentially different...
What if Joyce dies before me? This is one of my greatest vulnerabilities. Sure, I could die first. Statistically, women live longer than men. Even though we’re both healthy in the important ways, we are still seventy years old. We are now in our senior years. Death of our bodies is no longer something that can be ignored.
I believe that we are all born with a powerful shamanic spirit. Like the rest of the natural world that we are so deeply related to, we are given many wonderful shamanic gifts from our divine source.
Since the late 1970s, American evangelicalism has been largely identified with right-wing politics. Conservative religious values entered the political sphere through movements such as Moral Majority and Focus on the Family that opposed gay rights, abortion, feminism and other liberal issues.
To come to the beginning of ourselves is to cease to be victims of circumstances, the actions of others, or even our own mistakes. The true story of who we really are begins now. We are no longer tossed willy-nilly from one desire, thought, or worry to another in a futile process of trying...
After the publication of Conversations with God, the question that I was asked more often than any other was: “Why you? Why did God pick you?” And, always, I’ve responded with, “God did not pick me. God picks everyone. The question is not, to whom does God talk? The question is, who listens?”
From ghosts to ghouls, witches to wizards, Halloween is the one time of the year when people come together to celebrate everything supernatural.