Anything less than a contemplative perspective on life
is an almost certain program for unhappiness.
- Father Thomas Keating
Love in a Time of War
Here in the mountains of northern New Mexico where I have spent most of life, the winter solstice season is marked by fire. During Advent, families and businesses fill small paper bags with dirt and nestle yellow votive candles inside them. They line the adobe walls around their homes and the low hanging flat rooftops of their shops with these homemade lanterns, called farolitos, and kindle them at sunset. The entire valley glows with tiny golden lights. What began as a Spanish Catholic tradition is now a cherished ritual for our entire multicultural community.
More Interfaith Spiritual Resources
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:
Yes, But Pay Attention to the Details
Count me a team-member of the interspiritual movement. I am in sympathy with the goals of The Coming Interspiritual Age by Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord, a grand, ambitious work with an optimistic vision of future global unity. Kurt Johnson’s mental scope on display here is astonishing. A polymath, he was for thirty years a distinguished scientist at the Museum of Natural History, penned an award-winning New York Times best seller about Vladimir Nabokov and butterflies, and regularly contributes to Wikipedia, all attesting to the breadth of his discussion of how humanity came to its current crises of religious conflict and spiritual dis-ease. Johnson and Ord’s ability to weave facts into sweeping historical narrative lends strength to their conclusions.
On Behalf of ‘the Many’
In this freewheeling book, Kurt Johnson and David Robert Ord attempt a truly daunting task: to tell the story — one that reaches back fourteen billion years — of what they call “the planet’s emerging unity consciousness,”1 or, in terms of their mentor Wayne Teasdale, the emerging Interspiritual Age. The authors define interspirituality as “the sharing of ultimate experiences across traditions,” “a more universal experience of the world’s religions, emphasizing shared experiences of heart and unity consciousness.” Fundamentally, however, interspirituality turns out to be monistic: “the entire religious experience of our species,” they write, “has been a single experience.”
There Just May Not Be Time
Is there any hope for real change in the human condition? Kurt Johnson and David Ord certainly think so, and I am grateful to them for The Coming Interspiritual Age and its optimism. But I wonder…
What You Should Know about "Spirituality & Practice"
The pilgrim typing “spirituality” into an internet browser these days will receive 225,000,000 hits in the flash of a second. Buyers beware. Virtual religion/spirituality is an unchartered territory where anyone with the inclination can put up a “shingle” on the web. Knowing whom to trust is a major consideration for the spiritual seeker who turns to the web for resources and support.
The Coming Interspiritual Age Published this Month
This month marks the publication of The Coming Interspiritual Age (Namaste) by Kurt Johnson and David Ord. The vision they sketch delivers its insights from a multitude of sources and disciplines and comes to conclusions that will be applauded and criticized. Whether it resonates with you or not, it offers an affirmative, healing perspective of a world clearly in trouble on many fronts, so it deserves our attention.
“Interfaith Seminaries” Chart New Territory
Historians generally associate the birth of world’s interfaith movement with the seminal Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893. At that gathering, the brilliant and charismatic Swami Vivekananda introduced the “consciousness” teachings of Vedanta to the West. After this remarkable seeding, the next Parliament of Religions would not gather for another hundred years.
Creating the Order of Universal Interfaith
Since its inception, leaders in the interfaith movement have asserted that interfaith is about bridge-building, not creating a new tradition; and that we treasure our differences as well as the values we share. Not everyone agrees though, and there have always been minority opinions.
Healing as an Interfaith Practice
The practice of healing is present in all of the great religions of the world today. I have taught a healing practice for the past three decades that I learned from Humanistic psychologist Lawrence LeShan. The practice is described in his book, The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist. In the healing training Dr. LeShan taught us spiritual exercises drawn from Hinduism, Theraveda and Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, Judaism, and Christianity. I have adapted LeShan’s method for my training, which is presented in the context of Progressive Christianity. It has been offered to more than a thousand people, a dozen at a time, over the past thirty-seven [Dr. Lawrence LeShan] years in classes, workshops, and five-day retreats. I call it Contemplative Healing, which is also the title of my book on the subject, published in 2011.
Double-Edged Daggers
Reconciling the Blessings and Challenges of Diversity through Ancestral Spiritual Values
In Lak’ech Ala K’in. In my Mayan tradition this sacred greeting serves to honor another and means “I am another yourself” or “I am you, and you are me.” Another meaning is “I bow to the Divine within you.” When this greeting is given, there is always an action of placing the hands over the heart. In the Hindu tradition the greeting Namaste, which I learned through my work and connection with spiritual teachers in India, corresponds and is similar to the Mayan greeting. It is a philosophical statement affirming that the doer of everything is not me but the gods. With these greetings I embrace the blessings of diversity.
Indian Spirituality at T Mobile Los Angeles
I was looking for a new cell phone when I met 27-year-old Maz, a wireless expert who works for T Mobile at a mall in Los Angeles. We started talking about droids and ended up talking about interfaith. I wasn’t surprised. These days interfaith consciousness lies just under the surface of almost every encounter between strangers – especially in LA, culturally and religiously one of the most diverse cities in the world.