My Take: Science and spirituality should be friends

Editor's Note: Deepak Chopra is founder of the Chopra Foundation and a senior scientist at the Gallup Organization. He has authored over 60 books, including The Soul of Leadership, which The Wall Street Journal called one of five best business books about careers.

 
By Deepak Chopra, Special to CNN

For most people, science deserves its reputation for being opposed to religion.

I'm not thinking of the rather noisy campaign by a handful of die-hard atheists to demote and ridicule faith.

I'm thinking instead of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution has proved victorious over the Book of Genesis and its story of God creating the universe in seven days. Since then, God has been found wanting when measured against facts and data. With no data to support the existence of God, there is also no reason for religion and science to close the gap between them.

Yet the gap has indeed been closing.

Hey, St. Nicholas, DBAD!

Port Authority Is Sued Over Church Destroyed on 9/11

The New York Times
by The Associated Press

The Greek Orthodox church filed suit on Monday against the public agency that owned the World Trade Center over stalled plans to rebuild a church that was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

The church said the agency, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, reneged on a 2008 deal to rebuild St. Nicholas Church at a new location down the block from its old site. It also said the Port Authority sent construction equipment onto its property without permission in connection with the new business and transportation complex at the World Trade Center site.

It filed the suit in federal court in Manhattan.

The Port Authority said it called off negotiations in 2009 because the church was asking for too much money.

[Also - The London Daily News]

LiveSTRONG

The LIVESTRONG Manifesto.
Unity is strength.
Knowledge is power.
Attitude is everything.

www.livestrong.org

Baby boomers flood seminaries

Actually, my prediction is that this trend puts an exclamation point on the prevalent description of organized religion as DYING, ANTIQUATED, and IRRELEVANT. I've got nothing against the boomers. It just could not be more ironic that the "hippies" who rejected the modern modality of their own youth have turned around to drive what's left of organized religion into the dirt.

With grey-hairs in the pews and grey-hairs in the pulpits, is it any wonder that the 40 and less crowd has abandoned ship? The boomers are bringing back the church of the '50s.

Beaver Cleaver is back! And he's wearing a robe!

~ B

[Full Article]

My Faith: Suffering my way to a new tomorrow

Editor's Note: Rob Bell is the Founding Pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His latest book and DVD are called Drops Like Stars. 
 
By Rob Bell, Special to CNN

"This truth, about the latent seeds of creativity being planted in the midst of suffering, takes us deep into the heart of the Christian faith. We are invited to trust that in the moments when we are most inclined to despair, when all appears lost and we can't imagine any way forward - that it is precisely in those moments when something new may be about to be birthed.

Jesus hangs naked and bloody on a cross, alone and abandoned by his students, scorned by the crowd, and yet defiant, confident, insistent that God is present in his agony, bringing about a whole new world, right here in the midst of this one.

This is a mystery, and one we are wise to reflect on it, because of the countless disruptions we experience all the time.

God is in those moments, grieving with us, shedding tears with us, feeling that pain and turmoil with us, and then inviting to trust that something good can come from even this.

* * *

So keep your eyes and your heart open.  Be quick to listen and slow to make rash judgments about how it's "all going to turn out," because you never know when you'll find yourself miles from home, laying in a hospital bed with a bad case of brain squeeze, all of your plans crashing down around you, wondering how it all went wrong, only to discover that a whole new life is just beginning."

[Full Article]