Jack Hinton says fasting involves "introspection and deep contemplation of your own spiritual state."

"For me Reiki is another form of prayer," says spiritual director Lauri Lumby Schmidt. But a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops says this holistic healing practice is "not of God."

How do religious leaders answer questions about God's role in the face of human suffering and tragedy?

At the center of Judaism, writes Yale University scholar and critic David Gelernter, is "a thread of ecstasy…the whole world, space and time and suffering and all, pulled together by triumphant jubilation."

"Once you have empowered a disabled person artistically, you have in fact empowered a disabled person,” says this Georgetown University chaplain who ministers to wounded combat veterans and amputees through the theater.

As Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated, watch this wildly popular singer talk about spiritual searching, Jewish mysticism, and why "my life is not separate from my music."

"It is much easier for God to get through our defenses when we're in a wilderness," says John Lionberger. He leads kayak and canoe trips that he says "get to the transcendent through the physical."

For this Grammy-nominated singer and Seventh-day Adventist pastor, music is both a ministry and "the most powerful way of impressing the human mind with hope." (Originally aired April 10, 2009)

Read and watch more of Kim Lawton's interview with Jeni Stepanek, who says her son, best-selling poet and speaker Mattie Stepanek, had "a universal message--give and you shall receive."

Revisit our November 2007 Web-only essay on the spiritual and moral pain of war. "My sense is that this is a fundamentally religious issue," says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, a combat trauma expert.