Cathleen Falsani

Now, before you sprain an optic nerve rolling your eyes, let me begin by saying, "Yes."

Yes, I realize that the vast majority of HuffPost readers do not fall within young Mr. Bieber's target demographic.

Many of you likely are asking yourselves (perhaps out loud, as we adults are wont...

In 1943, in the throes of World War II and one of the most fraught times in contemporary human history, the psychologist Abraham Maslow published a paper explaining, as he understood them, the five basic, motivating needs common to all of humankind.

They are:

* Physiological (air, food, water,...

For as long as I can remember, Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday. Even as a child, with the prospect (and visions) of sugar plums and bundles of wrapped Christmas presents dancing in my imagination, it was our annual family gathering, a food-a-palooza in November that claimed the preeminent spot...

Rarely do I leave a cinema and feel the urge to tell everyone I know to run out and see the film I've just watched.

But that is precisely how I felt after a recent screening of "The Mighty Macs," an outstanding new independent film with a subtle yet powerful...

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a month old.

Now what?

On Sunday afternoon, I stood in Zuccotti Park with several thousand other folks trying to take in the veritable circus that is the Occupation site sandwiched between Wall Street and Trinity Episcopal Church.

Who is working here? Who is...

"The conditions of my life are precarious," film critic Roger Ebert wrote last week in a posting on his online journal titled, "Fall from Grace."

Ebert, 69, perhaps the pre-eminent film critic in the United States and a longtime colleague of mine at the Chicago Sun Times newspaper,...

The idea behind "Belieber!: Fame, Faith and The Heart of Justin Bieber" was to peel back the veneer of celebrity and take a closer look at Justin as a person and as a cultural phenomenon. At 17, Justin's reach and influence is international, vast and unprecedented. As someone who watches...

Don't believe most of what you'll hear about Kevin Smith's new movie, "Red State."

It is not an angry tirade against religion, nor is it an attack on Christianity guised as a horror flick laden with gratuitous violence.

Smith has described "Red State" as a horror film, and it is...

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was standing in the bathroom of my apartment outside Chicago, about to hop in the shower, when I heard the phone ring and then my husband call my name.

"It's Roger from the desk," he called, sleepily, invoking the name of the...

"The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life," the late Christian apologist and author Henri Nouwen said, "need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering."

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the practice of training one's mind to be clearer and more compassionate by studying and meditating on 59 short aphorisms from the Buddha's teachings is called Lojong.

Number 21 on the Lojong list: "Approach every situation with a joyful mind."

If Jeff Bridges hadn't chosen...

c. 2011 Religion News Service

(RNS) A week or two after the 2004 election, I was dining with some friends in New York when the conversation turned to religion and politics -- the two things that you're never supposed to discuss in polite company.

George W. Bush...

Next to lists of emergency phone numbers tacked to the inside door of her kitchen cabinets, Jennifer Grant has posted prayers to remind her that parenthood is both a labor of love and a sacred calling.

Inside the cupboard with the cereal bowls is a prayer from...

When Justin Bieber strode onto the stage of the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on Sunday (Aug. 7) night to accept a Teen Choice Award, he thanked his fans profusely, then quickly turned his attention to something more eternal.

"I wanna say that anything is possible if...

"Music," Ludwig van Beethoven said, "is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

Transcending dogma, creed, culture and even language, music has the power to elevate the soul as well as the mind. It's the source of a type of faith as often discovered outside...

Without the help of special 3-D glasses or Pixar-style bells and whistles, the new "Winnie the Pooh" film succeeds in transporting its audience to a place every bit as magical, where the hidden treasure is found in simple pleasures and sacred friendship.

At a throw-back...

When ABC recently announced it had ordered a season's worth of a new show based on the novel "Good Christian Bitches," I'm not sure which surprised me more -- that the network planned to run a show with the word "Christian" in the title, or the derogatory "bitch."

Poet W.H. Auden once described cathedrals as "Luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone."

It's an evocative image and a reminder that a cathedral, no matter how grand, is meant to be a vehicle of sorts -- elevating the souls of...

What would the Dude do?

That is the central spiritual, if not theological, concern of the Church of the Latter-day Dude, the totally not-fake religion based on the ethos of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, the slacker savior of Joel and Ethan Coen's 1998 cult masterpiece "The Big Lebowski."

Organized (or...

When a friend sent me a link to an article titled, "Michele Bachmann, evangelical feminist?" I figured it would lead to a satirical piece from "The Onion."

But the link took me to a serious article on a reputable news site. Reading the headline again, I answered its question aloud:...