Spirituality in the News

We Asked Our Readers To Define God In One Word. Here’s What They Told Us.

The answer is pretty beautiful.

Earlier this year, HuffPost Religion decided to conduct a little experiment.

With the advances in science and medicine, more effective ways to fight the scourge of cancer are now available, although the cost of treatment remains sky-high.

A recent study, however, showed that there is another way to combat cancer that doesn’t come with a price tag: faith in God.

Researchers analysed previous studies involving 44,000 cancer patients and their spirituality, and found out that patients who are more religious and spiritual tend to experience fewer physical symptoms of cancer.

How you wake up can set the tone for your entire day. That’s why Episcopal priest and best-selling spiritual author Barbara Brown Taylor begins each morning with a three-step ritual in which each part plays an essential role.

My 19-month-old daughter loves watching for school buses. She camps out on our couch, eyes eagerly scanning for any sign of yellow, and when one goes by, she squeals “Bus!!!!”

Her natural awe, curiosity and excitement simply amaze me — I wish I got even remotely as excited about anything as she does about buses! But if you spend any time with children, you’ll notice that they just seem to have an innate sense of what we might call “spirituality.”

The California drought is on the news every day and each of us is confronted with doing what we can about it. Perhaps thinking of it as a closer meeting with our environment, the created world on which and in which we live, is a positive way of thinking about the drought.

All of creation reveals something of God; all of creation reveals God. You may remember from elementary school memorizing “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. The last lines read, “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” Thomas Berry, who called himself a geotheologian, said, “We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world.”

Is Spirituality a religion?

I was asked recently what it means to be Spiritual. I stopped and thought. My answer was simple, it means to “feel.” Spirituality to me is not religion. Religion is based on set beliefs determined by past doctrines adopted by groups as a way to live.

Seeing the images of destruction and suffering coming from Kathmandu and Nepal, it’s easy to be moved and want to do something helpful.

Obviously our thoughts are with those living in the midst of the effects of this devastating Earthquake, but this tragedy has also catalysed a lively debate online about what the best way to help those suffering from the consequences on the ground.

It is a mild Kenyan day in January of 2014. With temperatures in the 70s. I smile with some Lutheran guilt because I know I am missing the worst of Minnesota’s frosty brunt of the so-called “polar vortex” (climate change in action). At this moment, instead of curling up with blankets and hot cocoa, I stand with nearly a hundred others outside in a large half-circle, leaning with anticipation against a waist-high rope. The crowd’s eyes are set on a dusty red trail emerging from a row of trees far on the other side. Cameras begin to click, small gasps and “awws” begin to rumble, and, from the crowd’s sudden muttering and questions, it becomes very clear to me that I have stumbled half hazardly across a kind of spiritual pilgrimage site.

Organised religion may be on its last legs, but spirituality is all the rage.

Courses in yoga, zen, mindfulness, reiki and meditation all have waiting lists of people who may have abandoned the idea of an all-powerful creator, but still crave transcendence. The truth is that many of us sense there’s a higher mystery about human existence – and we want connect with it.