Hanukkah on the River

Jews will soon be celebrating Hanukkah, the eight-day festival of lights (December 24-January 1). Passages in the Talmud direct Jews to “publicize the miracle” of Hanukkah. We visited San Antonio, Texas, where the Jewish community holds an annual Hanukkah on the River celebration. Rabbi Chaim Block, executive director of the city’s Chabad Center for Jewish Life & Learning, explained how members of the community fulfill the requirement to “publicize the miracle” with boat parades, children’s workshops, and menorah lighting. “It’s about bringing light into the darkness that surrounds us as we move through our daily lives,” says Rabbi Block.

Photos by Noelle Serper.

Christmas Music Tells the Story

With the Advent season underway, correspondent Kim Lawton looks at how central music is to the celebration of Christmas. She talks with singer/songwriter Amy Grant, who says Christmas music allows people “to feel the presence of hope,” and to Wesley Theological Seminary professor Eileen Guenther, who says that for Christians it is the songs that “embody the meaning of Christmas.”

Packing Meals for the Hungry

Churches across the country frequently take part in a special project for the charity Stop Hunger Now by sending non-perishable meals to children in poverty-stricken areas of the world. We visited Grace Community Church in Arlington, Virginia, where senior pastor John Slye said of those who were packing the meals, “Instead of hearing a sermon, they come here and be the sermon.”

The Singing Monks of Norcia

In the Italian town where St. Benedict was born, Benedictine monks led by Father Cassian Folsom, an American, gather nine times daily to worship God with Gregorian chants and prayer. Their singing has been recorded and is now a chart-topping album, allowing others outside the walls of the monastery to experience the music and devotions of monastic life.

Listen to some of the music from the Monks of Norcia’s album Benedicta.

Affordable Heart Surgery

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, a heart surgeon in India, runs a network of for-profit hospitals that perform world-class operations at a small fraction of what they would cost in the U.S. He is driven by his belief that even the most sophisticated surgery should be available to the world’s poorest people, and he says that “if a solution is not affordable, it is not a solution. It’s pointless if we talk about huge developments in cardiac surgery or a brain operation or complex cancer surgery if [the] common man cannot afford it.”

Laughter Yoga

A growing new spiritual practice combines the breathing techniques of yoga with laughter. Practitioners say it helps them achieve joy and spiritual well-being. At a laughter yoga session at Washington National Cathedral, we talk with instructor Diane Cohen, who says laughter yoga releases “that inner essence that we don’t always let out.”