Geoff Bell-Devaney, Interview #185

Name: Geoff Bell-Devaney

Where you live:  Berkshires, MA

What you do as a vocation or avocation? 

Special ed teacher and artist

Your two favorite books: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Your two favorite songs: In My Life Today by Lenny Kravitz; War (No more trouble) by Bob Marley

Why you are interested in spirituality?

I had an inner awakening at age 30 and realized the power of my inner world.

Your favorite quote: "The truth will set you free."

Your favorite web site: www.gbd-art.com. (I love expressing my creativity through painting.)

Your hero? Anyone who is seeking the truth.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn? Being fully present to my inner and outer world.

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"  The ocean.

You can find Geoff on Twitter @how2bmindful

Hitesh Abhani, Interview #184

Name:  Hitesh Abhani

Where you live: Mumbai -India

What is your vocation or avocation? 

Pharmaceutical business, Research and development

Your two favorite books:

Embark on the Inner Journey and Life Worth Living both books written by my spiritual master. His divine discourses and this  book is life changing experience, it's so simple any person can understand and Embark on the Inner Journey is in 10 languages: Spanish, Cantonese, French, English, German, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Hindi.

Your two favorite songs: "Tumhare darshan ki bela" by Deva Premal and "hari om namo narayan" by Deva Premal.

Why you are interested in spirituality?

The reason is, it's about me, my pure self and after having an enlightened spiritual master in life, spiritual life is like a celebration. Life is full of celebration, introspection, and meditation. In short, "Life is beautiful and worth living."

Your favorite quote: from the process of self-realization by Paramkripaludev Shrimad Rajchandraji

"Without knowing the real nature of self, I suffered infinite misery. I bow to the adored holy true Guru (Guru:spiritual teacher/spiritual master) who disclosed that self to me
He, who knows wherever and whatever (out of renunciation,non-attachment and knowledge of self) is proper and practices accordingly, is the aspirant of self-realisation.
 By the contact of true Guru,deluded self-notion is restrained. It mostly, becomes two-fold by adapting other means.
 One, who follows the guidance of the true Guru, giving up deluded self-notion and obstinacy in supporting his wrong view, is said to have right belief, knowing it to be its direct cause.
 The great enemies such as pride, etc.(i.e.,the passion of anger, pride,deceit and greed) cannot be destroyed by deluded self-guidance. But by accepting the protection of the true Guru, they pass away by slight effort.
The self is pure, enlightened, consciousness in core, self-illuminating, the above of bliss. How much more to be said. If you contemplate over this, you will realize such self."

Your favorite web sites: www.shrimadrajchandramission.org

Your hero?: Param Pujyashri Rakeshbhai Jhaveri is my spiritual master. He is an inspirational hero for me. To walk on this path, even he is "busy, " he is witness of all activity, his awareness, his eyes speak. No need for words in his existence. Meditation happens, no need to put efforts, his silence. I have no words, it's just experience ...... 

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn? 

It's a process of learning and practicing under the guidance of a spiritual master, and it's a beautiful process. I have started to love my self and I have started to know my self.

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?" 

He taught me the art of feeling spirituality everywhere, in all situations, all places.

Laurie Brock, Interview #182

Name: Laurie Brock

Where you live:

Lexington, Kentucky

What you do as a vocation or avocation?

 Episcopal priest

Your two favorite books:

I have read far too many books to have two favorite - something like trying to choose your two favorite children.  My favorite books of the last few I've read are Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr and the Outlander series by Diana Galbandon. Both nourish my soul in very different ways.  One invites me to reflect.   One lets me enjoy the story.   

Your two favorite songs:

General Seminary (King of Glory, King of Peace) from the Episcopal Hymnal makes me cry every time. That's where I attended seminary, and every word has faces and memories wed to it.  And anything by Beth Nielsen Chapman. I listened to her music over and over while I was finishing my manuscript.  She captures the extraordinary joy and grief of life perfectly in her lyrics and music.

Why you are interested in spirituality?

Life is not concrete reality, and we are not simply a mixture of flesh and blood.  Spirituality gives us a glimpse of that mystery of spirit and soul and connects us to all that has been and all that will be.  Spirituality offers us a vocabulary of the unspeakable.

Your favorite quote:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in. 

From Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Your favorite web sites:

 I love Facebook.  I have friends all across the country and the world, and seeing the mundane and special events of their lives keeps me engaged with them.  And I'm a big fan of Dogshaming.com.  The posts make me laugh.  Every.  Time.

Your hero?

 Sojourner Truth.  Her story is remarkable.  Her faith was unshakable.  She faced discrimination on so many levels, and yet she preached the Gospel relentlessly.  Her "Ain't I a Woman" speech cannot be read and understood enough.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?

 It's one I hope to learn, but realize I will be learning it for the rest of my life - that our brokenness, our wounds, and our scars are the beautiful places where God shines through.  Life is about becoming more comfortable and more familiar with the beauty of our scars.

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?" 

In the horse barn.  I ride, and I feel most centered, most connected to God, when I am mucking out stalls, brushing horses, and riding on these amazing creatures.  Riding is not just about me.  I am in relationship with this animal who has her own personality and quirks, and who, on occasion, drops me on my rear end.  Elegant and messy, all at once.  That is being spiritually connected for me. 

Editor's Note: Laurie blogs with Mary Koppel here

Robert V. Taylor, Interview #181

Name: Robert V. Taylor

Where you live:
In the spectacular Pacific Northwest where I’m blessed to live in Seattle and on a farm in the high desert of rural Eastern WA. The contrast of the desert and the lushness of Seattle are soul food!

What you do as a vocation or avocation?
I’m the author of A New Way to Be Human: 7 Spiritual Pathways to Becoming Fully Alive. It’s an invitation to a life of compassion and love in which we discover our oneness as we allow the breath of life to flow through us, unstopped and unstoppable. I’m deeply honored by the endorsements it has received from Deepak Chopra, Bernie Siegel, Nora Gallagher, Desmond Tutu, Helene Gayle and a cross section of spiritual, philanthropic, corporate and transformational leaders.

I blog for Huffington Post and am a commentator on the inter-section of social justice, mindful living, well-
being and spirituality.

I’m also a speaker and love the diversity of audiences I speak to from professional associations, colleges,
community organizations, and religious or spiritual groups.

When I’m not on the road I adore cooking and gathering friends, family and strangers around our table!
In each of these areas of my work and life I’m enlivened by my interactions with people and feel privileged
to be part of the journey of so many remarkable people!

Your two favorite books:
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Your two favorite songs:
Born This Way by Lady Gaga and What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

Why you are interested in spirituality?
I believe we are all hard wired for compassion, love and goodness – it is the essence of what spiritualty
invites us into. I adore the transformative path that emerges when we are tender with ourselves and
others. Spirituality is like a labyrinth inviting us deeper and deeper into our belovedness as we claim the
unique and ancient truths revealed in the arc of our story and life. Our own story offers a meeting ground
with the Holy and others in which we become awake to the spiritual truth of the oneness we share with
the human family, Creation and the Universe. On the spiritual path you realize that your own well-being
and happiness is bundled together with the happiness and well-being of others. I never cease to be
amazed by new awareness of the delight that the journey reveals as we practice mercy, kindness, justice
and love.

Your favorite quote:
"Everything in the Universe has a rhythm; everything dances" – Maya Angelou

Your favorite web sites:
Huffington Post with its variety of platforms and the On faith blog at the Washington Post

Your hero?
Anyone whose intention is to live a life of generous and unconditional love. And of course the Dalai Lama,
Desmond Tutu and Mary Oliver.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?
That the most vexing and offensive people are on a journey also.

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
Anywhere near mountains or water. My dog Lucy is always inviting me into the playfulness of life and my
spouse reminds me of the joy of life.

Editor's Note: See more of Robert's work and writing at www.robertvtaylor.com

David McGlynn, Interview #180

Name: David McGlynn 

Where you live: 

Appleton, Wisconsin. About 30 minutes south of Green Bay, Wisconsin. About an hour south of the North Pole (not really).

What you do as a vocation or avocation? 

Besides being a writer, I'm also a professor at Lawrence University,a small liberal-arts college in Appleton. I love it: the students are smart, down to earth, and generous souls. I'm also an avid, devoted, life-long swimmer. Much of A Door in the Ocean is about my love-affair with swimming, and even years after my last big meet, I still swim every morning. In fact, in a few weeks, I'll be swimming from the tip of Wisconsin's Door County Peninsula to Washington Island—a 4 mile stretch of water famously known as Death's Door.

Your two favorite books: 

I read constantly, which means that my favorite book is never fixed. But I started writing A Door in the Ocean (in a very different form, many years ago) after reading Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart. It's an amazing work of nonfiction that I go back to again and again. Another memoir that helped me understand the form and direction of my book is Debra Monroe's On the Outskirts of Normal. Debra's a friend and her work has shown me how to be simultaneously smart and vulnerable, academic and accessible. I recommend her book to everyone I know, and I keep it beside my computer on my desk. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Andre Dubus' story, "A Father's Story." I read it years ago and it completely captivated me. It gave me the courage to write about spiritual matters.

Your two favorite songs: 

Van Morrison's "Caravan" and Ben Harper's "Amen Omen"

Why you are interested in spirituality?: 

There’s a stark division in the American media between how evangelical Christians (a subculture at the heart of both my fiction and nonfiction) are portrayed by so-called “outsiders” and how they portray themselves. Evangelicals are often interested in portraying themselves as enlightened, that they have found the truth and can rest comfortably in the knowledge that they are right. Secular, or otherwise unsympathetic, observers often paint them as crazy or myopic. Neither portrayal, in my view, tells the entire story. I believe that people come to faith in the same ways we come to friendship and marriage and our political affiliations: informed by our experiences, fueled by our passions, driven by complex, contradictory psychologies. I wanted to tell an honest story about why evangelicalism drew me in and why it couldn't keep me, to show both its good and bad sides. I wanted to paint a complex picture of a culture that’s most often drawn (and draws itself) in crayon.

Your favorite quote: 

It's the epigraph to A Door in the Ocean, from Mark Jarman's book of prose poems, Epistles: 

Out of chaos, beyond theory, into a life that peaks and breaks, the wave emerges. The shore where it dies lies ahead and waits, unseen. A life must peak as it rides up the shallow approach, steepen, and break. I want you to think of yourself like that, of your body and soul like that, one flesh traveling to shore, to collapse, all that way to end by darkening the sand and evaporating. Where do you go? You repeat in other waves, repeat and repeat. Each bears a message.Each has a meaning.

Your favorite web sites: 

Slate.com and ReligionDispatches.org

Your hero?: 

My wife. She's a social worker in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at a hospital in the town where we live. She confronts mortality and the limits of human emotion on a daily basis, and she remains a generous, loving, and hilarious person. She's strong in ways ordinary people are not, and in ways most of her friends never see. 

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn? 

I’ve managed to hold onto faith—despite my break with the evangelicals—because I still believe in a grand meaningfulness to human existence, that I am part of something larger than myself. Many people can find such a meaning without faith, without a conception of God, but I cannot. I have spent too much time puzzling out Christianity to suddenly jump to another faith, another system. And religion is a way of expressing what it means to be human. As I write late in the book, I like being part of the broad cloth of humanity. In that way, faith is, for me, like music and literature and art: an ongoing conversation about who we are, and why. The "why" is the ultimate spiritual question, and one I'll likely pursue for the rest of my days. 

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"

I love old, musty churches with worn-out wooden pews and stained-glass windows. And whenever I get in sight of the ocean, I feel my heart-rate slow a bit, a sense of serenity creep in. The ocean—as the title of my book suggests—is my doorway to the spiritual realm. 

Editor's Note: NPR's Book Review of David's book A Door in the Ocean

Chana Keefer, Interview #179

Name: Chana Keefer

Where you live:  Santa Clarita Valley, Southern California, USA

What you do as a vocation or avocation?
Along with my full-time job of wife and homeschooling mom of four, I am an author. My first novel, THE FALL (Rapha Chronicles #1) gives the story of the fall of Lucifer and creation through the eyes of an angel, Rapha, who was once best friends with Lucifer.

Your two favorite books:
The Bible is more than a book to me so I am excluding it from this short list.  Therefore, my two favorite books would be J .R R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (forgive me if that’s cheating) & Gene Stratton Porter’s “Girl of the Limberlost,” a beautiful tale of a young woman raised without love who finds meaning and the means to clothe and educate herself through the riches of the Limberlost swamp.  That novel is a naturalist's dream.

Your two favorite songs:
You’ll laugh.  I’ve told my family if ever I was in a coma, they should play Michael Jackson’s “Shake Your Body.”  If there was the slightest trace of life in me I’d have to move ☺.  Wow, it’s hard to limit this to just one more since music ministers so deeply to me in all my moods.  Okay, since you force me, I’ll choose Sting’s haunting tribute to his father, “Ghost Story.”  It contains some of the most gorgeous lyrics ever written.  “What is the force that binds the stars?  I wore this mask to hide my scars.  What is the power that pulls the tide?  Never could find a place to hide.  What moves the earth around the sun?  What could I do but run and run and run… afraid to love afraid to fail… a mast without a sail.”  (heavy sigh)

Why you are interested in spirituality?
There is a wonderful C.S. Lewis quote:  “You do not have a soul, you are a soul.  You have a body.” To ignore my spirituality would be to ignore what will last for eternity.  Besides, I have found my deepest meaning and fulfillment through the spiritual pursuit of prayer, communion with my Father God, and this gives direction and purpose to every other pursuit and relationship.

Your favorite quote:  
Hmmm.  I think I gave this answer above.

Your favorite web sites:
The Pioneer Woman, The World of Steve Quayle, Unleashed Beauty, One Roof Africa, 24/7 Prayer—in whatever order the current mood dictates.

Your hero?
Jesus, all the way.  Even though He is the Son of God, He took on the role of a servant and obeyed all the way to the cross.  Therefore He fulfilled God’s highest calling for His life and made a way for ALL to return to Father God.  My deepest desire is to fulfill God’s highest calling for my life and Jesus is the best example there is.  There are a couple normal human examples, though, who show that mere mortals can make a huge difference in eternity—Mother Teresa and Kemper Crabb (I am working on the biography of the latter—he worked alongside Mother T. and has built hundreds of churches and orphanages, even hospitals, in Africa and India.)

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn?  
I hope to learn that the spiritual really does trump the physical realm.  It’s easy enough to say I believe in God’s power and that I know Christ’s life, death and resurrection give me authority over darkness, but dang, the darkness can sure be overwhelming.  Please God, give me faith!

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
Anywhere there is heartfelt worship music and people singing praise is wonderful, but my favorite place to “be still and know He is God” is an old barn that was next to my parent’s property when I was growing up.  That barn became my quiet retreat and a sort of weather-beaten cathedral for me.  Even nowadays, just to close my eyes and see that quiet, dusty, bleached wood with the huge openings on the top level that framed views of the East and West horizons, ah! My heart slows, the daily grind fades away and I breathe in peace. 

Kaya Oakes, Interview #178

Name: Kaya Oakes

Where you live: Oakland, California

What you do as a vocation or avocation?
I’m a writer, and I am lucky enough to teach writing for a living. My most recent book, Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church, is a memoir about my life as a progressive, feminist Catholic, and the many, many other progressive Catholics I’ve been lucky to meet, read about, and learn from.

Your two favorite books:
Two? Yikes. I’m surrounded by books day and night, so it’s really hard to narrow down. Since this is a spiritual blog let’s do the Gospel of Luke and Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is.

Your two favorite songs: 
Two? Yikes again; not only am I married to a musician but I’m a musician too. Again, since we’re going spiritual, I vote for Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater, which I just heard for the first time (amazing; check out the Andreas Scholl version), and Leonard Cohen’s The Window, which quotes from the great work of Christian mysticism The Cloud of Unknowing.

Why you are interested in spirituality? 
Because I can’t help it. Like a lot of Gen X people I lived in denial of my interest in spirituality and religion for a long time; it was seen by my peers as unfashionable, regressive, and oftentimes straight up dumb. But maturity lead me to recognize the fact that I not only have a soul, I have a thirsty soul.

Your favorite quote:
Right now? “All things counter, original, spare, strange/ Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)/ With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers forth whose beauty is past change.” That’s the great Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Your favorite web sites: 
I’m a huge news junkie so I’m a New York Times addict in addition to reading lots of news feeds and keeping up with stuff via Twitter and Facebook. For Catholic news the National Catholic Reporter is my favorite. For spiritual sites, I’m a big fan of Killing the Buddha, Sacred Space, Occupy Catholics, and a couple of sites I recently discovered: Anarchist Reverend and The Jesuit Post.

Your hero?
A brown skinned feminist rabbi who practiced radical inclusion. You may have heard about him.

A spiritual lesson you hope to learn? How to keep my mouth shut!

A place in the world where you feel spiritually "connected?"
The women’s homeless shelter where I volunteer; the living rooms of the women in my contemplation group; my sofa; Lake Merritt in Oakland; the beaches in Gualala and Point Reyes, California; and in the Basilica of Saint Francis, in Assisi, Italy.