How Play in Nature Feeds our Spirits and Improves Health by Jessica Palys French Jesuit and scientist Pierre Tielhard de Chardin once said, “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.” But busy lives and faithful devotion tend towards seriousness and stress rather than the playfulness that opens us up to easy laughter Read More
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. I have been and remain troubled by what seems like an uptick in the spate of deaths involving uniformed police Read More
Infant Mortality: How social support for mothers can reduce stress and improve infant health and survival rates among African American and Latina women and their children The following is an interview with the Rev. Dr. Shirley Gwendolyn Eloby Fleming, Co-Director of The Center for Faith and Community Health Transformation and Director of Faith Health Promotion Read More
“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot, . . . a time to be silent” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 7 NIV Bible) In a world that is constantly speeding up Read More
Dylann Roof, State Senator Pinckney, and the challenge for faith communities to become more “loving” and honest places of social transformation As I prepared to write about the need for faith communities and religious institutions to take seriously their role in affirming individuals and building a network of “loving” communities, a news bulletin flashed across the Read More
Some of you reading this blog may have made a New Year’s resolution and for many of you it might have been to lose weight, get in better shape or perhaps both. As we approach the end of January, some of you are doing well, some are having a hard time, and still others have Read More
Things Fall Apart is a novel written by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and tells the story of the life of a leader and local wrestling champion in a fictional group of villages in Nigeria. Set in pre-colonial Nigeria in the 1890s, the novel highlights the inevitable clash between colonialism and traditional culture. The protagonist is Read More
Recently I was looking through old files and came across this list of principles for practicing a certain kind of shiatsu massage called Ohashiatsu. I trained in this body work practice when I was working as a chaplain as a way to help me understand how to be present with people’s bodies as I encountered Read More
A few years ago a study came out that showed that social relationships–the human connections that we share with other people–have a powerful influence on our health. The study, Social Relationships and Mortality Risk by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton found that having low levels of social interaction had the same Read More
A joint project of Advocate Health Care & the OCEAN-HP at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
