Philip GoldbergThat spiritual and religious factors significantly influence health outcomes is now indisputable, and healthcare professionals—from M.D.s and nurses to social workers to chaplains—have taken notice. According to the journal Research News...
We know from a growing body of scientific research that religious participation and spiritual practices are good for the health of our bodies. What we don’t often appreciate is the reverse: that attending to our bodies can be good for our spiritual...
It’s that time again, two or three weeks into the new year, when we start to struggle with some of the resolutions we made. Most people who set goals for a coming year begin with all the things they want to accomplish: complete this project...
On the day after Thanksgiving, as is my custom, I took out my collection of Christmas music and inaugurated the season with The Drifters’ gloriously funky version of “White Christmas.” It’s a quintessentially American moment: honoring a...
Since the presidential election, the term “moral values” has been in the spotlight. This seems like a good opportunity to reflect on the role of moral and ethical codes in our spiritual lives. Needless to say, no particular voting block...
One of the great paradoxes of the spiritual path is that we are on our own and we can’t do it alone. By on our own I mean this: no matter how devoted we might be to a particular faith or teaching, we and we alone determine what to believe and...
As a political activist in the 1960’s, I was an avowed atheist who believed that religion was the opium of the people. Then I snapped out of it and became a spiritual activist. Now politics was the opium of the people.
A spiritual teacher from the East, amused by Americans’ obsession with psychotherapy, shrugged, “If you want to change your personality, do it now. When you’re enlightened you won’t care.” Many spiritual seekers choose not to...
George Carlin once quipped that “God can’t be perfect; everything he makes dies.” There, in one irreverent nutshell, is a fundamental truth about life on earth: Everything changes, everything withers, everything eventually disappears. That applies...
The comedian Emo Philips once said, “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.” A joke, yes, but a good...
