Ocean State Libraries

The author relates her decision to leave her convent after failing to find religious fulfillment, her struggles with depression and epilepsy, her realization of her calling, and her career working with sacred texts.

Traces the author's spiritual journey in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, which led him to Quaker meetings, Catholic masses, and sessions with an astrologer in search of connection to the world.

"Join former NBC newsman and Meet the Press moderator David Gregory as he probes various religious traditions to better understand his own faith and answer life's most important questions: who do we want to be and what do we believe? While David was covering the White House, he had the unusual experience of being asked by President George W. Bush "How's your faith?" David's answer was just emerging. Raised by a Catholic mother and a Jewish dad, he...

"Sue Monk was a 'conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother' with a thriving career as a Christian writer until she began to question her role as a woman in her culture, her family, and her church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore to monastery retreats and rituals in the caves of Crete, Kidd takes readers through the fear, anger, healing, and transformation of her awakening. Retaining a meaningful...

"Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey begun in Leaving Church of finding out what the world looks like after taking off her clergy collar. While teaching the world's religions to undergraduates in rural Georgia, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students' eyes as she sets off with them on field...

"Sarah Sentilles relationship with God was not a casual one. When it began to unravel she was in the ordination process to become an Episcopal priest. She was a youth minister at a church in a suburb of Boston and a doctoral student in theology at Harvard. You might say they were engaged and that the wedding was all planned- the church reserved, the menu chosen, the flowers arranged. Calling it off would be more than a little awkward. But in fact,...

In the United States, we often assume religious and spiritual identity are pure, static, and singular. But some people regularly cross religious boundaries. These "spiritually fluid" people celebrate complex religious bonds, and in the process they blur social categories, evoke prejudice, and complicate religious communities. Their presence sparks questions: How and why do people become spiritually fluid? Are they just confused or unable to commit?...