Rev John R Mabry Author, Editor & Translator

Rev. John R. Mabry, PhD, directs the interfaith spiritual direction certificate program at the Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley and is adjunct faculty in the pastoral ministry program at Santa Clara University. A United Church of Christ minister, he is pastor of Grace North Church in Berkeley, California. He is the author of several books on spiritual direction and spirituality, including Faithful Generations: Effective Ministry across Generational Lines. Dan Mendelsohn Aviv, PhD, has been engaged in Jewish learning as an educator, lecturer, professor, and published scholar for almost twenty years. Having spent three years creating an alternative model for informal education, he recently returned to his greatest passion, classroom instruction. He is also an itinerant blogger at http://thenextjew.com, an inchoate podcaster, MacBook zealot, and most important, a proud spouse and father of three. Måns Broo, PhD, is senior lecturer at the Department of Comparative Religion, Åbo Akademi University, Finland. His research interests include Caitanya Vaishnava ritual practices, modern middle-class Hinduism, and issues of agency and identity within modern yoga practices. He is also editor of the award-winning Finnish yoga magazine Ananda. Rev. Cathleen Cox, MAT, MDiv, is a Unitarian Universalist minister and interfaith spiritual director. Her ministry encompasses both a private practice serving individuals and life partners and an outreach ministry exploring best practices for spiritually grounded growth and development in congregations, religious communities, and service-oriented organizations nationwide. Her passion is companioning others in the creation of joyful, meaning-centered lives and work that offer our best gifts in service to the world. Her community ministry is affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. Contact her at http://www.revcat.net. Ervad Soli P. Dastur was born as the last of eleven children in the small village of Tarapur, India, to a priestly family from Udwada. Soli was admitted to the M. F. Cama Athornan Institute boarding school to complete his priestly studies as well as high school. During his nine years at the boarding school, Soli completed all the requirements for becoming Navar and Martab and was initiated as a priest in the Holy Iranshah Atash Behram in Udwada. He had to also pass the final examination of Saamel required by all initiated priests from Udwada to be able to perform all inner and outer liturgies. Soli is fully retired and lives with his wife of forty-eight years, Jo Ann, in University Park, Florida. He performs religious ceremonies all over Florida and the rest of the United States. He is an avid tennis player and dabbles with the computer in his free time. Karen L. Erlichman, MSS, LCSW, provides psychotherapy, spiritual direction, supervision, and mentoring in San Francisco, California. Karen is a core faculty member in the Spiritual Guidance Program at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Starr King School for the Ministry and the Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries. Karen is passionate about creating diverse and welcoming spaces for exploring identity, spirituality, and community. To find out more about Karen, visit her website: http://www.karenerlichman.com. Rev. Ann Llewellyn Evans is a Shinto priestess, trained and licensed by Tsubaki Kami Yashiro, one of the oldest Shinto shrines in Japan. She has helped introduce Shinto to North America through her involvement with Tsubaki Shrine of America in Granite Falls, Washington, through the Bright Woods Spiritual Center in Canada, and through publication of Shinto Norito: A Book of Prayers, an English translation of traditional Shinto prayers. Jonathan Figdor, MDiv, is the Humanist chaplain at Stanford University, where he organizes events and programs for both students and community members from the San Francisco Bay Area. Figdor and his work have been discussed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He received his BA with honors in philosophy from Vassar College and holds a master's degree in Humanism and interfaith dialogue from Harvard Divinity School. A transplanted New Yorker, he lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The Very Reverend John A. Jillions, PhD, has been the chancellor of the Orthodox Church in America since late 2011. Previously, he served parishes in Australia, England, Canada, and the United States. He was a founding director and first principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England, until 2014, and was an associate professor at the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. Siri Kirpal Kaur Khalsa is a practicing Sikh, the founder of an interfaith worship organization, and the author of Sikh Spiritual Practice: The Sound Way to God. She has spoken about Sikhism on televised interfaith panels. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her non-Sikh husband. Rev. Daijaku Judith Kinst, PhD, a priest and teacher in the Soto Zen lineage, is professor of Buddhism and Buddhist pastoral care and director of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Program at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She has taught and led retreats in a variety of settings with teachers from Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions and is co-founder and teacher, with Rev. Shinshu Roberts, of the Ocean Gate Zen Center in Capitola, California. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist and maintains a spiritual guidance practice for people of all faith traditions. Ozgur Koca is an adjunct professor of Islamic studies at Claremont Lincoln University in Claremont, California. His studies focus on Islamic philosophytheology, Islamic mysticism, contemporary religion and science discussion, environmental ethics, interreligious discourse, and contemporary Islamic movements and ideologies. Bruce Lescher, PhD, is adjunct lecturer in Christian spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California. He has been involved in the ministry of spiritual direction for over thirty years. He has also taught courses on spiritual direction at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and St. Michael's College, Burlington, Vermont. Rev. Dr. Jim Lockard is active in the Centers for Spiritual Living organization as a member of the Growth and Development Commission and as the Disaster Relief Coordinator and is currently spiritual leader of the Center for Spiritual Living, Simi Valley, California. His most recent book, Sacred Thinking: Awakening to Your Inner Power, is now out in paperback. He received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his master's degree from the University of Miami. He has served on the board of directors of the Orphan Foundation and on the board of advisors of the Foundation for Self-Esteem ( Jack Canfield). Dr. Jim lives in Oak Park, California, with his wife and stepdaughter. Rev. John R. Mabry, PhD, directs the interfaith spiritual direction certificate program at the Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley and is adjunct faculty in the pastoral ministry program at Santa Clara University. A United Church of Christ minister, he is pastor of Grace North Church in Berkeley, California. He is the author of several books on spiritual direction and spirituality, including Faithful Generations: Effective Ministry across Generational Lines. Fr. Scott McCarthy, DMin, celebrating forty years of pastoral ministry as a Catholic priest in the central California Diocese of Monterey, has experienced a variety of multicultural parochial settings. His travels have taken him to Europe and most of North America, but lately he concentrates his free time visiting tribes in Central and South America, learning their ways and offering spiritual counseling as needed. He is author of Celebrating the Earth: An Earth-Centered Theology of Worship with Blessings, Prayers, and Rituals; All One: A Handbook of Ecumenical and Interfaith Worship; People of the Circle, People of the Four Directions; and Sacraments and Shamans: A Priest Journeys Among Native Peoples. Many years ago he was also adopted by a family of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Tribe of Montana. Moojan Momen, MB, BChir, was born in Iran but was raised and educated in England, attending the University of Cambridge. He has a special interest in the study of the Baha'i Faith and Shi'i (Shia) Islam, both from the viewpoint of their history and their doctrines. His principal publications in these fields include Introduction to Shi’i Islam; The Babi and Baha'i Faiths 1844–1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts; and The Phenomenon of Religion (republished as Understanding Religion). He has contributed articles to Encyclopedia Iranica and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Wendi Momen, PhD, studied economics and international relations at the London School of Economics, of which she is now a governor. She is a founding member of the European Bahá'í Business Forum (ebbf), is a magistrate, and sits on a number of boards relating to social issues including health, the advancement of women, interfaith work, and philanthropy. She is the author of twelve books and a consultant to the Bahá'í Office for the Advancement of Women in the United Kingdom. Richard K. Payne, PhD, is dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, an affiliate of the Graduate Theological Union, and he is a member of the GTU's core doctoral faculty. He is editor of a number of scholarly series on Buddhism, and his ongoing research focuses on tantric Buddhist ritual. He erratically blogs at http://rkpayne.wordpress.com. Susan S. Phillips, PhD, executive director and professor at New College Berkeley (part of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union), is a University of California, Berkeley–trained sociologist as well as a spiritual director and supervisor. She teaches in San Francisco Theological Seminary's Spiritual Direction Institute, supervises New College Berkeley’s Group Spiritual Direction Program, and is the author of Candlelight: Illuminating the Art of Spiritual Direction. James Michael Reeder, LCPC, CPRP, is a Neo-Pagan and a psychotherapist in private practice in Baltimore, Maryland. He holds a master of science in clinical community counseling and a post-graduate certificate in spiritual and existential counseling, both from Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at [email protected] and www.hygeiacounseling.com. Robert A. Rees, PhD, teaches Mormon studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Rees has been active in religious and Mormon studies over the course of his academic career. He has served as the editor of Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought (1970–1976) and as chair of the Sunstone Foundation, and he has published a wide variety of scholarly articles, personal essays, editorials, and poetry. He is the editor of A Readers' Book of Mormon (2008) and Why I Stay: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons (2011). Previously he taught at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz and was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies in the Baltics. Bharat S. Shah, MD, is the author of An Introduction to Jainism and other books to teach Gujarati, English, and Sanskrit. He is also the author of the memoirs Dawn at Midnight (about his wife's liver transplant) and My Life with Panic Disorder. He has served as president of the Gujarati Literary Academy of North America. He specializes in pulmonary medicine, and lives with his wife of more than forty years in Long Island, New York. He Feng Dao Shi (Thom McCombs, DO) is the Ridgecrest Junction Way Teacher and an osteopathic physician in private practice in Northern California. He was Abbot of the Golden Elixir Temple in Issaquah, Washington, from 1992–2001. His teacher was Share K. Lew (Phoenix Mind Way Teacher) of Yellow Dragon Temple in Guangdong, China. They transmit the Dao Dan Pai (Way of the Elixir) and Tai Ji Chir (Great Pivot Ruler) traditions of Daoist cultivation. Dr. Thom also plays classical guitar and is fond of geology. Joshua Snyder taught English at the Pohang University of Science and Technology in North Gyeongsang Province, in the Confucian heartland of South Korea, where he lived for fourteen years. He is an American Catholic who works at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. Rev. N. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, is pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, and an adjunct professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, focusing on spirituality and congregational life. He is author of six books and numerous articles and is a contributor to five books. He is also a therapist, spiritual director, and teacher (www.ngrahamstandish.org). Chief Luisah Teish is an elder in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of the West African diaspora. She is the author of Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals, a women's spirituality classic. She is a mixed-media artist, a ritual design consultant, and a global village activist. Christopher Titmuss, a former Buddhist monk in Thailand and India, teaches awakening and insight meditation around the world. He is the founder and director of the Dharma Facilitators Programme and Mindfulness Training Course (MTC). He gives retreats, participates in pilgrimages (yatras), and leads dharma gatherings. Christopher has been teaching annual retreats in Bodh Gaya, India, since 1975 and has led an annual dharma gathering in Sarnath, India, since 1999. A senior Dharma teacher in the West, he is the author of numerous books, including Light on Enlightenment, Buddhist Wisdom for Daily Living, and Mindfulness for Everyday Living. A campaigner for peace and other global issues, a poet, and a writer, he is also the co-founder of Gaia House, an international retreat center in Devon, England. He lives in Totnes, Devon, England. Among his websites are www.insightmeditation.org and www.christophertitmuss.org.