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

What would chocolate be without bitter cacao and sugar? What would music be without notes and silences between? What would a rainbow be without rain and sun? I see now that there can be no love without loss, no joy without sorrow; no peaks without valleys. ~Aurora Winter Nightmares happen to everyone. Even the best [...]

Daily Life as Spiritual Practice

It’s that time of year, when millions of students “graduate” to a new stage of their education or life. During the ceremonies they will hear representatives of their classes share about what they have learned and then listen to graduation speakers talk about what they will need as they move into the future. Here’s the [...]

Quest for Meaning: A UU Collective

What better way to get people praying than to remind us of random chance? What better way than the cold logic of air rising, falling, killing here, not there; this one, not that. Where I come from we name them by a year: 2011, 1957, 1925, and remember deaths, 695, 255, 12. What better way [...]

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 [...]