Spiritual Literacy | Blog | Spirituality & Practice

Variety's Best Movie Scenes of 2015

Posted by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat on January 5, 2016

The staff of Variety, the entertainment trade publication, has put together a list of 14 of 2015's best movie scenes. We were quite interested to take a look at their choices. Years ago when we published Living Room Learning, we regularly identified scenes which we called "Human Touches in the Movies." We described them as "scenes, characters, and images which show us the way we are." We plan to bring back something like this in 2016.

Among Variety's winners are the moment in Carol where two women lovers lock eyes across a crowded room near the end of the drama; the adrenaline-pumping car chase in the climax in Mad Max: Fury Road; and the discussion among journalists in Spotlight who realize that the story of child abuse slipped through the cracks five years earlier.

There are many more well-acted and well-written screenplays from this year's movies. When you see these films, we encourage you to watch for scenes which convey human values worth emulating.

New Line of Books for Seekers

Posted by Frederic Brussat on January 4, 2016

HarperOne in San Francisco has launched HarperElixir aimed at the audience of seekers who make up the second largest and fastest growing spiritual category in the United States. As Antonia Blumberg of Huffpost Religion points out, this publishing company joins the ranks of Hay House and Harmony Books who for years have catered to the "mind, body, spirit" audience. Claudia Boutote, senior vice president and publisher at HarperElexir, states that they will be targeting readers who occupy the turf "where hippie meets hipster." These are the modern seekers who are "spiritual and magical and passionate and curious and they want to answer the call to go deeper."

One thing they have gotten right is the perception that the seeker audience comprises people whose spirituality is broad with many different interests and practices. That is why HarperElixir will cover everything from yoga to happiness, coaching to astrology, and healing to tarot cards. We affirm this wide-ranging approach for seekers and those often steering their spiritual path through more than one religion. Check out our Spiritual Practice Toolkit with links to more than 260 practices for this audience.

Making Movies that Reflect Human Values

Posted by Frederic Brussat on December 30, 2015

Haskell Wexler (1922-2015), who died peacefully in his sleep on December 27, was a socially conscious cinematographer who believed in art as a means of reflecting human values. On Common Dreams, Abby Zimet notes that he was respected for his craft (he won Oscars for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Woody Guthrie biopicture Bound for Glory) but put his heart into "giving his gifts to the revolution by highlighting issues of war, racism, poverty and torture — and accumulating a 500-page FBI file for his trouble."

As a liberal activist . . .

Reverence, Not Revenge

Posted by Frederic Brussat on December 28, 2015

In a profound and ethically rich blog for The Denver Post, John Kane, a professor of Religious Studies at Regis University who has focused on interfaith dialogue, justice, and peace initiatives, ponders the feelings of revenge toward terrorists afoot in Western nations. As he examines this theme, he recalls "the implacable furies of revenge" in the Greek dramatist Aeschylus's play Oresteia. Kane believes that the yearning to respond with violence against those who have hurt or shamed us is alive and well 2500 years after the Greek play.

We've been brainwashed to believe ...

The Value of Libraries

Posted by Frederic Brussat on December 8, 2015

Alberto Manguel, in his review of The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History edited by Alice Crawford, calls this book "a wonderfully informative, erudite, and entertaining collection of essays." Here you will find material on the Library of Alexandria, which was known as a shrine to the importance of human knowledge, through the present-day research library where four kinds of work are done: curatorial obligations; engagement with research and learning; publishing; and management of spaces for readers to work in and collections to be housed.

For many centuries . . .

After Paris - Thoughts from Rabbi Lerner

Posted by Frederic Brussat on November 16, 2015

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun and chair of the interfaith and secular Network of Spiritual Progressives, shares his thoughts on applying love, caring, nonviolence, and generosity to the present situation following the terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and elsewhere around the world. While the media cheerleads for fear and militarism, Lerner points out that the ancient strategies of revenge and payback should be out of the question; they lead only to more bloodshed. Healing will come only when we move beyond the unconscionable terrorist attacks of ISIS and the havoc the United States and other countries have reigned down on the innocent civilians in Syria and Iraq in drone attacks. He writes: "As long as our resources (and here I include not only the U.S. and the West, but also China and Russia) are primarily focused on military, economic, cultural and political domination of the world, what we saw in Paris will become an increasing reality worldwide."

Taking the Pulse of Religion in America

Posted by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat on November 10, 2015

A new survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentages of those who say they believe in God, pray daily, and regularly go to church or another religious service all have declined modestly in recent years.

This decrease in traditional religious beliefs ...

Everything Is Being Turned Inside Out: Interview with Terry Tempest Williams

Posted by Frederic Brussat on October 19, 2015

In an interview with Sarah van Gelder, the co-founder and editor-at-large of Yes! Magazine, one of our favorite Living Spiritual Teachers Terry Tempest Williams shared her vision of where we are at this moment in history. With the same creativity and deep questing spiritualty that she has demonstrated in her writings, she spells out the probes and epiphanies that challenge us to spiritual action.

For example when asked . . .

How to Avoid Polarization in Sports and Politics

Posted by Frederic Brussat on August 6, 2015

We don't attend many baseball games but we took some relatives to see a Yankees game. When someone in the crowd yelled in celebration of the opposing team, he was booed down and then pelted with a torrent of abusive language. We thought of this incident while reading Thomas Moore's essay on the Huffington Post in which he suggests that one of the practices he uses at sports events to resist this harsh treatment of others is "to try not to identify with either team."

The spread of political animosity

The Death of Novelist E. L. Doctorow

Posted by Frederic Brussat on July 28, 2015

E. L. Doctorow, who died on July 21, 2015, at age 84, was a thinking person's novelist who always excelled in showing us the unpredictable ways in which history, character, and morality intertwine. He was the author of a dozen novels, three volumes of short fiction, and a stage drama, as well as essays on literature and politics. This Bronx-born writer won the Penn/Faulkner Award for Fiction and The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Doctorow shared with novelist John Dos Passos

Spirituality & Practice