From the May, 2002 issue of *Touchstone*

Flying High at Trinity by Leon J. Podles

Flying High at Trinity

Trinity Church on Wall Street once contented itself with minor enterprises, such as founding Columbia University. However, this Episcopal parish has launched a new magazine, Spirituality and Health. Jittery passengers (airlines subscribe in bulk) can now calm their nerves by reading “The Unexpected Gifts of Karate,” or “The Art of Somatic Cryptology” or the reflections of ex-monk Thomas Moore on religious romanticism, which “will take me out of this cold, mechanical world and show me the way to spiritual delights and sensual realizations”—attained, Moore notes, by the great religious romantic Oscar Wilde.

Spiritual delights are the focus of Spirituality and Health, which directs its readers to “The Best Spiritual Books of 2000,” including Susan Seddon Boulet: A Retrospective, with “more that 200 reproductions of Boulet’s stunning paintings of unicorns, goddesses and shamanistic figures of intertwined animals and humans.” Or we can be edified by The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O’Reilly. For practical spirituality we have Zen Sex: The Way of Making Love and Tap Dancing in Zen.

But no man is an island, so we should seek in community our spiritual enlightenment. We can attend “A Celtic Horse Experience,” led by the authors of Horse Sense and the Human Heart: What Horses Can Teach Us About Trust, Bonding, Creativity, and Spirituality. For those who are afraid of horses, or perhaps who want to work on their tan, there is dolphin camp: “Are the DOLPHINS calling you? Come to the Florida Keys and embark upon an ultimate transformative vacation! Participants swim and interact with both wild and semi-captive dolphins.” After receiving wisdom from Flipper, one can continue south to “A Spirited Mind/Body Experince [sic] in the Caribbean” aboard the Paradise—“the world’s only smoke-free superliner.”

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Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, has worked as a teacher and a federal investigator, and is president of the Crossland Foundation. He is the author of The Church Impotent (Spence), Sacrilege (Crossland Press), and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine Press). Dr. Podles and his wife have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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