New Islamic Directions is a website featuring news, opinion and information. It is the project of Imam Zaid Shakir, a teacher at the Zaytuna Institute. It is published in Hayward, Calif.

Sandra A. Wawrytko, professor of philosophy at San Diego State University, has written about the integration of Buddhist values in the modern world; ask where rest and retreat fit into this picture.

Siang Yang Tan is pastor of the First Evangelical Church in Glendale, Calif. He wrote Rest: Experiencing God’s Peace in a Restless World (Regent College Publishing, 2003). He can discuss the concept of spiritual rest and how to achieve it through the practices of solitude and silence, surrender, simplicity and Sabbath-keeping. Ask him about sleep […]

 To discuss trends in spirituality and business, call Jay Alden Conger, senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He edited Spirit at Work: Discovering the Spirituality in Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 1994).

Read a Beliefnet.com article by Kimberly Winston about the rapid growth of Wicca and other Earth-based religions.

The Rev. Lizette Larson-Miller, a professor at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif., wrote an article in the May 23, 2005, edition of America magazine (subscriber-only) titled “Holy Ground: Roadside Shrines and Sacred Space.” She identified five general characteristics of roadside shrines, and she ponders what liturgical churches might learn from this widespread trend.

Tom Bruce is a psychologist, thanatologist and author who teaches a class in death and dying at Sacramento City College in California.

Cari Leversee is director of Thresholds Home Funerals. Founded in 2003, Thresholds is a non-embalming funeral establishment in San Diego, Calif. It has offered classes on “reclaiming death as a sacred event.”