Spirituality is a journey. Kind of like a holiday to a place you’ve never visited before, but without the luggage surcharges or the blackflies. While you have some idea of what to expect, you’re largely in the dark about the adventures that lie in wait, and it’s your anticipation of them that propels you ever forward in your expedition. But the concept works just as well in the reverse. A trip to some exciting...
It is, depending on your point of view, solid science or utter bunk. Either way, it can’t hurt. It is prayer and, says a just-published study, more of us are giving it a whirl in pursuit of relief from what ails us than ever before. University of Massachusetts researchers, whose results are published this month in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, have found that more people are praying for their...
There’s something inherently happy-making about being told you’re happy. I mean, what’s more cheerifying than the news that your fellow citizens—and you among them—have been given a berth on a list of the world’s lightest souls? And so it is with Canadians, who were prominently included recently in a ranking of the world’s happiest people. This is the 24/7 Wall St. list of the Countries With the Happiest People, a...
Candy’s dandy, and liquor’s quicker, but nothing’s as powerful as community when it comes to comforting someone enduring the personal issues surrounding a health crisis. So says a wide-ranging piece of research coming out of a website established to provide just that to people staring down some crummy bit of news about their health or someone else’s. A full 91% of the more than 4,000 respondents to this...
A scientist approaches God and says, “Listen, we’ve decided we no longer need you. Nowadays, we can clone people, transplant hearts and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous.” God hears the guy out before replying. “All right,” he says. “To see whether or not you still need me, why don’t we have a man-making contest?” “I’m in,” says the scientist. “Now, we’re going to do this just...