Looking for a spiritual retreat to tide you over in quiet contemplation during the holy days leading up to Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, and Epiphany? Here are many choices — some Christian and inclusive, others multifaith — from which you can find a perfect match for your needs.

We are in a time of transition, the midst of a cultural shift—what some have called "The Great Turning."

For all of you grieving the loss of someone you love — whether this loss occurred last week, last year, or decades ago — I hope you find some comfort in these words, too. I hope you have the courage to tell the truth about your loved one: the good, the bad, and the complex. And that you don’t break faith with the full spectrum of your feeling, from mourning to dancing.

On this St. Patrick's Day it is fitting to receive a blessing from a grand Irishman whose writing reaches into my soul.

  Here are some of our resources about racism and the global protests in the wake of George Floyd's death while being restrained

I hold in my consciousness two previously unimaginable opposites; on the one hand the possible even likely extinction of humanity and on the other, the potential for our unimaginable birth of a new embodied divine humanity, the mutation realized and resplendent.

Anyone who isn't prepared to do the intense work that is required to become love in action, is allowing the dark to destroy the planet.

An index of resources posted each day on the Spirituality & Practice homepage — practices, readings, films, quotes, and more to help you navigate these times.

Mark, I've been following you for awhile and I do appreciate some of the things you say, but what's the deal with this new agey movement for “simplicity”?

Seasons and Self is a courageous exploration into religious naturalism - sometimes called the 'forgotten alternative' - as well as contemporary critical biblical studies by one of Australia's leading progressives, Rex A. E. Hunt. A self-professed religious naturalist, progressive liturgist, and social ecologist., he belongs squarely within a post-liberal/ 'progressive' orientation. Rex A E Hunt acknowledges the principle attributed to the Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves: "I am not after conclusions... Conclusions are meant to shut... Every conclusion brings the thought process to a halt." The present collection is an invitation to readers to become curious and excited about what they read, and to explore further - beyond the tyranny of clear and distinct ideas! The author is concerned about 'likelihoods' and being 'open-ended' rather than closing any discussion with persuasion by argument. The intent is to strike a chord rather than 'shoehorning' something - ideas, answers, doctrine, correct belief - into people, often challenging the parochial and limited claims of traditional religions, or so-called pious biblical argument based on a proof-text zeal. While both science and progressive religion are to the fore in the topics and chapters of the collection of sermons, addresses and keynote presentations, there is also a strong hint of the poetic - all evoking a sense of awe and wonder at nature and the natural, rather than the supernatural. A radical theo-eco-logy! Themes addressed include evolution, earth, cosmos, food and wisdom, as well as Autumn, children, celebration and humour. All grounded in the Ordinary... in the hope that, collectively, they will stir one's own imagination. "Nature and naturalism are for us today the main game for any progressive spirituality," writes the author. "We are fully linked with our surroundings in time, space, matter/energy, and causality, and where the metaphor of 'web' is used to describe this interrelatedness - we create the web and the web creates us..."

Rachel Held Evans has died. She was a bestselling author on matters of faith and an advocate for a number of progressive issues. She'd been hospitalized for the flu but suffered an allergic reaction to antibiotics. After her death yesterday, her husband Dan wrote, Rachel's presence in this world was a gift to us all, and her work will long survive her. She was 37.

Every Sunday I stand at the altar and preside over a mystery. A mystery that has its roots in the events we remember this Holy Thursday. On Maundy Thursday, we gather together to contemplate MYSTERY. We know what will happen tomorrow as Good Friday plunges us into darkness. So is it any wonder that we cannot fully comprehend this MYSTERY.

The belief that humankind, created in the image of god, is the center and purpose of the universe, has been smacked down over the last 500 years by three revolutions in human self-awareness. The first was the Copernican discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe. Prior to Copernicus publishing his theory in 1543, the medieval worldview imagined that all the heavenly bodies revolved around earth and humanity, while god pushed them in their orbits through the sky. Today, thanks to Hubble, we gaze in fascination at photos of galaxies in outer space. We are not the center of the universe.

Those who believe there is a right and wrong time and place to protest injustices are those whose privilege keeps them from the injustices. Those who with Rev. Dr. M.L. King, Jr., live by the principle that the right time to do the right thing is now, privileged or not, remind us of the immorality of acquiescence, apathy, indifference, denial, negligence, and procrastination in confronting injustice and evil.

Remember that resurrection is more than mere resuscitation! It is life transformed! It is faith in possibilities, when others are convinced of inevitability.

On this St. Patrick's Day it is fitting to receive a blessing from a grand Irishman whose writing reaches into my soul. Followers of this blog know that John O'Donohue is one of my favourite sages. I am indebted to a follower of the blog for sending me this podcast of Krista Tripett's interview of John O'Donohue recorded shortly before his death in 2008. O'Donohue's words continue to open my soul.

O God of empty tombs and resurrection living: Make us mindful of the pervasiveness of hope,  the determination of faith,  and the persistence of love.  

Shymaa, a little 4 yr old girl who laid in a comma in a GAZA hospital, during the summer of 2014. She would recover to find her entire family was murdered during an Israeli bombing. Her story sparked the 2 Unite All benefit album with 30 world famed musicians like Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Stewart Copeland, Philip Lawrence (Bruno Mars) and the Love All Love Wins / UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) movement.

  Mary Magdalene was the first person, male or female, to witness the empty tomb…the first to see angels who reported the resurrection…the

Reinhold Niebuhr's brother, H. Richard, argued for faithfulness to the example of Jesus's nonviolence, while Reinhold believed this was naive and unrealistic in an imperfect world. H. Richard was the purist to the Christian faith, believing that following the Golden Rule, no matter the consequences, is what Jesus and God called us to do -- the success of the mission being in God's hands rather than our own. Reinhold, however, looked at the more practical side of things, substituting his or the world's idea of what was possible and changing his ethics accordingly. H. Richard thus trusted more in the providential moral arc of history as M.L. King, Jr. , would call it rather than a realist's version of what humans believe is attainable given their corrupt nature. In essence, H. Richard focused on the power of God's grace to transform our spirits and the world for the better, while Reinhold accepted a more cynical view of our ability to be radically changed as a specie.

1. Winter is the season of the revelation of basic structure. If I was to strip away all the paraphernalia of my life what form would it have? How many of the things which I do are related to the roots of my spirit. 2. Winter is the season for hibernation. What rhythm do I have for reflection as well as action? What frequency and length of time do I need in solitude in order to facilitate the growth and quality of my spirituality?

Source of physical being; help me to hear you in my body. Teach me to tend to my physical needs and be aware of my bodily conditions.

Can a living, vital and real faith that is true to the experience of the past, while dismissing the explanations of the past, be born anew in this generation? I believe it can and so to engage this task I issue this call to the Christian world to transform its holy words of yesterday into believable words of today. If we fail in this task there is little reason to think that Christianity, as presently understood and constituted, will survive this century.

What went wrong? Oh, what went wrong? I sought to be humble But boasted

Covenant, the promise that humans, especially those who understand our mortality, receive from the Eternal One. Co-creation, the promise that our thoughts, decisions and actions during the regular course of the day matter. We either choose to be aligned in the ways of Spirit or we choose not to be. Sometimes our awareness of what we are choosing is conscious and sometimes it is not. When our choices are aligned in Spirit’s ways, we bring about God's kin'dom, which is something of great value to earth.

Our senses and our use of them are part of God's creation. To attempt to deny our senses is as much an insult to God as is the misuse of them.

For half the world’s population who have to live on less than £1 a day All: Let justice flow down like a river

1. The earth may be our mother but we can be her mid¬wife or her funeral director. 2. Nature is a web of interdependency not a series of separate hierarchical layers.

We are here to praise and enjoy God with body and soul, mind and heart, with song and word, with hands and feet. We are here to give because of the abundance God has given us, to share with each other, and to receive, because God has created us to depend on each other. We are here to celebrate the differences that otherwise might divide us: differences of age, of body, of culture, of opinion, of ability, of religious conviction. We are here to put things in perspective: to celebrate what matters, to laugh about things we take too seriously, to cry about things that truly touch our hearts. So may it be this morning: Amen!

The dry bones raised by Ezekiel are a metaphor for those who died in the service of God’s justice: those who died working to restore God’s distributive justice-compassion to God’s Earth, and who themselves never saw the transformation. The army of dry bones is an army exiled from justice. Fairness demands that if Jesus was resurrected into an Earth transformed into God’s realm of justice-compassion, then all the other martyrs who died too soon should also be raised with him. “But in fact,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.” It is the Christ – the transformed and transfigured post-Easter Jesus – who has started that general resurrection, which restores justice-compassion to a transformed Earth. The transformation has begun with Jesus, and continues with you and me – IF we sign on to the program.