When you win the morning, you win the day. But there are days when my body isn’t quite ready to wake up when I am. And if I want to meditate in the morning, and my body’s not awake, my practice won’t be as invigorating as it could be—Which is why I start every morning with mindful movement. It promotes healing, increases energy, enhances awareness, and sets you up to thrive. With that in mind, I developed a simple 5-minute mindful movement practice that you can do as soon as you wake up to focus your mind and energize your body before you sit t...

Share Howard (James Cosmo) is a widowed sailor who lives by himself on the coast of Ireland. He has had a robust life of travel and adventure but his days now are constricted by loneliness and the debilitations of old age. His daughter Grace (Catherine Walker) is a natural-born caregiver who checks in regularly on her oftentimes gruff father. The tension between them and the rest of their family is evident at his birthday party. Still, Grace has assumed responsibility for making sure he is doing okay, even when that causes strain in her own mar...

Share "Christ has no body but yours,No hands, no feet on earth but yours,Yours are the eyes with which he looksCompassion on this world,Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world." These inspirational words by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) convey the high spiritual intent of her life of service as a mystic, a poet, an administrator, a religious reformer, the foundress of 17 convents, the author of four books, and a deeply devotional Christian. This sixteenth century Carmelite was onl...

Share On October 14, 2018, Pope Francis officiated at a ceremony declaring that Oscar Romer, the fourth Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, is a saint. During his beatification ceremony in 2015, the Pope said, "His ministry was distinguished by his particular attention to the most poor and marginalized." Today is a time to remember and celebrate his life and witness. Romero was born on August 15, 1917. He began pursuing a life of ministry at age 13 and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1942. Although he started out as a conservative p...

Adobe Stock/ krumanop-1 Sounds are a constant feature of life. So much so that we often take them for granted. So let’s go on a sound excursion. You may like to crack a window to let  the sounds from outside in. If you can’t do that, it is quite all right because we can still hear sounds inside with the windows closed.  I approach mindfulness practice by designing lessons that are user-friendly and engaging. I want to open a path for many to enter, deepening their practice naturally as they continue their journey of discovery. 12-Minute Meditat...

Share Saira Mir is a physician and author of Muslim Girls Rise, a nonfiction book about nineteen Muslim women of the twenty-first century who have risen above challenges, doubts, and sometimes outright hostility to blaze trails in a wide range of fields. As an OB-GYN, she has helped many families through pregnancy loss. But when her own family suffered pregnancy loss, she could not find a book that would help her support her daughter through her sadness. She wrote Always Sisters to be that book and to help children who have lost a baby sister o...

Share I am haunted by the news I woke to Saturday morning (October 7, 2023). And I am haunted by a message I received from a colleague Sunday morning, characterizing my response to the news as “a neutral stance.” I had thought my response was an attempt at compassion for all those affected by inhumane violence and injustice. I had thought I was being a responsible and informed voice in a complex situation. As a lover of Howard Zinn, the word “neutral” rattled my sense of self. I spent the weekend practicing compassion; in truth, I was also test...

Share “Spend some time connecting to your inner longing for pilgrimage and journeying to the land of the saint and mystic who calls to your heart. Listen for the prayer arising. If you are feeling called to the pilgrim experience, what is it about that voyage that sparks your imagination? Perhaps you are standing at a crossroads in your life and are discerning a new pathway. Maybe you are experiencing the loss of a loved one, a dream, a job, or an ability and need time to grieve and integrate. “Listen for the words and images that arise in the ...

Share Christine Valters Paintner is one of our favorite spiritual writers, winner of several of our “Book of the Year” awards, and a member of our Living Spiritual Teachers Project. Her latest book is wonderful. Particularly if you find yourself lonely or losing hope, her words of support and encouragement from angels, saints, mystics, and other friends along the spiritual path will buoy your spirits. This is a book of friendship that crosses the divide or, perhaps, shows how the divide is not real. She wants to take readers on “a journey of op...

Written by: Sybille Nkunzimana Whenever I walk to school, I feel as though I am glimpsing something that is so close yet so far. I walk down the red dirt hill from Mukecuru’s [grandmother] house to meet my teaching colleague, and we continue together silently, sometimes chatting about how steep the hills are or how difficult it is to walk with a heavy backpack. Each morning as we make our way to school, we are joined by masses of students in cobalt blue uniforms, seemingly identical but differentiated by discolored button-downs or mysterious st...

Share “To nurture her spiritual life as a graduate student, hooks revealed in All About Love that she repeatedly reflected on these lines from Corinthians [1 Corinthians, chapter 13]: “ 'If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gai...

Share This intriguing, short book will serve readers who are new to bell hooks (this is the pen name, always lowercased, by which she was consistently known), as well as hooks’ already devoted readers. We found it important for spiritual practices discovered by author Nadra Nittle at the heart of hooks’ discussions of race, class, inequality, and gender. Another Nadra Nittle book, Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision, earned one of our 2021 “Best Spiritual Books” awards. Nittle presents bell hooks in ways that bring forward this essential American ...

Share In the Christian monastic tradition, every day follows a rhythm of eight "Hours," which mark nuances of morning, noon, night, and between times. "Lauds" is the coming of the light, an opportunity to nourish your soul for the coming day. "Prime" — when you get to your workplace — allows you to make a deliberate beginning. "Terce" is a joyful mid-morning prayer break. "Sext" is a lunch-time meditation that renews commitment and fervor. "None" comes as shadows lengthen and you need a boost for the last hours of your work day. "Vespers" is an...

Share "Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God," Julia Cameron has observed. Far too often, people think that this path is restricted to artists. But every person has the gift to imagine and join with the Divine in the ongoing creation of the universe. This 40-day e-course is for those who want to discover and express their creativity through spiritual practices. Every culture and tradition links creativity and spirituality. Music, dancing, singing, poetry, and painting are common ways to express our soul an...

As we wake again to news that war has broken out in Israel and Palestine, our hearts are heavy. We offer this prayer originally posted on July 21, 2014. And so we pray this news . . . For People in the Midst of War O God, you have loved each of ussince before we were born,and you love each of us in equaland abundant measure.Yet we sometimes choose not tosee ourselves in one another.We sometimes choose to live as thoughwe were not the brothers and sisterswe know ourselves to be. Pour your blessings uponall your people in every nation,especially ...

Share One of Ignatius’s first followers, Francis Borgia, recommended these daily practices for cultivating humility: - As you get dressed in the morning, think of those who lack sufficient clothing.- As you eat your meals, think of those who lack proper nourishment.- As you go to bed at night, think of those who lack safety and shelter. For Francis Borgia, these three moments of daily reflection helped cultivate Christ’s humility and solidarity with the poor and the marginalized. Combined with gratitude — which recognizes that we cannot take cr...

Share This book is all about Ignatian spirituality — the way of Christian meditation, mindfulness, and paying attention started by Saint Ignatius of Loyola nearly 500 years ago. Members of the Roman Catholic religious order co-founded by Ignatius are called Jesuits or members of the Society of Jesus. One of their most well-known members today is New York Times bestselling author James Martin, who writes the foreword to this book. The author himself is Patrick Saint-Jean, not a new name to Spirituality & Practice; we awarded his first book, ...

Share Saint Francis of Assisi (1182 - 1226) is probably the most popular Christian saint. His radiant spirit is a beacon for those seeking a life of meaning and service. It does no good to put him on a pedestal; rather we should walk with St. Francis on the path of peace, openness, mysticism, poverty, reverence for nature, and love of animals. There are plenty of spiritual resources on his remarkable life and his spiritual practices. Photo Credit: Icon of St. Francis of Assisi by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM, available from Trinity Stores. To Name Thi...

Share Spanning two generations, The First Day of Peace shows how a taken-for-granted policy of "live and let live" can quickly crumble under the stresses of climate disasters. Only when it morphs into conscious acts of compassion can true peace prevail. Two communities of people — one on the mountain with access to river water and one in the valley with lake resources — leave each other alone until a severe drought strikes the land. Unwilling to share what little they have with each other, the two communities build hostility which later spills ...

Share “I offer descriptions of three ways of being with sameness that vary in their means of approaching differences: 1. Syncretism: the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought…. This blending of the belief systems and practices of two or more religions, such that a whole new religion (or at least a distinctly new sect of one of them) emerges, recognizes differences but incorporates them into a type of sameness. 2. Appropriation: the act of taking something for one’s own use, typically with...