By Sana Saeed
FOLLOWING THE WAYS OF THE HEART
While there is a rising group of Americans who don’t identify with any religious label, many of them are pursuing spirituality without being boxed into one faith. Historically, spirituality has usually been associated with a specific tradition, but that is changing. Today, for some, interfaith spirituality can mean belonging to more than one faith group. For others it can be observing multiple diverse religious rituals while on your spiritual journey. For others it can be just going on a Sunday morning hike with religiously diverse friends. Whatever your path, here is a list of resources to help you start exploring interfaith spirituality:
- Chaplaincy Institute Online Library: A California based interfaith seminary, Chaplaincy Institute aims to educate and empower people for interfaith service and spiritual leadership. They celebrate interfaith spirituality through community, contemplative practice, worship, and ordination. The online library is a compilation of resources for approaching interfaith spirituality through different mediums such as sermons, art, and music.
- On Being Both: This blog by Susan Katz Miller highlights her family’s journey exploring interfaith spirituality, celebrating holidays with the kids in an interfaith fashion and going deeper into issues using an interfaith lens. The blog has a great collection of “Interfaith Resources” for families. What I find especially interesting is the collection of “Successful Interfaith Marriages” links, a good introduction to exploring how people of different faith backgrounds can have strong marriages.
- Spirituality Channel at Patheos is full of interfaith resources for daily inspiration, advice on enlightenment, and videos on spirituality. And you can become a contributor in the spirituality section! Patheos is a department store full of information, stories, and reflections about everything religious. But the Spirituality Channel takes you to the heart of things.
- Faith in Action: This multimedia project documents and celebrates the community service and social justice work of diverse peoples of faith throughout the Washington DC region. FIA shows through video and photography how interfaith communities in the Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia areas are putting their interfaith spirituality into practice through service. I especially like the interviews of local religious leaders discussing what spirituality means to them and can look like for various people.
By far the richest web portal for spiritual resources and exploration is Spirituality and Practice, which TIO profiled last month. Likewise, the websites above give you a variety of approaches and resources into the disciplines of the heart, particularly for those who don’t identify with a particular faith or tradition. Email me at resources@theinterfaithobserver.org with other interfaith spirituality resources you find useful, and we can share them on the TIO’s Facebook Page.
