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In the larger scheme of life, I believe that the great challenge of western culture is to connect with our souls, our inner being, the “still small voice” that urges us to be this or do that. In the busyness and challenges of life it is easy to push aside that inner light and get on with the demands of work, family, and all the responsibilities life brings. The temptation is to live on the surface of life and neglect its depths.

… evidence of reincarnation can help fulfill one of Christianity’s greatest doctrines, that we are indeed brothers and sisters, and that we should love one another as such. Religious teachings can contain great wisdom, but at the same time, religions separate and divide us. Wars are based on the perception that the enemy is different from ourselves, which allows us to justify killing. Evidence of reincarnation allows us to see that we are universal souls, which are not bound to any one religion, nationality or ethnic group.

This is Part 2 of an interview between Eric Alexander and Matthew Fox. In this clip Eric asks what the word Christ means to Matthew, and whether that answer could reframe what it means to call oneself a Christian, and Matthew offers an insightful response.

Replace “slavery” with “global warming” and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in 1865 hits home not just in the ears but in the gut. Lincoln’s rhetoric still reaches into the soul of America and swells it with emotion and conviction. And integral to its impact is its use of Judeo-Christian language.

The first three questions of the Bible are of great significance to me.

Before I continue, let me explain my thinking about the Bible, albeit quickly and (perhaps a little) crassly: no one in the airline industry intended for the instructions about putting an oxygen mask on oneself before assisting others with their oxygen masks to be a moral lesson. Nonetheless, it is. Similarly, I do not believe that one needs to believe that the Bible is “The Word of God” to take moral lessons from it.

Just as the internet and its technology may be made personal, iSpirituality may awaken individuals to the worldwide spiritual internet, helping us see the connection of the personal to the universal, the individual to the international. And by “spiritual” I don’t mean other-worldly, non-physical, or immaterial, for the “i” in iSpirituality could stand for “incarnational” as well.

Judeo/Christian/Islamic belief will be forced to adjust to the reality of an ecologically disintegrating planet with humans on it searching not for solutions restricted to their past, but built on new ideas within a thought process reaching beyond. This is not to say that all Abrahamic thought will die. Many ancient texts and beliefs will find value. However, a new world-wide cosmic realism will be taking hold. Past religious belief in all three of the religions of Abraham will be made to measure its value against a new form of thought that encompasses the nonlinearity of all matter and non-matter in the context of human/planetary consonance – and survival.

  Unlike Richard Dawkins, the Revised Edition, Contemporary Creed sees no conflict between evolution and God, faith and modern science. But what sort of God creates a violent universe with a Big Bang almost 14 billion years …

In this profound work, bestselling author and the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today. Pulling back the layers of misunderstanding created over the centuries by Gentile ignorance of things Jewish, he reveals how a literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from the original intent of the Jewish authors of the gospels that it has become an act of heresy.

Since the very beginning, Xavier Rudd’s ability to connect with people has been his most powerful gift. The more he has toured the world, the more hearts he has touched and the more of the world he has put back into his music.

Since its foundation, nearly a century ago, the United Church of Canada has famously been a broad-minded Christian denomination. Its goal at the outset was to unite the many strands of liberal Protestant practice under the same roof. And through the years it’s been widely seen as an open-minded and pluralistic institution. But now, one United Church minister in Ontario, is forcing the church to re-examine the limits of that approach…

Carl Sagan gives the best speech ever about humanity and how foolish we behave. Pale Blue Dot is one of the most important and reflective speeches about the human condition and our place in the Universe. The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images.

Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have already helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violence on our planet.

But it is not only God that is recurrently jealous and punishing. Other monolithic entities can also be jealous: your nation, the military, employers, and political causes all demand unswerving loyalty. They chastise members who refuse to obey or ‘worship false Gods’ by colluding with enemies, conspiring with political, professional or commercial rivals. And God help those who whistle-blow, aaaagggghhh snitch!

To know how to live do we need God and religion, or, does religion only produce wars, hatred, intolerance and unhappiness? Does giving up God mean giving up morality, or, can we finally live a peaceful and fulfilling life as atheists by following science and reason instead? The anthropologist Christopher Hallpike has spent a lifetime’s research on the morality and religion of different cultures around the world, and shows that trying to base a moral life on atheism and science actually has some very nasty surprises in store for us.

Ruminating over this Sunday’s prescribed reading from Job 38, my mind harkens back to 2012, when I had the privilege of attending a series of lectures given by the great Phyllis Tickle who described the current reformation that the church is experiencing as part of a cultural phenomenon that happens about every 500 years, which she calls “The Great Emergence”. When asked what skills religious leaders will need to navigate the information age, Tickle insisted that the best advice we could give to anyone considering a religious vocation was that they should study physics.

Brian Cox from New Zealand spent 4 years transforming his backyard into a living church.

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.