Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
New Visions

2021-07-11T09:06:04-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Spirituality, A Personal View – Part I

Last updated on: July 11, 2021 at 9:06 am By Spiritual Naturalist Society

Spirituality, A Personal View – Part I by Thomas Schenk Spirituality is the creative activity wherein we transform life’s noise into life’s music. The word “spiritual” comprises one-half of the term Spiritual Naturalist, but even among members of SNS there is no general agreement about what the word means. There isn’t, of course, one correct definition. It means many things to many people, and people approach it in many different ways. Here, I present what spirituality means to me. Spirit Spirituality... Read more

Uncategorized

Spirit

2021-06-17T14:34:03-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Why Compassion?

Last updated on: June 17, 2021 at 2:34 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by DT Strain We talk a lot about compassion here at the Society. It’s even in our motto, “Happiness through compassion, reason, and practice.” Talking about compassion will generally get you positive response – everyone likes compassion. It sounds really nice. But there are some important things about compassion in a spiritual practice that get missed. One friend recently said she was in favor of being more compassionate and a more compassionate world, but didn’t understand what I meant by saying that compassion... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Compassion

2021-07-02T14:15:09-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ants As Pets and Pests

Last updated on: July 2, 2021 at 2:15 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by SNS Guest (Today’s article is by guest writer Brock Haussamen. For brief bio, see below.) Of the thirty or so ants that arrived with my ant farm, five are still alive after about six weeks. I never had much interest in keeping ants, but E. O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler’s Journey to the Ants sparked my curiosity. A plastic “ant farm” with its big window and the bag of gel “sand” arrived in the mail, followed a week later by a tube... Read more

2021-06-17T14:32:26-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Mysticism and Beauty

Last updated on: June 17, 2021 at 2:32 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Eric Steinhart I’m prone to mystical experiences. I’ve had six that were sufficiently intense that I ended up recording them in detail later. And none of those mystical experiences involved any revelation of God. So they weren’t religious experiences – they were irreligious, and I’m still an atheist. Mainly, those experiences involved an intense awareness of the beauty of nature. My most recent mystical experience happened in October 2017, when I was driving through the San Rafael Swell in the middle of... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Beauty

Mysticism

2021-06-24T17:39:20-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Should Naturalists Celebrate the Decline of Christianity?

Last updated on: June 24, 2021 at 5:39 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Gregory Gronbacher Our crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. – Antonio Gramsci The predominant influence of Judeo-Christianity in Western culture for the past 1700 or so years has been waning for decades, even centuries, and this is becoming increasingly visible. Yes, the cultural residue of Judeo-Christian moral insights remains, but weakening is widespread, explicit identity with the mythic narratives... Read more

2021-06-17T14:30:16-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Bodhicitta: The Mind of Awakening

Last updated on: June 17, 2021 at 2:30 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Daniel Scharpenburg Bodhicitta is the quality that drives away the suffering in ourselves and others. “Bodhi” means awake, free from delusion. “Citta” means mind. So this is about the mind of awakening that we’re trying to develop and strengthen. The way of the Bodhisattva is the way of compassion and wisdom, of realizing your own boundless potential. It comes from realizing that Enlightenment is our true nature, that we have a basic goodness and wakefulness that is fundamental to our... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Bodhicitta

2021-06-18T20:31:22-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Maps of the Soul

Last updated on: June 18, 2021 at 8:31 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Daniel Shkolnik I don’t trust the Zodiac. The Tarot isn’t too different from a Rorschach test. Even less metaphysical personality systems like the Myers-Briggs test and the Enneagram fail to impress me. All these systems promise to give a map of the most complicated regions of the universe we know of: the human mind. More poetically: the human soul. For various reasons, each falls short. But there’s one framework that’s garnered my trust. In the ‘90s, Jungian psychologists Robert L.... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Archetypes

Soul

2021-06-17T14:28:18-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Damn It, It’s MY Body That’s At Stake”: Autonomy, Sociality and Imperfect Choices

Last updated on: June 17, 2021 at 2:28 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Brock Haussamen My family were swapping medical grievances one evening—flawed diagnoses, unwanted side effects, useless procedures. “Damn it, it’s my body that’s at stake” was one protest. I thought how forcefully people can stake out the inviolability of not only their health but also “my life,” “my rights,” “my money,” “my free will.” When relatives, employers, government, or banks overstep, we stand by our autonomy. Don’t tread on me. But we work the other side of this relationship too. We uphold—because we benefit from— social codes... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Choice

Choices

2021-06-10T21:39:13-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Of the Earth

Last updated on: June 10, 2021 at 9:39 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Thomas Schenk In his book, The Saviors of God, Nikos Kazantzakis writes: “Earth rises up in your brains and sees her entire body for the first time.” Taking into account that the idea has been made poetic and personified, the idea presented here is not only compatible with Naturalism, but is implied by it. The soils and waters of the Earth, aided by sunlight, have over the eons self-organized and evolved into living forms, into sensitive nervous systems, into awareness, and... Read more

Spiritual Naturalism

Earth

2021-06-09T13:59:05-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The River of Contemplation (Nature and Soul, the Sacred Unity)

Last updated on: June 9, 2021 at 1:59 pm By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Thomas Schenk When I was young, I lived in a house on the banks of the Mississippi River. Not the grand, storied Mississippi of the South, but a young Mississippi only a hundred miles or so from it source in Lake Itasca. As a child, I spent many an hour sitting by the river watching the water flow. The river provided me with a natural lesson in contemplation; though I didn’t think of it like that at the time. Perhaps... Read more

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian group follows the "Watchtower" publication?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Pentecostals Baptists Seventh-day Adventists

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Spiritual Naturalism Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 August 2017 July 2017 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 January 2015 December 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012

TRENDING AT PATHEOS New Visions