Explore cyberspace and your inner spiritual space through these Web sites

Explore cyberspace and your inner spiritual space through these Web sites.

www.christinemoers.blogspot.com: After just a few visits to “Welcome to My Brain,” the blog of a Baptist preacher’s wife, you’ll feel like you know Christine Moers. The former Dallas resident who now lives in Oklahoma writes with honesty and familiarity about sex and depression, homeschooling and weight loss, money and marriage. She doesn’t hesitate to disagree with James Dobson, encourages readers to learn about global warming and extols the virtues of breastfeeding. She sports a small nose ring, encourages her kids to be crafty, and preaches the importance of living within your means. Some of her postings might make some members of her husband’s congregation blush, but you get the idea that she doesn’t care much about what others think. She seems to place more emphasis on how her life aligns with the teachings of Jesus and how she can best honor God.

www.christianspracticingyoga.com: There are all kinds of opinions about Christians practicing yoga. Some view the two as incompatible — there’s no way to separate the Hindu roots from the now-popular Westernized version of yoga. Some Christians have no problem practicing sun salutations or the corpse pose — it’s more a form of exercise than a subscription to an Eastern religion’s discipline. Others assign biblical verses to traditional yoga poses. This site gathers Christians to discuss how meditation and yoga can be integrated into a Christian life. The plurality offers different perspectives, including a Catholic who finds Christlike perspectives in the pain and discipline of yoga and an instructor who uses Scripture to encourage students to be transformed by yoga practice and the Bible.

www.shawlministry.com:Visit this site to learn about a decade-long outreach to those in need of prayer and warmth. The prayer shawl ministry, launched by two New England women in 1998, encourages people to knit or crochet prayer shawls as a spiritual practice and then give the creations to others, perhaps new moms, patients undergoing cancer treatment or someone who’s grieving. The site explains how the ministry began, offers a pattern for the shawls and posts reader-submitted tips. The prayer page includes suggested prayers for when the process is started, when the knitter has doubts, when the shawl is completed and when the shawl is given. Click on “Stories and Inspirations” for heart-warming accounts of what the shawls have meant to creators and recipients.

McClatchy Newspapers