One hundred million people worldwide now have Calm on their smartphones, a meditation app that monetized doing absolutely nothing. The app’s popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, as anxieties ran high and finding peace and quiet proved harder to do. Calm provides mindfulness meditations, breathing exercises and bedtime stories to encourage users to take some time Read more
What do you think of when you hear the word spiritual? Do you see visions of immaculately arranged Instagram posts of people practicing yoga or calmly sitting with their eyes closed in an upscale loft? Do you hear the ramblings of someone ‘finding their bliss’ or seeking ‘inner peace’? Do those things seem totally unrelated Read more
Actress Theresa Healey told Stuff that lots of Catholics become actors: “I think it’s because we’re introduced to the concept of spirituality from an early age. Mass is a performance, it’s all rituals, mystery and symbolism. The transubstantiation, wine becomes blood, bread the body. The church was my first theatre, then the theatre became my Read more
The Salvation Army is concerned that the Government’s Health Response Bill, designed to empower police to deal with breaches of Covid-19 alert level 2 rules, does not consider spiritual wellbeing alongside physical wellbeing. The Army considers Sunday church services an ‘essential service’, as they offer spiritual health; a vital component of wellbeing. They say that Read more
The great doorway to growing in the Christian faith is narrowing from year to year in Quebec as baptisms have significantly declined in since 2012 and there’s no indication the trend will reverse. Confronted with a shift away from traditional practices of transmitting the faith in childhood, leaders in the Quebec church are rethinking how Read more
One of New Zealand’s best-loved writers, Dame Joy Cowley, is a finalist in this year’s Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit Literary Awards’ Book category for her non-fiction work Veil Over Light. She joins four other authors from all over the country writing about issues as wide-ranging as global ethics, living cooperatively, mystical and shamanic practice Read more
At first sight there may not appear to be a great deal in common between director Ken Loach’s powerful movie, set in Newcastle in England, and the early Marist missions in the Bugey region of France. But while they are separated by 853 miles and 190 years, it is not too fanciful to suggest that Read more
New Zealand-born author Father Gerald Arbuckle’s most recent book, Loneliness Insights for Healing in a Fragmented World has been included by the Spirituality and Practice website among the 50 best spiritual books of 2018. Arbuckle is noted scholar in both theology and anthropology. He is the author of many books, the most recent being: Laughing with God: Humor, Read more
Spiritual care must be integrated into health system care plans, policies and training in order to reflect national guidelines and strategies more effectively, according to University of Otago researchers. In interviews with 24 cancer survivors, their whanau and health workers, the researchers found participants felt as if documentation of their spiritual beliefs had the potential Read more
There is nothing intrinsically holy about a “16 Weeks to Marathon” spreadsheet, GPS watches or the neon accents of running shoes. But, for a certain class of runners, there is no denying the spirituality of the long run. There are no pews, steeples or chapels in this church. It is a social movement complete with Read more