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How do we keep our hearts open when the world is breaking? Few saints wrestled with that question more deeply than Edith Stein.

I had a powerful experience while sitting on the wooden floor of my apartment on a Saturday morning, scribbling away in my prayer journal. As the pages curled with ink under my hand, I had a sudden realization.

While on a scientific expedition through the steppes of China, Teilhard de Chardin found himself without bread and wine to celebrate the Eucharist. So he used the elements God had given him: the earth itself became his altar; the earth’s land, labor, loss, and longings, his bread and wine. Read the full text of Teilhard's Mass on the World.

I remember the first time I set foot in Muir Woods, a stunning 500-acre natural reserve just north of San Francisco. Soft earth cushioned my steps, and enormous old-growth coast redwoods towered over my head, most of them at least 500 years old. It was impossible to crane my head far back enough to see their highest branches. There is a kind of sacred hush that overcomes you in a place like that. It was that sacred hush to which naturalist and conservationist John Muir dedi

What if tenderness is the most radical act we have left?

Carl Jung was a depth psychologist, yes. But he was also a mystic—one who believed that the psyche was not merely a structure to analyze, but a living reality filled with meaning.

The new American pope chose the name Leo XIV—declaring a continuation of Pope Leo XIII's legacy in Rerum Novarum | To choose the name Leo is to take a stand. Leo XIII was the first pope to really engage with modernity—and the first to lay the foundation for the Church’s social teaching that stands as a bulwark against injustice everywhere. 

How Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan taught the West about Divine Harmony.

Feeling everything deeply can feel like a burden—but Rainer Maria Rilke saw it as a gift. Here are 4 ways he embraced his sensitivity.

5 Lessons in Resistance from Mother Maria Skobtsova. There once was a nun who refused to be tamed.   She was a twice-divorced, twice...

Shunryu Suzuki’s Grounded, Practical Advice for Engaging with Suffering—Without Losing Yourself in It. If you’ve been paying attention to...

How do we find hope when facing suffering and injustice? Here are 4 ways Howard Thurman offers.

Caryll Houselander was a colorful, chain-smoking therapist who didn't fit in anywhere. Except for one place—right at the heart of divine Lov

I made it to the desert -- and I was shocked. I can’t believe I made it to New Mexico. After spending the majority of the last two years...

How I first met the Hindu Christ (and why we need this Benedictine monk to make the introduction)

How Henri Nouwen's Inner Voice of Love rescued me after I left the convent. As I reeled in my illness, Nouwen invited me to tenderness.

Imagine, if you will, two icons of peace perched on the precipice of change. One, a Buddhist monk in saffron robes, the other a Baptist...

When crisis strips away our normal roles - job, parent, spouse - what is left?

“Baloney!” were the first words Thomas Merton heard her say. The year was 1941 and Merton was teaching at St. Bonaventure University. The...

Julian of Norwich is becoming a wildly popular mystic. Yet she lived as a recluse in a forgotten corner of England in the 14th century....