Sitio oficial del Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos. Escuchar canto gregoriano. Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant. Welcome to St Michaels Parish Lane Cove. Keep updated with the Latest News, Mass Times and more at St Michaels Parish Lane CoveIn Search Of The Sacred. Rita Mc. Clains spiritual journey began in Iowa, where she grew up in the fundamentalist world of the Pentecostal Church. What she remembers most about that time are tent meetings and an overwhelming feeling of guilt. In her 2. 0s she tried less doctrinaire Protestantism. Inner Path specializes in meditation accessories, yoga supplies, the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda and other spiritual teachers. Chant is an album of Gregorian chant, performed by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos at their monastery in Burgos, Spain. The music was recorded perhaps. That, too, proved unsatisfying. By the age of 2. 7, Mc. Clain had rejected all organized religion. I really felt like a pretty wounded Christian, she says. For the next 1. 8 years, she sought inner peace only in nature, through rock climbing in the mountains or hiking in the desert. That seemed enough. Then, six years ago, in the aftermath of an emotionally draining divorce, Mc. Clains spiritual life blossomed. Just as she had once explored mountains, she began scouting the inner landscape. She started with Unity, a metaphysical church near her Marin County, Calif., home. It was a revelation, light years away from the Old Testament kind of thing I knew very well from my childhood. The next stop was Native American spiritual practices. Then it was Buddhism at Marin Countys Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where she has attended a number of retreats, including one that required eight days of silence. These disparate rituals melded into a personal religion, which Mc. Clain, a 5. 0 year old nurse, celebrates at an ever changing altar in her home. Right now the altar consists of an angel statue, a small bottle of sacred water blessed at a womens vigil, a crystal ball, a pyramid, a small brass image of Buddha sitting on a brass leaf, a votive candle, a Hebrew prayer, a tiny Native American basket from the 1. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now. Maybe its a critical mass of baby boomers in the contemplative afternoon of life. Or anxiety over the coming millennium. Or a general dissatisfaction with the materialism of the modern world. For these reasons and more, millions of Americans are embarking on a search for the sacred in their lives. Not all have a journey as extreme as Rita Mc. Clains. Some are returning to the religions of their childhoods, finding new meaning in old rituals. Others look for wisdom outside their own cultures, mixing different traditions in an individualistic stew. The seekers fit no particular profile. They include Wall Street investment bankers who spend their lunch hours in Bible study groups, artists rediscovering religious themes, fitness addicts whove traded aerobics classes for meditation and other spiritual exercises. No matter what path they take, the seekers are united by a sincere desire to find answers to profound questions, to understand their place in the cosmos. Living in a secular world is like living in an astrodome with a roof over the top, says Roy Larson of Northwestern Universitys new Center for Religion and the News Media. The temperature is always 7. Even in a place that holds 7. You need to breathe some fresh air. Americans have always been a religious people, of course. Even during the past several decades, when it seemed like the prevailing culture was overwhelmingly irreverent and secular, legions of the faithful filled pews every Sunday. But for baby boomers in particular, spirituality was off the radarscope. Instead, as a generation, boomers embraced political activism, careerism, even marathon running, with an almost religious zeal. Now its suddenly OK, even chic, to use the S words soul, sacred, spiritual, sin. In a Newsweek Poll, a majority of Americans 5. And a third of all adults report having had a mystical or religious experience. Check out the barometers in the cultural marketplace. Bookstores are lined with spiritual missives. Music stores feature best selling Gregorian chants. Hollywood salts its scripts with divine references and afterlife experiences. Want to give that special seeker on your winter solstice list a crystal Be sure to wrap it in angels gift paper. These are amazing times Pope John Paul IIs new book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, tops the best seller list, beating out Faye Resnicks raunchy tell all about Nicole Brown Simpson. James Redfields spiritual novel, The Celestine Prophecy, is at the top of the fiction list. In the music world, Motown no longer has the monopoly on soul. Since March, Angel Records has sold 2. CD Chant by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. The Beastie Boys included a Buddhist rap on their last album gospel rap is competing with the usual misogynistic fare page 6. Somethings going on, and people want to talk about it. Celebrities as different as tennis star Andre Agassi and playwright David Mamet tell interviewers how theyve found God in their lives. Kathleen Norriss 1. Dakota A Spiritual Geography, is on the paperback best seller list. She has received 3,0. Newsweek publishes a story about Czech President Vaclav Havels speech on the search for meaning, and readers call for weeks, wanting to describe their own journeys. Politicians, like Newt Gingrich, have pushed school prayer onto the national agenda. Talk shows, such as Oprah, have featured spirituality. Physicists debate the spiritual significance of quantum mechanics page 5. Attendance at religious retreats has skyrocketed. The Abbey of Gethsemani, 4. Louisville, Ky., is booked through the end of April. For people who are really insistent, says Brother Patrick Hart, we say well put you on standby, just like on the airlines. Courses and lectures with spiritual themes are drawing standing room only crowds. Interface, a holistic education center in Cambridge, Mass., offers 7. This fall, 2,0. 00 people showed up for a conference on body and soul featuring such heavy hitting speakers as Dr. Dean Ornish, who advocates a diet cum spiritual cure for heart disease, and Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles. People are really hungry for this, says program planner Anne Arsenault. Theyre hungry for meaning in life. For entrepreneurs with a keen sense of the Zeitgeist, this is an obvious opportunity. Deja Vu Tours, based in Berkeley, Calif., specializes in spiritual adventure travel. It boasts that its clients have seen the sun rise at Stonehenge, visited the Room of the Spirits at the Dalai Lamas Monastery, participated in rituals led by a shaman at Machu Picchu, sung a greeting to the Kumari, the Living Goddess of Nepal, and received baptisms in the Jordan River. Susan Hull Bostwick, who started Deja Vu Tours 1. There are spiritual seekers of all ages, but baby boomers are at the head of the march. Wade Clark Roof, a professor of religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says that as the boomers enter their 4. China can keep them young forever. As our bodies fall apart, as they weaken and sag, it speaks of mortality, says Roof, author of A Generation of Seekers The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. Boomers, says Roof, are at a point in their lives where they sense the need for spirituality, but they dont know where to get it. Another trigger parenthood, and the desire to give children a moral and spiritual foundation. The boomers search is eclectic, as befits children of a skeptical age. Each generation is trained to look at spirituality differently, says Rabbi Robert N. Levine, 4. 3, of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan. Our generation participated in civil rights and Vietnam marches. Now we want to have a dialogue. That dialogue can take place within a traditional denomination.