This essay will help you write, lead, or choose a guided meditation. It starts with some simple steps for leading an effective meditation, gives some guidelines for choosing or composing a meditation, then concludes with two sample guided meditations.

We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion – and we can understand our own traditions better – through more intimate awareness and experience of the world’s religions. Pluralism Sunday, May 5, is a time …

My friend, @SgBz, posts on twitter: “Whatever else prayer may or may not do, the 1st thing it changes is the one praying.” I reply: I agree. I’m not quite as eloquent in 140 characters as I …

We have a choice to make, and that choice will define each of us as a person, and who we are as a country. We experienced an act of terror last week that traumatized our nation and …

(Friends: Please “LIKE” my Facebook page for my new book, HITCHHIKING TO ALASKA – there, you can contribute to an ongoing dialogue about soulful service with your stories and musings. How have you been soulfully served? How …

Why may the majority of scholars be right, that the Bible is not a reliable book of history, although much of its historical sections are indeed based on actual events and real places in the larger picture?

Do you imagine yourself at some point in the future radically changed in nature? For instance, you have always been a risk-taker, someone who lives life large but always assumed that by the time you hit 65, you’d be careful and serene? There’s nothing wrong with changing our minds about who we are or want to be: to develop aspects of ourselves that have been neglected in the past. At least in theory. But in reality, on the eve of turning 65 next week, in the midst of a big life transition, I am rethinking some key assumptions I’ve held about who I would be at 65.

The Conscious Aging Alliance is comprised of several organizations that are making a positive contribution to a new vision of aging

When things get tough, we frankly wonder what kind of courage it will take to grow old and whether we have that courage.

I had no idea, over 30 years ago, what I was getting into when I accepted an invitation by a good friend to attend something called an Enlightenment Intensive. At the time I was getting ready to move with my wife and three-year old daughter to Berkeley, California to attend Pacific School of Religion. Admittedly I was put off a bit by the rather pretentious title of the retreat. However, I decided if my wise friend thought it might be a good experience for me, it was good enough for me. It turned out to be a life changing experience.

Your vision doesn’t have to be pretty, and it doesn’t have to conform to other peoples’ expectations. It just has to be clear. What if your vision is lost in a blizzard like mind fog? It’s sometimes hard to see past the demands of the moment to imagine life in the future.

I’m attending a conference at Esalen Institute near Big Sur this week. It’s hosted by Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. It’s focused on peacemaking among the Abrahamic faiths. After the first day of the meeting, I …

If Jesus died for anything, he laid down his life like most social prophets and martyrs as a complete and utter refutation and relinquishment of any vestiges of earthly kingdoms. Whatever the subsequent followers of the donkey king would retrospectively make of him, he was regarded by the powers that be as nothing more than a nuisance. As more than one biblical scholar has pointed out, the real significance of Jesus’ crucifixion lay in the fact that anyone subsequently noticed and cared about the execution of a nobody. Yet it is the way of a nobody — not a somebody — that has so often altered the way of an otherwise weary world.

Jesus tells us to not only resist retaliation but to turn the other cheek. While I attempt to humble myself to this calling by listening closer, measuring my words, and remembering that with with God’s help, I am strong enough to let go of my need to be right, I struggling with this concept when it comes to my children.

One of the cool things about an evolutionary understanding of the Kosmos is that we need not rely on myth alone to make sense of the world; and, at the same time, we can look back with …

As a progressive clergy person from my first day in the pulpit, thirty years ago, I always felt that everything from Lent to Easter Sunday was the most important and exciting season for Christians. It was another opportunity to teach and even to practice the path of kenosis, to move beyond our familiar boundaries of mind and body by learning to let go and change.

It was never fully hidden but now, for sure, the tendency of religious institutions to quash doubt and keep it under wraps has succumbed to an end-around play. People can connect cross-country and around the world, and do so anonymously if they want! This is a big, big help to many. It is only one expression of a broad and accelerating shift in the way religion and spiritual life are viewed and practiced.

The battle for growth is not just conceptual or “spiritual.” It is also practical – monetary, social, interpersonal, etc. “Culture wars” and the growth boundaries they often represent, are not separate from practical issues like making a living and social relationships but are intertwined with them. It is similar with religious and other belief systems.