ABSTRACT Many individuals are now reflecting on spirituality and religiosity being essential parts of their life that helped them cope and overcome the fears associated with COVID-19 during the quarantine period. Although medical interventions remained vital in managing the COVID-19 outbreak, little attention was given to the contributions of spirituality as a personal coping mechanism in South Asian culture. Through a qualitative descriptive exploratory approach, we explored the roles which spirituality and faith played in lives of COVID-19 patients and their families during the quarantine period in Karachi, Pakistan. Twenty-two dyads of COVID-19 patients and their family members were purposively selected and interviewed via telephone or Zoom. Quarantine was a reflective opportunity to focus on one’s inner-self and make spiritual connection or re-connection with God. Participants felt the pandemic reminded them that humanity must come closer, act as one household, and extend help to each other. However, there were conflicting views regarding the impacts of spirituality and religiosity during the restrictions and quarantine period.

ABSTRACT This article is based on the keynote lecture which the author gave at the Seventh International Biennial Conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS) at the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford, Ireland, on 16 May 2023. The conference title was Spirituality, Critical Reflection and Professional Practice in an Uncertain World. The article addresses the question of what it means to ‘do’ reflective practice, and what makes reflective practice ‘critical’. It then explores different ways of knowing, drawing on John Heron’s (1996) ‘pyramid of fourfold knowing’, and points to a possible relationship between these ways of knowing, spirituality and professional practice. The article concludes with some thoughts on the transformative potential of understanding spirituality in the context of both reflective and professional practice, and how this relates to the concept of authenticity.

ABSTRACT Religious decline is an oft-repeated fact proposed by secularization-based studies. It stems from the preconceived notion that religion and secular are against each other. A major problem with this binary is that secular is considered to be devoid of any religiosity. This paper highlights the opposite avenue of research trodden by a few scholars who have disregarded the said binary and navigated the religiosity of secular to which far too little attention has been paid. Particularly, this article focuses on the religiosity of self-help which is mostly considered as a secular movement. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there is only one study which has empirically examined this topic while it occupies a special place in our understanding of religion. The space in this paper does not allow for a full discussion of the issue. Therefore, it generally highlights the new path to understanding religion and potential points of departure for exploring self-help’s religiosity. Finally, the paper briefly discuses why this topic deserves serious attention.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ways in which artistic creation and spiritual search interrelate in the life and work of seven Colombian artists who took part at the Laboratory of Art and Spirituality in Bogotá (2022–2023). Based on a hermeneutic analysis of different narrative and reflexive materials produced by the artists during a ten-month period of spiritual and artistic exploration, the first part delineates the artists’ understanding and practice of spirituality in a plural world. The Discussion section investigates the connections between their artistic and spiritual practices, emphasizing their understanding of art as a vehicle for accessing and communicating spiritual insights. Thus, this work aims at contributing both to the study of the shapes spirituality takes today and to the investigation of their relationship to the arts.

ABSTRACT This study aims to explore the ideas related to Islamic spiritual ecology in Indonesia as offered by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), with a focus on three progressive intellectual subjects from NU: Roy Murtadho, Muhammad Al-Fayyadl, and Muhammad Jadul Maula. The study uses Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse and power and the genealogy method to examine historical statements by the three subjects and to reveal what is both said and unsaid. The research question driving the study is how these intellectuals offer Islamic spiritualism as an alternative basis in responding to contemporary ecological issues. The research findings indicate that: (1) Murtadho contends that economic liberalization enables exploitative practices of natural resources by extractive industries and ruling elites, contributing significantly to contemporary socio-ecological issues; (2) Al-Fayyadl’s concept of Cosmic Islam emphasizes the importance of religiosity and Islam in maintaining the order of the cosmos; (3) Maula mentions that the idea of caring for nature and mitigating ecological disasters has actually become a part of the spiritual practice of religious communities in Indonesia. Overall, the study reveals the potential for Islamic spiritualism to offer unique perspectives on ecological issues in Indonesia.

ABSTRACT This paper takes education to be concerned with human flourishing, and education that is distinct from instrumental training and which attends to the spirit of students. Such education is holistic and integral and develops the capacity for sustained attention and concentration. Marketization does not, and its impact on education has been long decried. The use of technology in education has always been met with ambivalence. What comprises technology is not obvious, and aspects of it, especially developments in media, undermine sustained attention and concentration. Both marketizing and technologizing an impact on spirituality in education but how they do so in concert with one another and under the aegis of corporations warrants particular scrutiny, which to date has been insufficient, for their combined impact is greater than the sum of the parts. In this paper, markets are distinguished from marketization, and religion from spirituality and mindfulness from what has been labelled McMindfulness and positive psychology. The latter are critiqued for how they have been co-opted by marketization, technology and corporate interests. The conclusion of the paper is that the contemporary pain of educators and students and dysfunctional institutions arises from the loss of spirituality and purpose and that reversing this is essential for humanity’s well-being.

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to illustrate through an empirical case how art in a secular age can function as a spiritual-but-non-religious (SBNR) environment for both artists and art followers. It examines contemporary performance artist Marina Abramović as an example of a post-modern spiritual figure, rooted in the artworld. Her relevance for a secular age is as a contemporary artist who has developed her own brand of art-based spirituality with no theological nor religious content whatsoever. Although nonreligious, she does not conform to a materialistic worldview. She holds many so-called ‘New Age’ beliefs which place her among the growing SBNR demographic. She has developed her own ‘spiritual’ method to teach people beyond the ‘elitist’ artworld, and has created the immaterial Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) to carry on her legacy. Arguably, therefore, she has effectively transformed herself into a ‘spiritual’ teacher. Drawing on Denita Benyshek’s construct of artist-shaman, scientific explanations about the relieving of pain, and Victor Turner’s concept of spontaneous communitas, the article concludes that Abramović is a nonreligious spiritual charismatic figure who is generating countercultural communitas through her performances, her institute and her teachings, providing an empirical demonstration that art can indeed function as a spiritual but not religious context.