From the bits and pieces of Oprah's "Belief" series that I have seen, it looks to be a beautifully produced exploration of religion and spirituality as it plays out in the lives of ordinary people from a variety of cultures and traditions. The episode I viewed tonight had the story of a Moroccan boy who is memorizing all eighty-thousand words of the Koran. Another story featured an Australian physician who walked the Camino de Santiago, and discovered a resurgence of purpose and meaning that had left his life decades earlier.

The series does not downplay the capacity for religion to be implicated in disagreement and violence, but focuses on the role of religion and spirituality where they are part of positive developments for individuals and their communities. The show's epigram is, "See the world through someone else's soul."

In the story of the man who hikes the Camino, his pilgrimage seems to have restored his ability to care and to love. The tears he cried along the way had the markings of tears someone might cry when they are beginning to heal from deep trauma--in this case, the trauma of being in dis-relationship to one's own life. The window into this man's healing provoked me to think about how difficult it is to judge another person's deep life perspective, especially as that perspective manifests in particular expressions that might be described as spiritual or religious. One person's medicine may be meaningless or even repugnant to another. In some cases, at least, I'm sure it's because the one making the judgment has never suffered from the sickness for which that particular medicine appears to be the agent of healing.