World Religions News

“When things change inside of you, things change around you.” ~Unknown

When I was twenty-three, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. It was not until two years later, when I stopped taking medication, that I discovered I had a mental health disorder linked to my menstrual cycles.

Meditating daily has been foundational for my well-being. It helps me manage the physical expressions of anxiety and bad moods. It allows me to be more accepting of myself and grateful for the many positives in my life.

But it is the awareness journey that mindfulness has paved over these last …

(RNS) — Bhante Sujatha, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk leading a temple in Woodstock, Illinois, hopes a new outdoor, interfaith meditation space will be a sanctuary in a world of noise.

The post In a noisy world, this temple hopes a new Buddha and meditation garden can bring peace appeared first on Religion News Service.

The South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, on May 16, 2023. / Credit: LOGAN CYRUS/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2024 / 09:20 am (CNA).

The South Carolina Department of Corrections could potentially execute one death row inmate every 35 days — or every five weeks — as the state resumes executions on Sept. 20 after a 13-year pause in carrying out the death penalty.

A recent South Carolina Supreme Court order decided that a five-week interval between executions was “reasonable” and “warranted” but left open the possibility of carrying out the death penalty more frequently if circumstances warrant it.

The ruling came after death row inmates requested a 13-week interval between executions and state Attorney General Alan Wilson asked the court to permit at least one execution per month. With the court’s decision in effect, the state could potentially execute 10 or 11 people within a calendar year.

In 2024 to date, no U.S. state has carried out more than four executions. In recent decades, the frequency of executions has declined throughout the country and some states have ended the use of the death penalty altogether.

There are more than 30 people on death row in South Carolina. Freddie Owens, who was convicted of murder, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 20. The state Supreme Court announced its plans to schedule the execution of at least five other death row inmates following Owens’ execution.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting an update promulgated by Pope Francis in 2018, describes the death penalty as “inadmissible” and an “attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (No. 2267). The change reflects a development of Catholic doctrine in recent years. St. John Paul II, calling the death penalty “cruel and unnecessary,” encouraged Christians to be “unconditionally pro-life” and said that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.”

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of the anti-death penalty group Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), told CNA that the frequency of executions proposed by the attorney general was “reckless” and “would be a major regression.”

CMN works closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on efforts to oppose the death penalty and uphold the human dignity of people who are incarcerated.

Murphy encouraged South Carolina officials to consider changes made in other states, such as Oklahoma, which reduced the frequency of executions after Attorney General Gentner Drummond wrote a letter to the state’s department of corrections that said staff had reported “distress they are experiencing due to the nonstop executions.”

Murphy said “even corrections officials know this is the wrong thing to do.”

“Our prayers remain with Freddie [Owens], who faces this imminent execution, for victims’ families and those impacted by acts of harm and violence,” Murphy added. “We also pray for every individual currently on South Carolina’s death row whose life is at risk.”

“All executions violate the sanctity of life, regardless of the pace at which they are set or how they are administered,” she said. 

“We have ways to keep society safe and uphold justice for victims’ families without violating the God-given dignity of the human person. And as such, there is no humane way for the state to take a life.”

The last time South Carolina executed a man on death row was in 2011, after which executions were paused because the state department of corrections could not find a drug company from which they could purchase the drugs required for lethal injection.

South Carolina has since obtained the drugs required to administer lethal injections and, in 2021, legalized executions by the electric chair and by firing squad. In July of this year, the state Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty — including executions through all of those methods — was legal, after which the corrections department announced its intent to resume executions.

Gymnastics, both beautiful and thrilling to watch, is an event for the young — and sometimes the very young.  This evening on TV, I saw a competition among gymnasts who...

The post Every Day Dawns on a Fresh Spiritual Start appeared first on BahaiTeachings.org.

An unborn child, a victim of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, is remembered at the 9/11 memorial in New York City. / Credit: Katie Yoder/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 11, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Nearly 3,000 names are engraved in bronze at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. But 10 of the victims in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are different: They have no names. Instead, each is remembered as an “unborn child.” 

Among those memorialized this way are “Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas and her unborn child.”

On Sept. 11, Jack Grandcolas lost the two people he held most dear: his wife, Lauren, and their unborn child. His pregnant 38-year-old wife died on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers fought back against hijackers redirecting the flight to Washington, D.C. Grandcolas recounts his loss and search for hope in a memoir called “Like a River to the Sea: Heartbreak and Hope in the Wake of United 93.”

The book was published by Rare Bird on Sept. 6, 2022, and opens with a dedication to his lost child.

“Dear Son … or Daughter,” he begins. “I am writing this book at the advice of my therapist. She felt it would be helpful to share a little bit about your mom and dad, and why you will always have your place in history.”

Today, that child would be 22 years old. Her name would be Grace, if a girl — Gavin, if a boy.

Lauren was three months pregnant, Grandcolas recalls, when she flew from their home in California to New Jersey for her grandmother’s funeral. At her insistence, he stayed behind to care for their sick cat.

“We were giddy at the thought of becoming parents, having spent the previous decade trying to get pregnant,” he writes. “There had been plenty of heartbreak along the way, including a miscarriage in 1999, when Lauren was 36. Two years later, we had pretty much resigned ourselves to raising only cats ... and then a miracle happened.”

Lauren and their “miracle” were supposed to return to California on Sept. 11, 2001.

That morning, Grandcolas woke up to the sound of the answering machine. He fell back asleep, only to wake up again and spot what he calls the “shape of an angel.” 

Had someone he knew recently died?

It must be Lauren’s grandmother, he thought. Then he realized it was Lauren.

When he checked the answering machine, he heard a message that would change his life forever. 

“Honey, are you there? Jack? Pick up, sweetie,” he heard Lauren’s voice say. “Okay, well, I just want to tell you I love you. We’re having a little problem on the plane. I’m fine and comfortable and I’m okay for now. I just love you more than anything, just know that. It’s just a little problem, so I, I’ll … Honey, I just love you. Please tell my family I love them, too. Bye, honey.”

“In that moment I knew Lauren and our baby were gone,” he writes of his college sweetheart and their little one. 

His wife’s funeral was held at a Catholic church in Houston. Lauren, he says, was not a religious person. But in the months before her death, she began attending a weekly Bible study.

“One evening she came home and said, ‘I finally get it,’” he remembers. When he prodded her by asking, “Get what?” she responded: “The meaning of it all.”

While raised Catholic, Grandcolas struggled with his faith. 

“What kind of merciful God would take my sweet Lauren and our child?” he asked. He later concluded that it was not God but human ideology.

He encountered God again after a conversation with Bono, the lead vocalist of the famous rock band U2. Bono performed “One Tree Hill” — Lauren’s favorite U2 song — in her memory at a 2005 concert at the Oakland Coliseum. Afterward, Grandcolas opened up to the singer.

“Being brought up Catholic, you’re given all this guilt about things that you didn’t do right,” he told Bono. “I worry that I may have screwed up in this life and mortgaged my opportunity to see Lauren again.”

“You’ll see her again. I know it. We all screw up in life,” he says Bono reassured him. “That’s why God grants us forgiveness. It’s his most powerful gift.”

Bono’s words changed him and his faith, he says. 

“Ever since 9/11, I had questioned God and his plan for me,” he writes. “The night was a tribute to her but in a very important way it set me free, allowing me to be more forgiving of myself and rekindle my belief in God’s mercy.”

Grandcolas introduces readers to Lauren as a woman with a beautiful smile, radiant personality, and even a mischievous streak. They married after meeting in college and stayed together as he progressed with a career in the newspaper industry and she took charge as a marketing manager.

After losing her and their baby, he struggled with depression, PTSI (post-traumatic stress injury), heavy drinking, fear of abandonment, and survivor’s guilt. With the help of EMDR psychotherapy, he said, he discovered that “for all these years I had been mourning Lauren without fully grieving for the baby we lost.”

“Over the years that child grew up in my mind, growing older every year,” he writes. “I knew I would not be able to move on until saying goodbye to the baby I never got to hold.”

Today, the memory of Lauren and their unborn baby lives on at memorials across the country, through the Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas Foundation, and, now, his book.

“[A]s I continue to reflect on the highs and lows of the last two decades, I’ve come to realize that I am very lucky indeed,” he says. “I found true love, twice. I’ve endured a pair of horrific tragedies but still have a resilient spirit and zest for life. I’ll always carry the emotional scars of losing Lauren and our child, just as I’ll always have the physical scars from my burns, but all of my wounds continue to heal.”

“We all suffer loss. We all endure heartbreak. It’s how you respond to these cataclysms that define you,” he concludes. “Sometimes the most beautiful things grow out of our hardest moments.”

This article was first published on Sept. 11, 2022, and has been updated.

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The post The Abyss of Eleven Months of War appeared first on Jewish Journal.

There may indeed be a right path and a wrong path here, but it is far from clear which is which.

The post A Place of Unknowing appeared first on Jewish Journal.