Marcia McQuitty, an experienced preschool educator, is associate professor of childhood ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Phyllis Mark is coordinator of children’s meditation programs at the Birmingham Shambhala Meditation Center in Alabama. The center offers programs for children to learn about Buddhism and meditation.

Marvin Belzer is an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. In the essay “Mere Stranger” (in Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life), he tells of growing up in an evangelical Christian home but gradually dropping his religious beliefs through the process of reflection and study.

Silver Sage Village in Boulder, Colo., broke ground in August 2006 and is Colorado’s first cohousing development for seniors. With a spiritual core, the ecofriendly community has a common meditation room.

Linda Thal is co-director of the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction in California and co-director of Morei Derekh, a two-year, retreat-based distance program. She serves as a consultant to the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Committee on Rabbinic Spirituality and did her doctoral dissertation on spiritual direction.

Rabbi Shefa Gold is director of the Center for Devotional Energy and Ecstatic Prayer in Jemez Springs, N.M. She teaches workshops and retreats on chanting, devotional healing, spiritual community building and meditation. Shefa combines her grounding in Judaism with a background in Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Native American spiritual traditions and says she returned to Judaism because […]

Rabbi Heather Altman, a Conservative rabbi, is a spiritual director, teacher, yoga instructor and healer based in Chicago.

Rabbi Aryeh Azriel of Temple Israel in Omaha, Neb., a Reform synagogue, leads the Spiritual Working Group on Leadership for Synagogue 3000.