Another way that religion can do a body good is through the mindfulness practices that are embedded in it. It's no news that it's part of Buddhism. But for most Christians, it may come as a surprise to find that it has always been integral to contemplative prayer. You can't confess the truth of your heart unless you know what's in it.

The 15th century North Indian poet-singer-saint, Kabir, lived in a time of great tension between two major religions. He honored and bridged both with his bhakti devotional songs. He was claimed by the Hindus to be a Hindu and by the Muslims to be a Muslim. He both inspired and confused both camps with his mystical lyricism. He confounded them even in the legend of his death. The Hindus wanted to burn his body, and the Muslims wanted to bury him. When they looked under the garlands of flowers that had been placed on top of his body, they saw that his body was gone. The Hindus burned half the flowers, the Muslims buried the other half. One of the five pillars of Islamic practice is the expectation that every Muslim will make hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in a lifetime. For some Muslims, making hajj is an arduous and very expensive journey. But if your mind is your Mecca, why would you not make the journey to self-awareness every day?

Every time I enter into mindful prayer, I start by gazing into a mirror, dimly. A dim inner mirror, gazed at with dim inner eyes. Slowly I polish the mirror with loving, open, non-judgmental attention. My inner eyes begin to adjust and focus. And I begin to see not just the face I expect or want to see, but the whole picture of my thoughts, sensations, and urges - physically, mentally, and spiritually. Warts and stray hairs and happy smile and all! Behind the eyes that appear in the mirror I begin to awaken to the subtle eyes of the One who is doing the seeing. And then we begin to see, face to face...

We can hope that the standoff in Oregon ends with cool heads prevailing and no bloodshed. But the threat that Christian jihadism poses to America is very real. Our country is in danger at least as much from home-grown anti-government terrorism as is from the foreign sort.

On Jesus' fifth birthday, living in Egypt, his parents announced that they were going on an outing. "We've got something to show you," said Mary to Jesus.

Quickened by my attention to what surrounded me As I sat on one of the pale yellow rounded boulders in the creekbed.

Mindful Christianity is mysticism: the experience of a human being in spiritual union with the divine, seeing each other with the same eye. The observer within you, when you are deep in mindfulness meditation, is God. God is lovingly attentive toward your every experience, every feeling, urge, and thought. In mindfulness practice, God notices all of that is going on inside of you, with deep compassion and without judgment.

This film explores some major concepts, but two of them are simple: places and spaces. Places are merely physical locations, with often no meaning attached to them. However, a simple, empty room can be formed into a space; turned into a place of meeting, creativity, innovation, and community. Places are often beautiful, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, but they only become spaces when we engage with them. When we experience beauty, peace, or joy from a place, our reflections and responses to the place are what create an experience, as well as the emotions that we feel. Here’s the problem, when we reflect during an experience, or bring pre-conceived notions to an experience, we arent truly experiencing. Reflection must exclusively follow experience.

Michael Brown should not have been shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. His hands were up. He was unarmed. It doesn't make any difference whether or not he had stolen earlier something that day. If he had committed such a crime, he should have been given appropriate justice, not a volley of bullets. At the time he was shot, there was simply no excuse for what happened to him. Somebody else had his life stolen from him, too: a man named Jesus, killed for no good reason. Jesus also died with his hands up. He had been ethnically profiled by the Roman occupying army in Jerusalem, and was brutally murdered on a cross.

Thunder lags behind lightning beyond an outcrop of stone slabs framed by clusters of Joshua trees with spikes shivering in the wind. A dark gauzy curtain descends from a boiling mass of cloud. Scattered spits of rain puff dust out of tiny craters they form on impact in the fine dirt. The cooling air fills with the overwhelming scent of wet creosote.

The "sixth sense" in popular culture is a reference to paranormal powers of perception. But I sense it's something deeper than clairvoyance. It's not some kind of superpower. It is our ability and propensity to have a relationship with the underlying essence of all reality. There's a subtle way in which we can know what we cannot know, touch what we cannot touch.

By the caves of San Satorio We hold hands and gaze at the quiet rush of the Duero As once did Leonor Machado and her husband Antonio, The poet of the two Spains - upstream and down in time - Through this same place where hermit monks of old Contemplated the flow that ever is here and now And drew close to the subtle power moving the silent river Imperceptibly carving the hill of Soria, steep and stark.

The idea of a second coming of Christ is a mystery, if not explicitly controversial. Jesus’ followers apparently believed he would return during their lifetime after he was crucified. When that didn’t happen, later followers gradually changed the belief into an indefinite “someday.” After two thousand years of waiting, most Christians no longer look for it to happen in their lifetimes and acknowledge that Jesus may have been speaking metaphorically about his return. It is just as likely that those words were put into Jesus’ mouth by the gospel writers themselves. Wishful thinking?

Being a child of God – for Jesus and for the rest of us – is a poetic way of describing our direct, personal engagement with Ultimate Reality. It is an artful expression of ourselves as physically integrated with the divine essence of the cosmos. Being the son or daughter of God does not mean that any of us can leap off the cross in a single bound.

CLEAR is what I want to feel and be when it comes to something that means as much to me as FAITH. I want to be at peace with what I believe and choose to say and do, with regard to my way of living in faith. I want to own it whole-heartedly. I don’t want to apologize or make excuses for beliefs that don’t make sense, saying things like, “You just have to take that in faith. Someday it will make sense to me, even if it doesn’t now. God’s ways are not our ways.” With Clear Faith, I am at peace.

It’s always ourselves we find in the sea. We find that Self, quite often, by unfinding. By recognizing what is not who we really are. When you go to the beach, you have to leave a lot behind. Half the fun of it is reducing your belongings to what fits in a wicker basket, and wearing as little clothing as possible. And when you get into the water, there’s no carrying the wicker basket. Or even the flip-flops. Is this not the work of ministry – the work of pastoring? To teach people to swim – to move freely and joyfully in the waters of the soul, unburdened by all the baggage of habit and culture. To help people shed their assumptions, drop their dead dogma on the sand, and soak up the sun of love and peace and total acceptance?

Full of God, full to birthing, Mary howls: head back, hair tossed, Hands skyward with joy That wrongs are about to be righted, Salvation's about to be sighted.