WritingSpirit Resources

All About Jewish Theatre

Who has the time to search all over the Internet to find the information you need in a timely fashion? This website is specially designed to provide a unifying environment designed to bring together all available information about the international world of Jewish Theater and performing arts expertly linked, displayed and easily accessible to anyone.

All About Jewish Theatre is the comprehensive and targeted coverage of the international community of Jewish Theater and the leading source of industry news in the world. Tens of thousands of professionals, educators, students and enthusiasts will stay in touch with All About Jewish Theatre to get the facts, figures & dates of what, when, where and how in-depth coverage they haven’t been able to get till now anywhere else.

Through All About Jewish Theatre, people worldwide will have a single source for a vast array of information pertaining to all facets of the Jewish Theater manufacturers to consumers.

All About Jewish Theatre

Journal of Religion and Theatre

The Journal of Religion and Theatre aims to provide descriptive and analytical articles examining the spirituality of world cultures in all disciplines of the theatre, performance studies in sacred rituals of all cultures, themes of transcendence in text, on stage, in theatre history, the analysis of dramatic literature, and other topics relating to the relationship between religion and theatre. This online journal also aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge throughout the theatrical community concerning the relationship between theatre and religion and as an academic research resource for the benefit of all interested scholars and artists.

The Spiritual Literacy Blog

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

In their book, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, the Brussats wrote:

Life is a sacred adventure. Every day we encounter signs that point to the active presence of Spirit in the world around us. Spiritual literacy is the ability to read the signs written in the texts of our own experiences. Whether viewed as a gift from God or a skill to be cultivated, this facility enables us to discern and decipher a world full of meaning.

Spiritual literacy is practiced in all the world's wisdom traditions. Medieval Catholic monks called it 'reading the book of the world.' Muslims suggest that everything that happens outside and inside us is a letter to be read. Native Americans find their way through the wilderness by 'reading sign.' From ancient times to today, spiritually literate people have been able to locate within their daily life points of connection with the sacred.

The Spiritual Literacy Blog is their attempt to read the book of the world as revealed through articles and images available on the Internet.

Spirituality & Health Reviews Database

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, media and web editors for Spirituality & Health, explain their approach to resources covered in the Reviews Database:

We are drawn primarily to resources that are expressive of the quest for meaning and purpose, wholeness and healing, commitment and community, mysticism and social activism. We are open to works representing all the world's religions and a wide variety of spiritual traditions.

We practice hospitality, empathy, and enthusiasm as pathways to discovering a world indwelt by grace and holiness. We are decidedly positive in our reviews. All the resources in our database are recommended for those living a spiritual life.

The database now covers more than 6,000 resources from the past five years, and more reviews from the Brussats' three decades of reviewing are being added all the time. Included are reviews previously published in Cultural Information Service and Values & Visions. This includes:

• 3200 Book Reviews
• 2800 Film Reviews

What makes this database especially useful is that you can discover new resources by doing a search on themes and spiritual practices that interest you."

In the Reviews Database you can search by:

• TYPE: books, movies, television, audio

• PRACTICE: Contains 37 spiritual practices, including being present, compassion, hope, openness, peace, transformation and unity.

• THEME: Contains 130 subjects/themes such as addiction, angels, children, conscience, Eastern Orthodox, esoteric, food, God, humor, Islam, miracles, nonviolence, pilgrimage, prayer, science, time, war, writing, and Zen.

In addition to the Reviews Database, they also have annual lists (from 1997 on) of the year’s best spiritual books and movies.

Spirituality & Health
Reviews Database

Christian Women Today

The Internet magazine, Christian Women Today, exists to encourage, challenge and inspire women around the world. Their vision is to build Christian women in their faith and spur them on to be an influence for Jesus Christ through personal ministries of evangelism, discipleship and prayer. They also offer general interest information presenting issues that affect the daily lives of women.

Christian Women Today
Writers Guidelines

Spirituality.com

The spirituality.com community is all about individuals sharing experiences that show how an understanding of Christian Science can lead to healing and to other practical, positive solutions. These insights and results help anyone see how their lives--and their community--can be made better through prayer. Spirituality.com invites you to share the experiences and healings that have come about through your study and practice of Christian Science.

Spirituality.com
Writers Guidelines

Killing the Buddha

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not.

The idea of "killing the Buddha" comes from a famous Zen line, the context of which is easy to imagine: After years on his cushion, a monk has what he believes is a breakthrough: a glimpse of nirvana, the Buddhamind, the big pay-off. Reporting the experience to his master, however, he is informed that what has happened is par for the course, nothing special, maybe even damaging to his pursuit. And then the master gives the student dismaying advice: If you meet the Buddha, he says, kill him.

Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way.

Why Killing the Buddha? For the ezine's purposes, killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God. Killing the Buddha insists that if religion matters at all it matters enough to be taken to task. They believe it’s high time for a new canon to be created, and that the Web is just the place to collect it. They refuse to accept the internet as a world wide shopping mall. They know intuitively it can be a sort of Talmudic cathedral, a tool of transcendence made of words.

Killing the Buddha
Writers Guidelines

Spirit-Led Writer

http://www.spiritledwriter.com/
http://www.spiritledwriter.com/guidelines.html

Spirit-Led Writer is a resource for Christians who write in fiction and non-fiction genres for Christian and secular markets. It is for the beginner, intermediate and advanced writer.

As an alternative to secular writing resources, Spirit-Led Writer chooses to uplift the name of Jesus Christ, and give Him glory; thus, promoting Spirit-led excellence and integrity in publishing. Spirit-Led Writer recognizes that our achievements come "not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord" and that "all things work together for our good." Most sections of Spirit-Led Writer are open to submissions from non-Christian writers, however, the advice given must not conflict with Biblical principles.

Spirit-Led Writer
Writers Guidelines

Spirituality At The Movies

Whether your screenplay approaches spirituality directly or indirectly, movies dramatizing spiritual subjects (or themes) are becoming increasingly popular.

Recently, Indigo, a movie about a 10-year-old child who helps her family find redemption and healing through her psychic abilities, won the Audience Favorite Award at the Santa Fe Film Festival. Written by James Twyman, whom many call the "Peace Troubadour," and Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, Indigo was somewhat of a miracle itself. Directed by Twyman and starring Walsch, it was shot in just three weeks for $500,000, going from idea to film festival favorite in just eight months.   

Stephen Simon, who produced Indigo (as well as Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come), has described Spiritual Cinema as, “a specific type of film that has not yet been recognized as its own genre.

Films in this category illuminate the most extraordinary aspects of our search for meaning as human beings, such as:

• the nature of reality itself (The Matrix, Beautiful Mind, Vanilla Sky)
• life after death (Sixth Sense, Ghost, Heaven Can Wait)
• enhanced human abilities (Phenomenon, Powder, Altered States)
• time travel (Back to the Future, The Kid, Frequency)
• angels (All That Jazz, City of Angels, Michael)
• aliens (Independence Day, Forbidden Planet, E.T.)
• planetary destruction (Armageddon, Planet of the Apes, Fail Safe)
• the power of love (Cast Away, Sleepless in Seattle, It's a Wonderful Life).”

Simon distinguishes between spiritual cinema, which he says focuses on the empowerment of the God within each individual, and religious cinema, which focuses on God as an external power.

While each person may define the boundaries between "spiritual" and "religious" differently, there are also many common religious themes in movies, such as:

• the crisis of faith (The Third Miracle)
• politics and intrigue in the church (The Name of the Rose, Monsignor)
• miracles (The Song of Bernadette, The Maldonado Miracle)
• challenging social/religious traditions (Fiddler on the Roof, Yentl)
• Biblical stories (Ten Commandments, Solomon, The Passion of Christ)
• the outsider in a religious community (Witness, Little Buddha)
• interfaith relationships (Keeping the Faith).

In addition to dramas, documentaries are a powerful way of sharing spiritual and religious views. Documentaries tackle such subjects as:

• religious traditions (Living Islam, The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God)
• individuals who have made a spiritual impact (Peace Pilgrim, Andrew Harvey: The Making of a Modern Mystic, Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Universe)
• specific aspects of religious or spiritual life (Ancient Mysteries: Enigma of the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Story of Silent Night, Kalachakra: The Wheel of Time, A Crisis of Faith: the American Dilemma).

Whether these films depict their subject matter from the point of view of doubt or faith, whether their intent is to persuade or explore, they make us question, think, and get in touch with what we feel about the specific spiritual points being made. Whatever your particular spiritual interests or point of view, write about them with passion, precision, and honesty, and you'll have a script that will touch people's hearts and minds.

Copyright 2004 by Julie Isaac

Screenwriting Books For Spiritual Writers

The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
By Christopher Vogler
The Writers Journey.com

The Writer's Journey explores the powerful relationship between mythology and storytelling in a clear, concise style that's made it required reading for movie executives, screenwriters, scholars, and lovers of pop culture all over the world.
Writers of both fiction and non-fiction will discover a set of useful myth-inspired storytelling paradigms (ie. The Hero's Journey) and step-by-step guidelines to plot and character development. Based on the work of Joseph Campbell, The Writer's Journey is a must for writers of all kinds interested in further developing their craft.

The updated and revised second edition provides new insights and observations from Vogler's ongoing work on mythology's influence on stories, movies, and man himself.


Stealing Fire From the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model For Writers & Filmmakers
By James Bonnet
Storymaking.com

Designed for screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, directors, producers, studio executives and anyone else whose livelihood depends on an understanding of what makes a story great and successful, this new state-of-the-art story model will guide professional writers and filmmakers to a more complete understanding of the fundamentals that drive the world's most important art forms--storytelling and film.

Author James Bonnet takes you on a journey through the creative process of storymaking, uncovering not only what makes a story great but also how we can use the creative process to reconnect us to our lost or forgotten inner selves. In the tradition of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler, James Bonnet explores the connection between great stories and personal growth and the significance that connection has for screenwriters and other storymakers.

Armed with this new, deeper understanding, there is no limit to the power and art that can be created through your stories. You will know how to tap powerful creative sources deep within yourself and have the tools to use modern metaphors to create stories and films as significant for today as King Arthur and The Iliad were for their times.


The Force is With You: Mystical Movie Messages that Inspire Our Lives 
By Stephen Simon
Spiritual Cinema Circle.com

"Movies are the most electrifying communications medium ever devised and the natural conduit of inspiring ourselves to look into the eternal issues of who we are and why we are here."

So says film executive Stephen Simon, producer of more than thirty films, including Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come. Simon illuminates for the first time, with humor, energy, and passion, this emerging category of Spiritual Cinema; a genre finally being recognized for what it is: a metaphoric pathway to explore such things as the nature of love, the meaning of life and death, the concept of time and space, the visions of our future.

Movies have become our windows to the universe. The sheer imaginative power of the screen has shaped the way humanity views itself, the world, and the cosmos. The increasing technology of cinema has given us the opportunity to see before our eyes images that reflect all that imagination can conjure up—not only to ask the questions plaguing us since humans first contemplated the heavens, but to pose some answers as well.

Through his exploration of more than 70 movies that best represent the genre in all its aspects, Simon gives us his personal interpretation of these films and the extraordinary messages they embody.

Here is a wealth of inspiration, including the inside stories behind the making of many films and the familiar names who participated in their making. This is a book that will break ground for the many visionary storytellers and filmmakers to come, and most of all, their audiences.