When the intellectual history of the 20th century is written, a few achievements will tower overall. Einstein’s theory of general relativity will be one; the laws of quantum mechanics will be another. The Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe will be a third.

Spirituality is all about seeing, inclusivity, and reconciling apparent opposites via the "narrow way." The strait gate/kingdom that the spiritual Janus (Jesus) holds the keys to.

We are all part of this wonderful Cosmos, always have been and always will be.   This unknowable life-force-energy mystery, which I am comfortable calling ‘God’, has been, is, and always will be the active creative force in this changing, expanding and evolving wonderful Cosmos.  And in ME!!!

With childlike wonder and anticipation, I too will be dreaming this holiday, less of a White Christmas than a multi-colored, trans-religious, trans-disciplinary, trans-"everything" world, one complete with an iconic (conic?) tree, party hat, and in a literary sense, megaphone.

  The Higher Mind, Quantum Physics, and the Basis of Hope   Determinism is Antithetical to Free Will The famous mathematician, LaPlace, claimed

A sustainability leadership professor from the University of Cumbria (UK), Jem Bendell tells us that, at the current pace of runaway global warming, we can no longer assume that humans will figure out a way to avert environmental and societal collapse within the next ten years.

The poor of the planet stare us in the face. Disparity of wealth, in our country and elsewhere, is an outrage that cannot be endured. The numbers are literally unbelievable. The earth provides, but greed monopolizes the table, a select few taking it all while the many stare and starve.

The Parliament of the World’s Religions is thrilled to announce the launch of the Climate Commitments Project. This web-based resource is the virtual face of the Climate Commitments Project, our effort to coordinate and strengthen interfaith and faith-based climate action campaigns.

  “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about

A life time of study, a master’s degree and two doctorates (psychology and spirituality), interfaith ordination, numerous articles, nine books, and the wisdom of age, can all be distilled to this:

The news is devastating. Our planet is on a crash course with wide-scale death and degradation. The poorest of people and the most vulnerable of species are getting hit the hardest. It isn’t a pretty picture! Does God care?

Just as anthropocentrism is untenable, so also is absolutism. No species across the extent of the universe can claim that they alone have access to abiding truth. Visions of truth are not monocular.

When our ancestors looked into the heavens they had no way of knowing the wonders of the cosmos that we are beginning to discover. While physicists can ignore theology, theologians who ignore physics will find themselves stuck atop Job's dung-heap impotently shaking their fists at the Divine.

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  We continue the presentation we began in the last column, here offering:   Thesis #4: Normally intelligent and socialized human beings come

  In the last column, we began our discussion of Thesis #3. Just as a reminder, Thesis #3 states: Thesis #3: Human beings

Thesis #3: Human beings have the intelligence to think abstractly, and to use symbols (esp. complex language, which eventually allows a human person to think of himself/herself in the third person.) This is in essence what sets human psychology apart from animal psychology.

... believing in god and a universe of love is no more difficult than believing in the expanding universe, a multiverse, reality as a probability curve, or the entanglement of particles. What science today sets forth as reality is about as bizarre as an active god sitting on a heavenly throne. Of course, there is proof that the science is true. And is there no proof that god is real. Or is there? One might argue that those moments that we all experience (see below) would lead us to suspect that there is a cosmic Thou behind those experiences. Does not homo sapiens have a sense of the Holy, an intuition that there is more to life and reality than meets the eye? We’ll take a look at that. But first, evolution.

Earlier this year the Prime Minister of Israel addressed a joint session of Congress. Last week, Pope Francis did the same. Many believed the former had a political ax to grind, and the latter a pastoral message with political points to preach. For many modern day Christians, Francis embodies many of the teachings and much of the life-style of the Galilean sage. Unless one believes in the highly speculative Second Coming, Jesus will likely never be invited by the Speaker of the House of Representatives to follow Benjamin and Francis, addressing our political leaders. But if we were to draw from the earliest available records of his theological – if not political – perspective, what might Jesus have to say to our elected government officials? Read more.

For the last several decades it is been clear to me that one of the primary goals of the Jesus path is a profound spiritual experience of Oneness with all life. At times I have used terms such as becoming awake to the interconnectedness or interdependency of all creation and creatures. Admittedly, these are only words which attempt to describe an awareness which defies an exact or precise definition. Other spiritual teachers had different ways of describing this phenomenon, though they may have emphasized different steps to experience it. In all cases, a common objective from all the great and enlightened teachers is learning how to live on this earth with awareness that we are all part of one living organism.

Personal transformation occurs every time you enter into nature and stop to delight in its inherent divinity. World transformation occurs when we serve and protect our earth home. And, my friends, this CAN be done one person at a time. Our earth heroes and heroines have been showing us the way- it is time for us follow their lead, or become the new leaders for our future generations.

All human effort is navigation. Human striving—confronted by the wreckage of the past moment, the state of the soil, the demands of both—finds orientation from a compass with two arrows: moral and physical. I was always interested in ethics, but it took a while for me to notice that the moral spins out from the physical more often than the reverse. “Each of us is made by—or, one might better say, made as—a set of unique associations with unique persons, places, and things,” writes farmer-poet Wendell Berry. “The world of love does not admit the principle of the interchangeability of parts.”

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It won’t adhere to rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question.

When you see something so clearly, you inevitably wonder why it took so long to find the solution. It’s the same with so many things in life. Once you see reality clearly, you can’t believe it took you so long to see it. Suddenly everything becomes clear. When you fall in love, find your passion, realize an injustice, see nature’s beauty, it’s like scales fall off your eyes and everything becomes clear.