Rabbi Paul Cohen continues Spiritual Journeys series

Paul Cohen, a feminist theologian, pastoral minister and social activist from Berkeley, Calif., will discuss A Catholic Feminist Spiritual Path at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 16, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, at Bates College. The public is invited to attend this Spiritual Journeys lecture without charge. Call 207-786-8272 for more information.

Redmont is the author of the critically acclaimed books Generous Lives: American Catholic Women Today (1992), personal interviews with more than a hundred Catholic women, ages 17 through 90, and When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life (1999). In an introduction to the second book, Redmont writes: “It is meant to offer an experience of hospitality, just as I believe that God extends to human beings a divine and inexhaustible welcome: the door is always open, the table always set, the arms flung wide, outstretched.” According to the Associated Press, the book “describes the inner adventures of hundreds of ordinary people she spoke with, a spiritual mosaic, including mellow Californians, Benedictine monks, Zen practitioners, urban professionals and small-town Midwesterners.”

The first woman Chaplain at St. Paul’s University Catholic Center in Madison, Wis., Redmont was the social justice minister at the Paulist Center in Boston, the executive director of the Boston Region of the National Conference (founded as the National Conference of Christians and Jews) and has been involved in dialogue among Jews, Christians and Muslims. She has written articles on religious spirituality for The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal.

Born in France to American parents, Redmont was first educated in France, where she received her BaccalaurŽat, and then in the United States, where she earned a B.A. from Oberlin and an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School. After 15 years in the Boston area, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1995 to begin her doctoral studies at the Graduate Theological Union.

Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain at Bates, the Spiritual Journeys lecture series features speakers from a variety of traditions who tell the stories of their spiritual awakening and development. Speakers are invited to explore how they experience a sense of the holy in their everyday lives, how their perspectives and disciplines have shaped that sacred experience and how they understand religion as a resource or an obstacle to the life of the soul. Speakers may also address the political and social consequences of their spirituality.

Next in the Spiritual Journeys series will be Richard L. Wylie, on “Don’t Ask Why, Just Ask for Help: A Spiritual Journey of a Grieving Parent,” at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 25, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, at Bates College.