Today I ask a question: “Is it possible to understand 21st century spirituality without looking at today’s art?” And if so, to whom should we turn? I highly recommend turning to artist/activist Jennifer Hereth who, during the recent pandemic enclosure time, looked back at her life’s work as an artist and teacher of art and activist who has visited Syrian refugee centers and Sri Lanka war-torn villages as well as the rugged streets of Chicago where she lives to gift us with a spiritual testament for our times.
Might the global coronavirus emergency we are living through prove to be a kind of shamanistic initiation that is meant to wake us up as a species? Is facing climate change and extinction another such initiation? What are the most essential shifts in consciousness that our species must undergo if we are to survive?
There is – and ought to be – plenty of criticism of Patriarchy at this time in history. But for that very reason there needs to be a critical understanding of what it is – and is not.
Most people, if they know anything about Julian of Norwich, know two things. First, that she said “all things will be well, every manner of thing will be well,” a testimony to hope or what Mirabai Starr calls “radical optimism” that arises near the end of her book Showings and ought not to be understood as “spiritual bypass” or denial of suffering. Second, people have heard that she talks about the “motherhood of God” quite often.
I’m really interested in how we, and by we I mean seekers, teachers, preachers, clergy, laymen, mystics, atheists and everything in between, think and talk about the divine feminine.
One of the “ultimate questions” humans like to pose is this: Why are we here?
This might seem to be a particularly appropriate question to ask in a time of the coronavirus plague when so much is becoming uprooted, when so many are afraid and suffering and dying.
Many people, if they hear the name Thomas Aquinas at all, may not feel that he has anything to say to today’s “progressive” religious and post-religious movement. They would be wrong; dead wrong.
“What are a Bible Story or Stories that are especially pressing for today’s world?” Clearly there are many but I have chosen one from the Hebrew Bible and one from the Christian Bible.
Science and Spirituality need each other. This has always been the case—from Aristotle (who concludes his classic work on Physics with positing an Unmoved Mover) to Aquinas (who fought the fundamentalists of his day about the value of bringing science, namely Aristotle, and the scientific method of his day, namely scholasticism, into the world of faith).
As we enter a new year amidst the dire warnings from the United Nations and even Trump’s own administration about the peril humans and the rest of …