Spirituality

A Goddess in L.A.

A few days ago, in a post titled Spiritual, but Human, I shared my struggle with hateful feelings and non-forgiveness toward the monster who brutally held three women in captivity for nearly a decade in Cleveland. My feelings were raw and honest. Thankfully, as the days have passed, an empowered and freeing perspective has emerged. [...]

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Until I can commit, I accept my place on the outside. Call me "spiritual, but not religious," agnostic, or a None, but do not think that my choice to be unaffiliated is a cop-out.

Sarah Over the Moon

Trigger Warning for Rape, Sexual Assault, and “Slut Shaming” As you may have seen, this storyabout rescued kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart has been making the rounds on the internet. Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that [...]

Its All in Your Dreams

Change doesn’t care if we accept or resist it. I happen to believe that taking lots of naps along the way facilitates the changes. Changing your life can happen when you’re not trying so hard, or when you’re asleep! I think that change often slips in when we’re relaxed inside of ourselves. The process of [...]

Daily Life as Spiritual Practice

Several times this week we’ve passed little groups of people in graduation garb taking pictures in front of New York monuments. Beaming friends and families were looking on. We congratulate them — and others graduating in the days to come — on completing this stage of their education. Here’s Part II of the graduation speech [...]

Quest for Meaning: A UU Collective

It will only be five minutes. A favor. Celebrating women in the month of May and need a female minister to represent. When she asked a few weeks ago, calling in the middle of a rich and full work day, I said yes, okay, sure. I needed practice publicly speaking about ministry, especially as a [...]

The Principles of Spiritual Living

What is happening in form in the world around us is this: humanity is waiting for us to step forward. When we talk about 100 million “cultural creative” waiting to join our teaching, we are selling ourselves short. There are over seven billion people who are waiting to learn, understand and move into that which [...]

Wake Up Call

A few months ago I had a reader contact me about a blog post I had written. Like a lot of my Wake Up Call columns, it referenced God, and this particular person had a question that went something like this: “I enjoyed your story but you didn’t answer the question: Who is God?” It [...]

Evolutionary Enlightenment

When I met my last spiritual teacher, the revered HWL Poonja, in 1986, he taught me how to be free. He was such a powerful teacher that within minutes of meeting him, the most amazing thing happened. I asked him how much effort one needs to make in order to be inwardly free. He said, [...]

Planetary Energies

The New Moon is exact at 19 degrees 32 minutes of Taurus on May 9 in the US (5:30 pm West Coast, 8:30 pm East Coast) and on May 10 at 1:30 am in the UK, 10:30 am East Coast Australia. It occurs with a Solar Eclipse that begins two hours before the exactitude of [...]

Pluralism, Pragmatism, Progressivism

I am a religious skeptic. I don’t believe in Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, or Ogun; nor do I believe in the resurrection of bodies two days dead and buried, nor water changing into wine, nor men walking about unharmed in fiery furnaces. Likewise for angels, ghosts, demons, statues that weep milk, and miraculous cures effected by [...]

The Divine Feminine

As custodians of life, our families, our communities, the earth, we know the awe of responsibility. But how do we listen to the real need – both in ourselves and in life? For many years I have listened to women tell stories about their lives. Women who share dreams they have at night, and images that [...]