What's Happening at
SpiritualityandPractice.com
October 4, 2019
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By Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams enchants us with her poetic visions of the natural world. In this collection she gathers "stories, poems, and pleas in the name of Beauty in an erosional landscape sculpted by wind, water, and time." We open the book up to you with seven thought-provoking passages followed by our own musings on her words.
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By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Saint Francis of Assisi (1182 - 1226) is a beacon for those seeking a life of meaning and service. We honor him with a list of recommended book, spiritual practices, a sample service for a Blessing of the Animals in his honor, a video clip, and more. If you'd like to explore how his teachings and practices apply to your life,
please join us for an e-course about him
that just got started.
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Alphabet Spiritual Practices
Please enjoy the fruits of our labors to update and expand the spiritual practices in our Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy. Here are the sections refreshed so far:
More Practices
: Birthday of Thich Nhat Hanh, Birthday of William Penn, Oscar Romero Day, Feast Day of St. Teresa of Avila, World Food Day, Conflict Resolution Day, Birthday of Arthur Miller
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By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
October 14 - November 22, 2019
What do friends mean to you, and how can you enhance those relationships? In this 40-day e-course, we will look at the multifaceted meanings, recurring challenges, and enduring rewards of friendship with practices based on quotes from some of our favorite writers.
Learn more and sign up:
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In partnership with Stillpoint
Available now through January 2020
Spirituality & Practice has partnered with Stillpoint, a leading spiritual direction training organization, to help you find an equipped and well-qualified spiritual director. A spiritual director listens carefully to the unfolding of your experiences to help you discern the ways you are being led to a deeper and richer life. Learn more and sign up:
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Directed by James Gray
This science fiction thriller has beautiful cinematography and fascinating ideas to ponder about life in outer space, the use of robots, and the commercialization of the Moon and Mars. But the grabber is the ways in which an astronaut's emotions get transformed.
More Films
: Downton Abbey, The Friend, In the Shadow of the Moon, Memory: The Origins of Alien
Also new:
Movies about Space
, a collection revealing the challenges and benefits of space flight and encounters with extraterrestrials.
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Directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
A shy person who cherished solitude, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Morrison agreed to let her old friend Timothy Greenfield-Sanders put together this enlightening documentary on her striking and august life and career.
More DVDs
: Delili in Paris, Echo in the Canyon, Stuck, Wild Rose
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By Leah Price
Reading exercises our faith, fires our imagination, stirs our soul, and expands our circle of compassion. So you will be happy to hear that books continue to scurry out from under ominous death sentences.
More Books
: Bodyfulness; The Book of the Moon; The Character of Virtue; Fallout; Find Your Mantra; I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You Ok?; No Recipe; Plants that Speak, Souls that Sing; A Season on the Wind; Twenty-Five Words Toward the Truth; The Universal Christ
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By Thierry Lenain
This moving and powerful book draws us into the possibilities that imagination opens up, as a child sees those thing that weigh our hearts down -- such as war, famine, greed, pollution -- and offers unique solutions.
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KidSpirit Youth Voices Blog
By Samantha Singh
We as individuals have to take action now to promote a peaceful and loving world by accepting ourselves, accepting others, and building a loving relationship with our planet.
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Practicing Democracy Project
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By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Eleanor Roosevelt revolutionized the role of First Lady of the United States by becoming an activist. She excelled in serving others as a humanitarian and civic leader and toiled hard for the benefit of youth, black citizens, poor people, and women.
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Practicing Democracy Films
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Directed by Max Powers
In this documentary, the coach of the Bowery Slam Poetry Club encourages young poets to dig deep into their own anguish -- resulting from rape, child molestation, racism, and police brutality -- and speak truth to power. Here poetry as therapy takes its rightful place alongside poetry as prophesy.
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Practicing Democracy Books
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By Isabel Sawhill
With clarity and political wisdom, Sawhill presents four approaches to assisting those who have been left behind due to the disruptions and inequalities of today's economy. She admits that proposed solutions from different parties will not work without "finding a common ground and an agenda that most of the public can get behind."
More Practicing Democracy Books
: The Bodies in Person, Everyday Politics, A Place for Us, Slavery's Long Shadow, Superpatriotism, Transaction Man, Who Do We Choose to Be?
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Receive a daily boost of wisdom from the world's spiritual traditions, along with practical and specific first steps to embrace these ideas in your everyday life. Sign up for this free service -- and other ways to keep in touch with S&P -- on this updates page.
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By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
During his lifetime, Odilon Redon made some 30 etchings and 170 lithographs. This 1911 painting shows Harpocrates, the ancient Greek god of silence and secrecy, expressing a soul gesture illustrative of the need to hold in our energy in order to hear our inner voice.
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A Thought to Carry with You
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Filled with concern about the world's refugee crisis, we find ourselves reflecting on the word "foreign." It comes from the Latin
foras, foris
"outside," from
fores
"door." But if we have learned anything from seeing pictures of our globe viewed from space, how can anything or anyone seem "outside"? And if we have listened to the great spiritual teachers of all ages, then why should anyone be outside our heart's door?
This passage by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli and Katherine Ketcham in
The Power of Empathy
goes right to the core of what's needed to break down our sense of "otherness":
"Empathy allows us to see the connections between us, making strangers less strange, foreigners less foreign. When we adopt other people's perspectives, we do more than step into their shoes -- we use their eyes, we borrow their skin, we feel their hearts beating within us, we lose ourselves and enter into their world, as if we were them. I emphasize those words once again because they are so critically important and so often misunderstood. With empathy, we do not step into others' experience to see it with our eyes -- empathy demands that we see it with their eyes."
What is one way that you can see through another person's eyes this week with such acuity that they become less foreign, more intimately connected with you? A simple conversation in which you do more listening than talking? A quiet meditation in which you send them good will and put yourself in their shoes? An intercultural celebration in which you get to experience the world through another person's cherished rituals? Please let us know what you discover. We are all searching for new, more authentic ways of being right now, ones that consider the unique nuances of the whole that we call the human family.
Blessings,
Your Spirituality & Practice Team
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Patricia Campbell Carlson
Margaret Wakeley
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