{"id":159,"date":"2009-02-19T10:29:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T10:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/2009\/02\/how-to-define-spirituality.html"},"modified":"2009-02-19T10:29:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T10:29:26","slug":"how-to-define-spirituality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/02\/how-to-define-spirituality.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Define Spirituality"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m afraid Gus at A Pagan’ Blog<\/a> mistook my thoughts<\/a> on his “spirituality and buying local” for criticism.  Quite the contrary, I was admiring and agreeing with his insight on spiritual connection coming from the world around us – not in terms of what we buy or what we have, but who we are within our communities, on our planet, and in relationship to others.  I agree that that idea can, does, and should translate into buying local whenever possible.<\/p>\n

What I was wondering about is whether it starts to feel like a luxury during hard economic times to take that spiritual connectedness with us into the marketplace.  That’s not to say it’s ever a good idea to set aside deep spiritual principles for material reasons, but I just wondered if Beliefnet readers are struggling with it.<\/p>\n

Also, I’d love to hear readers’ thoughts on how to define spirituality, and the process by which we decide that something is “spiritual” as opposed to smart, responsible, joyful, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m afraid Gus at A Pagan’ Blog mistook my thoughts on his “spirituality and buying local” for criticism.  Quite the contrary, I was admiring and agreeing with his insight on spiritual connection coming from the world around us – not in terms of what we buy or what we have, but who we are within…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,27,2],"tags":[287,286,263],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-holly-lebowitz-rossi","category-eco","category-holistic-living","tag-community","tag-pagan","tag-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Define Spirituality - Fresh Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/02\/how-to-define-spirituality.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Define Spirituality - Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m afraid Gus at A Pagan’ Blog mistook my thoughts on his “spirituality and buying local” for criticism.  Quite the contrary, I was admiring and agreeing with his insight on spiritual connection coming from the world around us – not in terms of what we buy or what we have, but who we are within…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/02\/how-to-define-spirituality.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-19T10:29:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hrossi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How to Define Spirituality - Fresh Living","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/02\/how-to-define-spirituality.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How to Define Spirituality - 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A graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Divinity School, she has more than a decade of experience writing about religion and spirituality for Newsweek, The Washington Post, Spa Finder, Sojourners, Search, and many other publications. Her commentaries have also been heard on NPR\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All Things Considered.\" When not at her desk, you can find her baking, in her garden, or rockin' out in water aerobics class. She lives in Arlington, Mass. Visit http:\/\/www.hollyrossi.com for more.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/author\/hrossi"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}