Spiritual Dialogue Research Articles

Social Media and the Spiritual Journey: The Place of Digital Technology in Enriching the Experience

This qualitative study explores the utilization of social media among Pakistani pilgrims during spiritual journeys and investigates its impact on their pilgrimage experiences. Thirty Pakistani pilgrims who had embarked on spiritual journeys to various religious sites were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the interview transcripts, revealing five main stages of social media usage: pre-trip preparation, real-time updates and guidance, community building and support, sharing experiences and insights, and post-trip reflection and engagement. At each stage, social media played diverse roles, including providing information and support, fostering connections with fellow pilgrims, sharing personal experiences, and facilitating spiritual dialogue. This explorative study underscores the significance of social media in enhancing the pilgrimage experience for Pakistani pilgrims, serving as a valuable tool for information dissemination, community building, spiritual support, and personal reflection throughout the pilgrimage journey. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how social media shapes pilgrims’ experiences and fosters their spiritual growth, emphasizing the need for further research to explore the nuanced dynamics of social media usage in the context of pilgrimage. Overall, this study sheds light on the unique role of social media in the spiritual journeys of Pakistani pilgrims and highlights its implications for pilgrimage practices and the broader discourse on religious tourism.

To Whom Is the Institutional Chaplain Beholden? Reconciling the Christian Chaplain’s Tension of Identity With a Theology of Calling

Abstract Professional chaplains have the unique opportunity to provide spiritual care within institutional settings where other types of pastoral care may not exist. Serving within these institutions presents special challenges, including tension between multiple identities and responsibilities. This tension can create conflict within the Christian chaplain, and confusion as to whom they are ultimately beholden. The first section of the article discusses what I see as the five identity-related tensions a professional chaplain may experience serving in an institution. The second section of the article outlines a Christian theology of calling built on the framework of Covenant Theology and God’s reconciling work of grace. This theology of calling orients the professional identity of the Christian chaplains, rooting them in a clear sense of their responsibilities within their institutional setting. Christian chaplains are beholden first to God and to the calling God places on their life. Proper orientation to that calling equips chaplains to reconcile any cognitive dissonance caused by identity-related tensions, thus opening up a richer spiritual dialogue with God as they live out their kingdom-advancing mission.

Mystic on a Tilting Stage: Julian of Norwich’s Performance of English Visionary Devotion

Julian of Norwich’s performance within her longer Revelations of Divine Love involves layers of authorizing and devotional steps that frame it as a gift for her community. She presents herself not as an author, but as a revelator, in step with John’s acts of unveiling his visions and dialogue with the divine in the Biblical Revelations. Examining Julian’s act of presenting her visions in writing demonstrates how her daring yet insistently orthodox visions handle issues of spiritual authority and individual faith made urgent by the rise of Lollardy. My work with Julian’s Revelations is the foundation for a wider argument about the interchange between vernacular mysticism and public devotion through their use of affective piety and the performance of spiritual dialogue. In this article, I examine Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Divine Love to determine how it works as contemplative drama. I also look at The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ and The Cloud of Unknowing to set up Julian’s performance of contemplative devotion and the potential pitfalls of a pious English readership. Julian’s revelations demonstrate where interior contemplation is transformed into collective acts of devotion.

Mendelssohn and the Protestant Pedants: The Skeptical Rabbis, the Principle of Noncontradiction, and Judaism’s Spiritual Dialogue

AbstractThis study explores the extent to which Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem engages with Protestant sources in its portrayal of rabbinic tradition, which will allow further light to be shed on the pivotal role of rabbinic Judaism and its representations within the emotionally charged polemics surrounding Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century Prussia. This examination demonstrates that Mendelssohn’s idealized perception of rabbinic thought is deeply embedded in anti-rabbinic Protestant works, whose framework aids him in shaping his own unique outlook. By analyzing Mendelssohn’s deployment of the notion of contradiction, this article shows how his argumentative strategies in Jerusalem efficaciously counter well-known Protestant patterns of critique against rabbinic Judaism. By focusing on his idiosyncratic quotations and insinuations, it recovers the Christian works that he draws on and appropriates for his apologetic objectives and establishes that he uses Johann A. Eisenmenger for his depiction of the nature of rabbinic discursive practices while speaking out against “many a pedant” for their assertion that the rabbis disregarded the principle of noncontradiction. This article argues that Mendelssohn is alluding to eighteenth-century Protestant theologians who unreservedly follow Eisenmenger’s anti-rabbinic perspective and elaborates on how Mendelssohn entirely reframes this view as a conceptual strength of Judaism’s dialogical essence, thus rendering it compatible with the Enlightenment-based Weltanschauung.

The Semangat and the Mantra in Java, Indonesia

The Javanese mantra is a communicative act, and a spiritual dialogue. During the mantra ritual, the shaman Orang Pinter and supplicant receiving the intervention select become equal agents, as they intervene for change in the cultural and spiritual disposition of the supplicant. But in this paper. The presentation discusses ethnographic work over 10 years during which over 1500 mantras were documented throughout central to east Java, Indonesia, To effect the documentation process, I engaged with a range of communities and individuals throughout Java, that is, Yogyakarta, Solo, Surabaya, Alas Purwo, Salatiga, Bali, and other localities, Spiritual interventions were witnessed, and we suggest religious affiliation tells only part of the story. Drawing on frameworks of symbolic interactionism, and phenomenological nominalism, the synopsis discusses how a poetic discourse analysis of mantras can describe a system employed by these shamans and the supplicants to discursively facilitate the spiritual process, by altering the dissociative state of the supplicant. The talk concludes by presenting a model for the mantra in Java, and possibly in other global regions. Within this model, several overlapping processes mediate the drawing on cultural symbolisms, and overlap in strategic designs, to to effect change in the supplicant. The paper draws on work by Rebecca Seligman, who has conducted similar ethnographic and theoretical work in the South American context.

Prospects of ecumenical dialogue in the early works of the Holy Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović

Both in social and theological spheres we can see a tendency to the strict definition of the relation of the Bishop Nikolaj Velimirivić to ecumenical dialogue, which in itself is a kind of simplification. In this article an attempt is made to overcome this simplification and to highlight the main features of his theological position vis-à-vis the ecumenical movement and the creation of the frames for ecumenical dialogue. With time the Holy Bishop will change his initial views on the ecumenical movement, but they are certainly important for understanding the historical and theological context of the development of the ecumenical dialogue in the beginning of the 20th century. The main aim of the writing of this article is the underlining and highlighting the very meaning of ecumenism, which for Bishop Nikolaj was not a unity on purely utilitarian and political basis, but a certain type of the panhumanist universalism, which carries within itself the potential ideals of the allhuman equality and spiritual brotherhood. Therefore we do not consider the before mentioned type of the institutialized ecumenical movement, which relativizes the Church, its dogmas, canonical structure and liturgical tradition and placing it on the same level with all other Christian denominations, who take part in the before mentioned movement, but we speak about the spiritual dialogue of the brothers in Spirit, notwithstanding to what confessions they belong to.

ETHICAL COMPETENCE - A BASIC COMPONENT OF TEACHER PROFESSIONALISM

The article considers ethical competence as a basic component of the teacher's professionalism. The process of forming ethical competence should be systematic and requires the application of a holistic mechanism of professional development of the student's personality during training. The teacher's abilities regarding ethical competence, as well as its components, are highlighted.
 A necessary condition for the formation of students' ethical competence is the use of the latest pedagogical technologies and teaching methods in addition to traditional ones. The process of forming a teacher's ethical competence is complex, dynamic, multifaceted and multifactorial. The substantive basis of ethical competence is pedagogical ethics. Pedagogical ethics studies the features, content, principles and functions of pedagogical morality, the nature of the teacher's activity and his moral relationships in the pedagogical environment, develops the basics of pedagogical etiquette, which is a set of rules for teacher communication and behavior. Ethics is not reduced to a certain system of sanctions in pedagogical activity, because its task is to explain the social and psychological expediency of observing certain professional norms and rules. It is ethics, from the standpoint of a holistic approach to the individual, that insists on considering the education and upbringing of the individual as its spiritual saturation, which unfolds in spiritual dialogue, communication between equal subjects. The vocation of a teacher is not only the transfer of knowledge, abilities and skills, but also the comprehensive development of the student's abilities and capabilities, the upbringing of a decent, responsible, conscious citizen of the country. The professional activity of a teacher is based on the supremacy of universal human values, norms and principles of morality. When performing it, the teacher acts as the bearer of responsibilities in relation to: the student, the student's parents, the professional pedagogical community as a whole and individual teachers, himself, society.

Review: Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi Orders, and Authority in a Time of Transition, edited by Elliott Bazzano and Marcia Hermansen

Review: <i>Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi Orders, and Authority in a Time of Transition</i>, edited by Elliott Bazzano and Marcia Hermansen

Analysis of Barnes in The Sun Also Rises with the Survival Wisdom of Zhuangzi

Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” is one of Hemingway’s most famous works. The descriptions of a group of young men and women who live in self-exile in Paris after world war I reflect Hemingway’s heroic life style of “grace under pressure”, and it also shows that Hemingway’s tough men often have a powerful inner world. If we analyze Hemingway’s work, The Sun Also Rises, with the survival wisdom of Zhuangzi by making the Chinese literature as the measurement of English literature, we will find that this is a spiritual dialogue between ancient times in China and modern times in the USA.

The Iconography in the Context of the Spiritual and Aesthetic Dialogue between Russia and the West

The Iconography in the Context of the Spiritual and Aesthetic Dialogue between Russia and the West

«Восстановление родства»: роман «Подросток» как пролог к диалогу Н.Ф. Федорова и Ф.М. Достоевского

The article is an attempt to read the novel The Adolescent in the light of the spiritual and creative dialogue between the philosopher of the common task Nikolay Fedorov and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Although The Adolescent was written and published three years before Fedorov’s student N. Peterson presented his teacher’s ideas to the writer in the article “What should a people’s school be?”, the novel can be considered as a prologue to the topic that eventually became the subject of Fedorov’s main work The question of brotherhood or kinship, about the causes of the non-fraternal, unrelated, i.e. non-peaceful, state of the world, and about the means to restore kinship. The plot of the novel is interpreted in the article through the prism of Fedorov’s themes of non-kinship and the restoration of universal kinship, the idea of returning the hearts of sons to their fathers and the fathers’ ones to their children. It is shown how the theme of “family as the practical beginning of love” is expressed in the novel.

Gods in the Garden: Visions of the Pagan Other in the Rome of Julius ii

This essay 1 explores the reception of Pope Julius ii’s statuary deities in his Cortile del Belvedere through the poetic works of two humanists, papal courtier Evangelista Maddaleni de’ Capodiferro and Savonarolan philosopher Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola. The construction of the Cortile animated a lively querelle on the state and mission of the Catholic Church, as it allowed the pagan idols of antiquity to re-enter the holy grounds of the Vatican. Through the analysis of two divergent poetic receptions of the Belvedere gods, this article will explore the Cortile del Belvedere and Julius ii’s Rome, as a space of spiritual dialogue and religious hybridism.

The Spiritual Approach to Systemic Family Therapies

The concept of spirituality has started being included in therapy settings due to the new paradigms showing developments in the world of psychology in the late 20th century and in the 21st century. When examining the literature, many articles and books are seen to have been published related to the topic, and most of the studies have been carried out abroad. These performed studies have contributed new concepts and information to the literature by revealing how the concept of spirituality can be integrated with family therapies. This study has been prepared for the purposes of drawing the attention of researchers who conduct studies in Turkey based on systemic family therapy and of specialists who plan therapy sessions based the relevant theory to the topic and to provide the literature with a topic that finds no examples in the literature of Turkey. How the concept of spirituality can be used in harmony with the systemic family therapy approach and what the techniques of the spirituality-based systemic family therapy are have been prepared by being based on the many studies that have been published abroad. Before beginning the study, theoretical information and basic concepts primarily about systemic family therapies are provided, and then it moves on to spirituality-oriented systemic family therapy by briefly mentioning the concept of spirituality. How the concept of spirituality can be applied to systemic family therapy and the points and ethical situations to which counselors need to pay attention are also mentioned. Lastly, sample cases are shared by providing information about the techniques of using religious stories and spiritual dialogue, these techniques being used in spirituality-oriented systemic family therapies.

The Right Channelling of Desire

The Right Channelling of Desire Michael Barnes (bio) Like many theologians involved in interreligious dialogue, I have often found my faith challenged and deepened by engagement with a conceptual world that is ‘other’ yet also uncovers swathes of human existence, which are strangely familiar.1 To that extent, this article fits the mould of Comparative Theology with its focus on learning that leads from an appreciation of another tradition to a deeper understanding of one’s own. In this article, however, I will be less concerned with comparing the wisdom embedded in texts than in reflecting on the forms of spirituality and religious practice that underpin the systematic articulation of faith. Here my theme is desire—or, to be more precise, the purposive act of desiring. The specific context is the intellectual and spiritual dialogue with Buddhism that continues to sustain my intellectual and spiritual life. Despite their being very different in terms of theological vision and philosophical coherence, both Buddhism and Christianity—and other religions in analogous ways—seek to construct a holistic pattern of living which, at least in principle, aims to give a comprehensive account of the way things are. That in itself may be uncontroversial but it raises tricky questions about the continuity (or otherwise) between undiscerned human impulses and emotions, on the one hand, and more noble ideals of virtuous living, on the other. My initial claim is that desire is given a sense of authenticity and coherence by the manner in which it is shaped by a whole variety of religious disciplines, from ritual performance to social relations. That is not to underestimate the role philosophy plays in clarifying the language used to describe the experience of desire but to foreground the experience itself, an experience with a broad semantic range, from a sense of being drawn by incompletion and lack to a more diffuse confrontation with loss, failure and the tragic dimension of all human living. Whether spelled out in terms of appetites and cravings or an intellectualist drive for understanding and control, desire is more like a mysterious energy than a clearly articulated list of needs and wants. In theory, the comprehensive account is precisely that, promising a satisfactory resolution of the ethical questions and dilemmas of ‘ordinary living’ within a vision of the ultimate truth and value identified as Holy Mystery, however that is spelt out in philosophical or theological terms. In practice, of course, nothing is ever so [End Page 58] straightforward. The problem with comprehensive accounts is that they can become too all-encompassing, giving rise not to hope in an open-ended telos of existence but to an expectation that all forms of human desire can be fulfilled, whether in everyday experience or as reframed within an eschatological perspective. The risk involved in touching into Holy Mystery is something Christian mystics know well—perhaps most especially the first, Paul the Apostle. At the end of his life, held in prison and separated from his friends, he still manages to write with extraordinary joy and inner peace. ‘Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil 3.13–14; New Oxford Annotated Bible; RSV) The image of the spiritual life as a race, with the athlete striving for the finishing line, has about it a moving ambivalence. At the point when he is most constrained and unable to move, Paul is most free. He has to be still; he has no choice. But the ‘straining forward’ to the Holy Mystery he finds ‘in Christ Jesus’ has never been more intense. We will return briefly to Paul at the end of this article when his yearning to be with Christ, and his grief over the loss of his first community of faith finds an unexpected even ecstatic resolution. But first, let us turn to the experience of a very different tradition. ASCETICAL AND CONTEMPLATIVE Elsewhere I have used the phrase ‘channelling of desire’ to describe the process of spirituality, what following Raimon Panikkar, I understand as a cross-cultural religious ‘attitude’ towards whatever one takes to have transcendent...

Islām and Religious Plurality in South-East Asia. The Case of Muslim and Christian Dialogue in the Philippines

Following the historical accounts of Mindanao armed conflict and peace process in the Philippines, the author focuses on the reasons that brought about the difficult proceeding of Muslim and Christian relations towards a sustainable peace, which may respect, as much as possible, all the needs of both Muslim and Christian communities. The author considers the real cultural contest of the Philippines, which is made by three Peoples: Lumads, Muslims and Christians, and not only by two Peoples: Muslims and Christians. According to him, any peace process must focus on the complete anthropological and cultural context of the Country. A sustainable peace may be reached only through a harmonious approach, which interrelate whether political, social, as well as religious aspects, looking at the dignity of the human being. All these aspects are so fundamental, that cannot be forgotten in any educational program whether academic and political. Along this way, the author proposes and describes a possible model, which is focusing on Interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Lumads, Muslims and Christians, belonging to the Silsilah Dialogue Movement, located in Zamboanga City, (Mindanao Island). The author concludes his article underlining the discovery of a spiritual journey, which is the result of the personal spiritual dialogue as the pro-active attitude towards the acknowledgment of the truth about God, the self as well as the common good for all. Along this way, our own cultural and religious identity cannot be menaced by the diversity of different cultural and religious identities, since the pro-active attitude is able to prevent internal personal conflicts as well as the conflicts that different human groups may express within society. The religious experience of God is not a mere attribute beside our lives; it is the fundamental pillar on which to build reciprocal peace relations for the common good of all.

O curso eco design em sustentabilidade – Programa Gaia Education: análise sob a perspectiva do paradigma ecológico e da espiritualidade

Compreender a atual crise global pelo panorama ambiental requer reconhecimento, disposição e vontade para pensar e criar possibilidades de uma ação justa e em concordância com o paradigma ecológico, em prol da mudança desta realidade. Dentre várias ações em andamento a educação para a sustentabilidade acena com perspectivas reais e concretas. Esta pesquisa se insere no âmbito da investigação desta educação, e teve como objetivo identificar a espiritualidade e qual sua tipologia através da analise sob a perspectiva do paradigma ecológico e da espiritualidade, no curso Eco design em sustentabilidade do Programa Gaia Education realizado na Ecovila Terra Una/MG. O programa foi criado em 2005 pela Rede de Educadores Globais de Ecovilas para uma Terra Sustentável, passando a ser considerado complemento padrão pela ONU para a Década de Educação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável 2005\2014. Baseado na Pedagogia de Aprendizagem Vivencial, o Programa Gaia Education tem a finalidade de fornecer instrumentos\técnicas que possibilitem aos seus alunos aprender diferentes práticas sustentáveis, baseadas nas experiências comunitárias e nas relações que elas estabelecem com o ambiente, sendo rural ou urbano. A metodologia adotada consistiu na pesquisa bibliográfica de fontes primarias e secundárias dos materiais do curso e de obras de referencia na área da sustentabilidade e espiritualidade, no âmbito das Ciências da religião, da teologia, da educação, das ciências ambientais e sociais. Realizou-se a análise sistemática e hermenêutica dos discursos. Ao final da pesquisa, constatou-se a identificação da espiritualidade presente no curso, assim como outras perspectivas de praticas espirituais e de dialogo como referência para o desenvolvimento da educação para a sustentabilidade de forma integral. Palavras chave: Ecologia. Paradigma ecológico. Educação. Sustentabilidade. Espiritualidade. Gaia Education. Ciências da Religião.

The Moral Dimensions of Sufism and the Iberian Mystical Canon

This study explores the shared spaces and common ground between the moral theosophies of Sufism and Christian mysticism in Spain. This article focuses on how Sufis, Carmelites and other mystical authors expressed spiritual concepts, establishing networks of mutual influence. Medieval and Golden Age mystics of Islam and Christianity shared a cultural canon based on universal moral principles. Both their learned and popular traditions used recurrent spiritual symbols, often expressing similar ethical coordinates. Spiritual dialogue went beyond the chronological and geographical frameworks shared by Christianity and Islam in the Iberian Peninsula: this article considers a selection of texts that contain expansive moral codes. Mystical expressions of Islam and Christianity in Spain are viewed as an ethical, cultural and anthropological continuum.

‘The constant hum of the engine…’: A story about extraordinary interdisciplinary dialogues in spirituality and wellbeing

Spirituality is problematic, contested and controversial, yet popular. Across health and social care services practitioners are now being encouraged to pay more attention to the diversity of spiritual beliefs and practices which patients and service users may bring with them to consultations. However, it remains a problematic concept due to its subjective, and occasionally contentious, nature. If spirituality is to serve as a useful construct, then, the challenge for us all is to become a little more comfortable with some of its more uncomfortable dimensions; to develop an openness to pushing its boundaries, exploring its potential and recognising its rightful place in our modern disenchanted and secular age. I use this paper to explore reflections on how and where we may encounter the spiritual in unexpected ways, as I believe that only by being open to these challenges, can we begin to understand the full diversity of ways in which spirituality might play a role in therapeutic encounters and more broadly in supporting wellbeing. In doing so, I hope to stimulate critical but creative engagement with a varied spiritual dialogue, encouraging practitioners to put the spirit –and their spirit– right back at its heart. This a research-based paper incorporating original data alongside personal reflections on the experience of researching in this field. The paper has been developed from my keynote address at the 4th Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference in London in 2017.

The Tears of Rachel: Lament and Affective Improvisation in Mary Carey's Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Poems

The Tears of Rachel: Lament and Affective Improvisation in Mary Carey's Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Poems

Theology and interreligious dialogue: from controversy to cooperation

The article considers the original classification of four types of interreligious dialogue as follows: 1. Intention (the motivation to come into contact with a representative of another religion); 2. Goal (tasks and goals pursued by the participants in the dialogue); 3. Principles (the starting points, which determine the interaction); 4. Form (participants in the dialogue, meeting form). Among the most important criterion is intention, which identifies the types of polemical, peacemaking, cognitive and partnership dialogue. These types of dialogue are aligned respectively around the following questions: Who is right?, How can we live together peacefully?, Who are you? and What can we do to improve the world?. The place of theology in each type of interreligious dialogue is examined. In the context of religious pluralism, the spread of new religious movements, as well as a tendency towards convergence of religions, theology has not lost its importance as a tool to protect one’s faith and provided a reasoned justification of its benefits. In the framework of cognitive dialogue, the significance of theology is analyzed in such areas as theology of religions, the formation of attitudes towards followers of other religions, comparative theology, and spiritual dialogue. One of the main strategies for peacemaking dialogue is to identify the similarities of religious worldviews in dogma and ethics.Three areas of cooperation of religions in partnership dialogue are distinguished: “individual,” “society,” and “environment.” The role of theology is to identify possible paths and comprehend the conceptual grounds for interreligious cooperation. The author comes to the conclusion that the place of theology in the field of interreligious relations is wide and diverse. Consideration of this complex problem requires specification, that is clarification of the role of theology in various types of interreligious dialogue — polemical, peacemaking, cognitive and partnership, as well as their subspecies.