My daughter, thirty something, recently got married. Beautiful ceremony.  Almost two hundred guests on our back yard.  Luckily, we actually like the husband.

My friend David has a thirty something daughter too.  She and her beau have been together for about as long as my own daughter has, and they are in a committed relationship.  But they have decided not to get married.  No ceremony.  No guests.  Not even a ceremony at the town office with some unnamed justice of the peace.  A throwback to the sixties, it's something about the institution.

David has a lot in common with the young man.  Really enjoys him.  Yet, David said recently, in their not marrying, something has been lost.  But what?

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I invite you to ponder three facets of the Call to Global Spiritual Citizenship. I ask you, the individual spiritual seeker/leader, to question your personal response to some of my questions. And I pray that you will believe that the reflective energy that you spend in this process will be a contributing energy in re-creating a spirit of love and peace on earth, among all.

"All beings are endowed with the infinite energy that is the source of life itself, and which we call by different names, both religious and secular."

By what name have you called this source when you were a child, in midlife and most recently? Have your personal experiences funded these changing names? Or have your personal experiences contributed to a consistency in your naming?    Read More.

Sister Georgene Wilson, OSF, D.Min.

Pundits keep saying that the big questions before the American public are about the size and role of government: How much is too much? What should it get involved in and what should it stay out of? This strikes me as exactly the kind of debate that global spiritual citizenship calls upon us to transcend.

I have written about the necessity and difficulty of Change in all of my books and also in my Jan, 2009 blog, “The How of Change” in which I quoted from “Eco Harmony Dawn Cooking: Balancing your Internal & External Environments”, which I co-wrote with my wife, Nicola Lawrence:

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The scene:  I'm in a line of 230 graduating Ph.D.’s and 17 others who, like me, are being given Doctor Honoris Causa, honorary doctorates from the University of Lund, Sweden, in a long snaking procession into into the enormous romanesque Lund Cathedral, where the graduation ceremonies are to be held.  Two by two we walk behind men and women in brass buttoned ancient military outfits bearing banners and flags, and behind darkly robed priests.  Most of us wear tuxedos and tails, which is the customary if surprisingly formal graduation outfit of the University.  Some of us, like me, wear the flowing academic gowns and colorful hoods and insignia of our own institutions and programs.  Banners are fluttering, the orchestra is playing, and cannons, real brass cannons, announced us in sound.

Is it worth it, this journey?  Is it worth so many years of these peoples' time, the effort, forebearance and wealth of their families and of the society that has helped make these long, sometimes arduous journeys possible?  I think so...  Read more