by Mary Ferdinand
In the UK we still have our television and cable listings for the week in a publication misleadingly called “The Radio Times.” The issue for next week has two pages at the back: the usual “One Final Question” with a TV celebrity interview and a box at the bottom, “Next week in RT … ” etc. Then this week there’s another page headed “One Final FINAL Question” with a box sliding down a hole at the bottom of the page, “Next week in RT … if there IS a next week ….”
Emma Grewal - The Christian Science Journal, Feb. 2008
I had never heard of Qatar, a place I now consider home, until three years ago when my dad got a job working for a company there. My mum, dad, and younger sister, Abigail, and I moved to Doha, the capital city of Qatar, from Dubai. Being born and brought up in Australia, and having also lived in India, I found moving to a country like Qatar a big change. When you’re used to seeing people in jeans and shirts, coming to an Islamic country like Qatar hits you most visually. Here a lot of the women wear a black abaya, a traditional form of Islamic dress worn over your clothes, and a lot of my girlfriends also wear a black headscarf, even to school, although wearing the scarf is a personal decision.
by Matthew Cocks
A few years ago I spent some time reading about the life of Mohandas K Gandhi (more popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi). Gandhi was an Indian political and spiritual leader who lived most his life during the first half of the twentieth century. He was very influential in the process of India gaining independence from British colonial rule.
As fascinating as I found his extraordinary political career, it was his spiritual approach to life and thoughts on the nature of God which particularly interested me. Gandhi was a radical spiritual thinker. He loved simplicity, and is very well known for his strong encouragement of non-violence.
by Meg Dendler
I’ve grown rather accustomed to mentally tuning out the music my daughters play, often at competing volume levels, from their respective bedrooms. But one afternoon as we drove in the car a favorite of my older daughter’s came on and I really started listening to the words. What I heard from the gravely voice of rock band Nickelback’s lead singer shocked me, but in a good way for once. He sang:
By John Biggs 
Good heavens. It’s been a wonderful couple of weeks. This weekend I went to Addo Elephant Park near Port Elizabeth, and we must have seen over 100 elephants, along with bushpig, warthog, red hartebeest, and zebra. It was beautiful to see these animals in their natural environment. The bush is very thick here - such a diversity of plant and animal life. It was a great backdrop, to have these images in thought during the drive back to the farm the next day, as we talked about the current (and possible future) state of affairs in South Africa politically, socially, and economically. (more…)
By Tim Heinemann
Before returning to the Burma border region, I had gotten wind of assassination teams targeting key leaders of the Karen ethnic resistance movement with whom I had been working for some time. We had struggled uphill for several years trying to gain the approval for a youth-leader development concept that was now in the works. We wanted to develop a kind of grassroots initiative, to train ethical servant leaders so that they could then serve in the Karen’s decades-long resistance effort against Burma’s military dictatorship.
by Robert Horner
This second edition in a series on spiritual solutions for the environment will tackle our first specific issue: pollution from solid waste disposal. This may be the most visually disturbing form of pollution. After all, who doesn’t cringe when they sail into a plastic debris field the size of Africa floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? (If you don’t sail between Japan and the U.S. much, you can just imagine doing it and then cringe.)
Jan. 21–27, 2008 “Change your thought to change your world” originally appeared in the May 2007 Journal and was titled: “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
On Saturday, February 10, a sunny winter day in New Haven, Connecticut, the Christian Science Organization at Yale University hosted an intimate and thought-provoking regional “Global Awareness” conference for members of Christian Science Organizations (CSOs) at college and university campuses from New England. The Journal asked Yale student Inge Schmidt, an organizer of the conference and the CSO contact for the university, to share how the conference began and the events of the day.
by Tim Heinemann
We’ve all seen recent images on TV of Burmese monks and citizens beaten on the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay. To me this video footage is an example of evil, uncovered for all the world to see. This is only a beginning. While there is progress here, the brutalization of ethnic hill tribes on a much grander scale in Eastern Burma still remains largely unknown to the world. Here hidden beneath dense jungle canopy, the military regime has been carrying out a decades-long land grab, burning down and mining over 3000 villages in order to seize lands rich in natural resources.
by Robert Horner
Severe weather. Drought. Sea-level rise. Desertification. Freshwater shortages. Pollution. Deforestation. Species extinction. Climate change.
Today we are faced with a looming global crisis. Our actions are altering our planet in ways that are harmful to ourselves and to life around us. Often, the actions we take today will continue to hurt us for generations to come. And these effects are sometimes irreversible. This is the current state of our world from a material standpoint. As a student researching sustainable development and renewable energy, I often find the scientific data about the destruction of our planet overwhelming.
