This reflection is actually a bit of a challenge. The text author has given ample illustrations from music, photography, painting, and other areas that demonstrate the three aspects of eclectic spirituality—interrelatedness, reverence and respect, and the contemplative stance. Develop a multimedia presentation on one of the three features that somehow conveys an experience of that aspect.
Review the changes and challenges religion faces in the modern world, then review the practices and beliefs of a religion of your choice. Now imagine you have gone through some kind of a space-time rift and returned five hundred or a thousand years from now. How is the religion, if it still exists, being practiced and conceived?
Many of the role models for the environmentalism movement are women. Notice that three of the four listed in the text have directly centered their work on animals. As traditional religions rethink the role of nature in their religious understandings, they also must consider animals. Already in 1993 an international group of Catholic and Protestant biblical scholars concluded that animals have just as much a possibility of getting into heaven as human beings. Imagine ways this new thinking about animals could influence religious beliefs and practices.
In the text, the author demonstrates how secular philosophies like communism or events like a rock concert manifest features of religion. Explore other areas like the courtroom or a football game to identify religious features and practices that appear.
After studying many of the world's major religions and investigating the religious search in the modern world, you are now in a position to possibly define a religious experience. They occur in religious settings and in nature. And the author says that they sometimes occur in nontraditional places, like watching a movie or experiencing music. What have been the spiritual experiences of you and your friends and where have they occurred?
