I’m afraid Gus at A Pagan’ Blog mistook my thoughts on his “spirituality and buying local” for criticism.  Quite the contrary, I was admiring and agreeing with his insight on spiritual connection coming from the world around us – not in terms of what we buy or what we have, but who we are within our communities, on our planet, and in relationship to others.  I agree that that idea can, does, and should translate into buying local whenever possible.

What I was wondering about is whether it starts to feel like a luxury during hard economic times to take that spiritual connectedness with us into the marketplace.  That’s not to say it’s ever a good idea to set aside deep spiritual principles for material reasons, but I just wondered if Beliefnet readers are struggling with it.

Also, I’d love to hear readers’ thoughts on how to define spirituality, and the process by which we decide that something is “spiritual” as opposed to smart, responsible, joyful, etc.