At the beginning of a new year, there is a sense that we can jumpstart our lives and become new people. But at any time, we can think about personal transformation. And the world's religions support us in this. As Sam Keen once put it, "The great metaphors from all spiritual traditions — grace, liberation, being born again, awakening from illusion — testify that it is possible to transcend the conditioning of my past and do a new thing."

To honor this truth, and to reinforce it with a daily practice, we have gathered songs and videos that celebrate change. Transformation begins with the personal, moves through our relationships, and turns political when we seek real and meaningful changes in the world.

It is time to shed old habits and travel with the winds of change. Here are a few quotes to get you going.

  • "To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed very often."
    — John Henry Cardinal Newman
  • "It is the closing of the heart far more than the closing of the mind that keeps folk from transformation and deepening."
    — Jean Houston
  • "The ultimate goal is to transform the world into the kind of world God had in mind when He created it."
    — Harold Kushner
  • "Nothing is more crucial to our lives or more central to the heart of God than the transformation of the human personality."
    — Richard J. Foster

Videos/Songs about Transformation