Meditation & Eclectic Spirituality, Volume 7

I wrote Sunburned: A Blog Series About Spirituality while doing research for War & Grace, the final installment in my epic fantasy trilogy Daughter of Light. Neither the book nor the series is about meditation, they are about consciousness ... and I suppose, a spirituality/worldview beyond the commonly accepted religions that claim our present world ... ummm ... attention and devotions. But ... so ... anyway, meditation IS a great way of experiencing, exploring, and evolving your own personal consciousness ... thus, I've been posting links to articles about meditation (and spirituality) from around the web every Friday.

Enjoy!

What Can & Can't Be Taught: I totally agree: Meditation is deeply personal.

Neurobiological changes explain how mindfulness meditation improves health: Yet another study proves meditation actually ch-ch-changes your brain.

Mrs. Madhavi and the art of Meditation: If Mrs. Madhavi had been my geometry teacher, she would probably have been my favorite, too.

Calming the teenage mind in the classroom: Meditation is a life skill. Haven't we all, a decade or so out of school, moaned and groaned about how so many of the really important things just weren't taught in school? Teaching meditation to teenagers is great because it gives them a free, easily accessible approach to increasing their quality of life. Plus, most, all? religions have contemplative practices ... so ... why not?

Prison Yoga: Is Meditation the Cure for Recidivism: "Apparently there is a high demand for a higher consciousness. There is a one-year wait list for yoga classes at San Quentin, one of the largest prisons in the nation."

The Top 10 Cities for Meditation in The U.S.: Yes, I really have lived in two of them: Austin, TX & San Diego, CA. Yes, I began meditating when I lived in Austin ... all those years ago ... Coincidence?

mindfulness, meditation, yoga and the united states constitution: Just in case you were wondering ...

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether moments of silence are constitutional, although they did strike down an Alabama law that required a mandatory moment of silence for meditation or voluntary prayer. After looking at the law's legistaltive history, and how it was implemented, the court decided that the Alabama statute didn't have a secular purpose.

Many States have enacted moment of silence laws, and some of them make moments of silence mandatory. Lower courts have held that neutrally crafted moments of silence statutes are constitutional and a number of constitiuonal scholars believe that the Supreme Court will agree.

Okey, dokey.

If you'd like to submit a link for a Friday post, please email me at Heidi _ g @ comcast . net, thanks!

The Bursting Sexuality of Teenage Girls

Religion plays a large part in the The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen. The book opens on the last day of school, the end of Mercy’s junior year in high school. A star basketball player, she’s recovering from her team’s loss of a state championship and her loss of the collegiate scholarships that victory would have secured for her.

On the verge of womanhood, Mercy is dominated by her pious grandmother. However, the core of Mercy’s identity is shaped by the absence of her mother. As the story progresses, Mercy’s Charmaine-shaped hole undermines the framework of her accomplishments, much-like a sinkhole might collapse the stilts of a house built to withstand future floods.

The novel is set in the small town of Port Sabine, TX, Janis Joplin’s birthplace. It’s a great choice for a story about the physical, psychological, and spiritual constraints of a city with little more than a Sonic to showcase the bursting sexuality of its teenage girls.

A dead baby discovered in a dumpster early on galvanizes accusations, shame, suspicion and political ambition.

The lens is a sharp one. Sex is forbidden, a young woman’s body to be saved for the marriage bed, sealed with vows of chastity made at purity balls. There’s no middle ground, no room for reality or humanity to seep in. The whole story drives home the difficulty of those years when hormones rule flesh awakening to desire; and hearts yearn for love beyond the confines of the parental home. Tricky ones, those years. The space between what actually happens and "what is purported as ideal” creates a gulf so wide nothing constructed by human hands could bridge it.

Mercy’s slide into the uncharted abyss every teenage girl must navigate is harrowing, moving, touching, and penetrating, as her grandmother’s spiritual knife becomes ruthless and attempts to sever all that is life-giving at the roots.