The Spiritual Edge

In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we meet Sarah Byrne-Martelli, a hospital chaplain who is caring for COVID-19 patients when their families can't visit because she believes no one should die alone.

From The Spiritual Edge, this is the story of how Malcolm X inspired an outspoken Christian girl from Alabama, and how she went on to inspire a national campaign and a fatwa — a religious legal opinion — aimed at persuading the men who control America’s mosques to share space and power. 

For most of her life, Neets’aii Gwich’in leader Sarah James has worked to protect her homelands, including the coastal plain of the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But, now the U.S. government wants to lease some of the area for oil exploration and drilling. In this story from The Spiritual Edge we hear how the Gwich’in tribal government is challenging those plans, which threaten land that they call sacred. 

In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we meet a Palestinian man trying to navigate one of the thorniest conflicts imaginable — whether Palestinians and Israelis can exist peacefully on a landmass barely bigger than the nine-county Bay Area.

Most religions teach people to help those in need. But what happens when that mandate clashes with how the government views the law? In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we hear how federal prosecutors cracked down on volunteers providing aid on the border. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many Americans into sudden intimacy with difficult feelings: anxiety, fear, and grief. In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we get to know a North Carolina woman whose Buddhist practice has helped her navigate fear and grief.

In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we'll meet Al and Andi Tauber, married singer-songwriters who direct music for a congregation of urban Mennonites in Chicago. Like their Amish and Quaker spiritual cousins, Mennonites favor the simple life, but they see God in city life too. For the Taubers, this means taking their faith and music to the streets.

In a new story from The Spiritual Edge, we meet two Catholic nuns who, after decades of work with immigrant detainees, still aren’t slowing down. Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy say their age — one is 85, the other is 90 — is irrelevant when there is so much need. They attend rallies and prayer vigils, meet with immigrants in detention centers — and when they see an opportunity, press for legislation that will bring more humanity to a system where it can be lacking.

In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we meet a Honduran Catholic priest who speaks up on behalf of his country’s most vulnerable people. His activism over the airwaves, in his writings and speeches places him in the crosshairs of a government that has killed its opponents, including this priest’s friends and colleagues.

In a new series from The Spiritual Edge, we hear from a former Israeli soldier who questions the violence he perpetrated towards Palestinians, and what it means to be Jewish if he’s no longer a Zionist.

Architecture has the power to transform. A building can make us feel joy or sadness, powerful or weak. 

It’s not always easy to pass down family traditions, especially when they don’t match mainstream American culture. But that’s what Maria Sanchez and Roberto Vargas are trying to do. For both, Danza Azteca traditions have been important for honoring their Mexican and Nicaraguan cultural heritage. The couple sat down with their children, ages 12 and 14, for a talk about ethnic identity and why Danza is so important to them.

Our ongoing series The Spiritual Edge occasionally spotlights stories about how people have found their own personal religious beliefs. Today’s story profiles an Uber driver named Oscar from Napa. He didn’t grow up particularly religious, but during a months-long incarceration, he found the Bible that would change his life.

This story originally aired in May of 2015. 

Islam has a rich artistic heritage of architecture, design, music, painting, and poetry. Muslim poets like Rumi and Hafez are famous for a depth and beauty that defies time. Today, that poetic tradition is still strong. It's kept alive in what many may perhaps consider an unlikely place—urban America, through the genre of hip hop.

This story originally aired in 2015. 

Through much of their history, Sunni and Shia Muslims have lived peacefully together in countries like Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. But since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, sectarian conflict has escalated in the region. Here in the Bay Area,  around 75% of Muslims identify as Sunni, just four percent identify as Shia.

Visiting the Bay Area from Honduras, human rights activist Ismael Moreno stopped by the KALW studio to speak about root causes beneath the exodus that is pushing a growing number of Hondurans out of their home country.

A crowd of about 60 people sit scattered in the pews of St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. They sing “Caminando” — translated as “Walking,” in English, a nod to the millions of Mexicans and Central Americans who have journeyed to the United States in search of better lives.

Tracy Grubbs grew up fascinated, curious and also afraid of death. Her curiosity, plus her interest in Buddhism led her to volunteer at the Zen Hospice Project, a San Francisco center for the dying supported by the Buddhist community. Grubbs spoke with her colleague Lisa Messano.

If you’re familiar with Black churches, you know that they’re lively and uplifting places. That’s how San Francisco native Yvette Flunder remembers hers.

The San Francisco Rapid Response Network hotline, (415) 200-1548, supports people faced with imminent deportation or immigration issues, and is part of a wave of regional support for immigrants living in the Bay Area.

You can get a full list of rapid-response hotlines for the greater Bay Area and adjacent regions at the end of this article. This story originally aired in March of 2017, and has been updated online. 

At most schools, band practice, sports, drama and the chess club are the options that kids choose from for their after-school activities. But in 2016, students at Point Defiance Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington, also had the opportunity to join an After School Satan Club.

Western medicine once shunned alternative treatments like acupuncture, acupressure or the Indian system of Ayurveda. But the field of medicine is now taking them more seriously.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, art is much more than just decoration. Small, elaborate paintings known as icons portray Christianity’s most famous persons, and are used as tools for prayer.

If you had to hole up somewhere for months, or even years, what would you need?

Frank Hatch lived with HIV for more than 20 years, only to be diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer in 2010. For comfort and guidance, he turned to his Buddhism practice. And then, with encouragement from his nephew, he decided to do something he never thought he could: a 16-day rafting trip in the Grand Canyon.

Gary Shepherd has spent more than half of his 45 years incarcerated — his entire adult life. In that time he’s become a self-taught scholar and a self-described spirit warrior, putting into action a deeply-held belief in the power of altruism and cooperation. All of this springs from Shepherd’s study of evolution. It’s made him what he calls an “evolutionary.”

To forgive is not easy. The brain is wired to repeat offending moments over and over again, and our bodies — they’re programmed to react. Still, Fred Luskin, a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project says the effort to overcome anger is worth it. 

About 20% of American Muslims are converts — people who didn’t grow up with the religion and often don’t have any cultural ties.

When Miguel Prats revs the engine of his Harley Davidson, it might sound angry to some — but not to him.