The prickly relationship between spirituality and science is an enduring preoccupation for folks who claim fierce allegiance to either side of the marriage. But it’s a troubled one, too, given people’s inherent reluctance to share intimate details about their spiritual life and the challenge of social scientists to effectively gather such information in a way that it might be put to useful application. The subject...
Summer: when the length of your days finally matches the length of your reading list. Make the most of this extravagant stretch with a succinct inventory of must-reads. Better still, see to it that every one of them has a transcendent bent, so you exit the exercise (and enter the autumn) with your spirit all filled up. An eclectic mix to get you started: • Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their...
It ain’t easy being the guy at the top of the heap. People look to you for direction constantly, and the means by which you might give it are copious and a challenge to parse through in pursuit of the best. But ponderous deliberations about leadership styles — all the rage these days — can be dauntingly off-putting for the sheer volume of options they include. Should you be a hard-line or a compassionate...
Today, you will reconsider the virtues of an ancient discipline that ties the heavens to the earth with streaming celestial ribbons, but suffers a fairly recently acquired, and arguably undeserved, reputation for being wish-fed nonsense. Astrology, too often relegated to the junk drawers of fortune-telling and malarkey, is actually a legitimate science with plenty to offer a spiritually engaged, forward-looking...
The esoteric benefits to one’s physical health of living a spiritual life continue to lurk mostly in the halls of the not fully understood. Still, the world acknowledges an irrefutable connection between the two. More than that, an expanding body of recognition for the role a spiritual life has to play in maintaining and enhancing one’s mental health is gaining visibility. Certainly the meditative nature of...