The history of modern art has generally been understood as a grand leap away from tradition, religion, and conventional norms, yielding decidedly secular art. Yet a majority of the prominent modern artists in every period had strong interests in the spiritual dimension of life, which they expressed in the new art forms they created. The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art challenges the dominant narrative of denial by presenting hundreds of little-known direct statements by scores of leading artists – cited from overlooked historical documentation as well as contemporary interviews – to demonstrate that spirituality, far from being inconsequential in the terrain of modern art, is generative. This overview insightfully presents, for the first time, a chronological survey of the major art movements that weaves together spiritual profiles of numerous leading artists and situates their stories within the cultural context of each period. The result is a significantly expanded understanding of the cultural history of modern art.

Since the early 2000's discoveries in human biology have shown that humans are far more dynamically interrelated -- with other people, with nature, and within the bodymind -- than was supposed by the mechanistic worldview of modernity. This book was the first to demonstrate the coherence among these numerous relational discoveries and to explore their societal implications. Adopting a relational analysis and approach is already changing many fields, including healthcare, education, architecture, and community-based economics. The new relational knowledge derived from the discoveries in Relational Physiology can lead to a more insightful analysis of the crises of modernity and to a creative range of pragmatic alternatives.

The religious connotations of the Virgin Mary were "streamlined" when the Roman Catholic Church modernized itself at Vatican II. Although numerous constructive changes resulted from that global conference, the aesthetic, symbolic, cosmological, and mystical dimensions of Mary's spiritual presence were largely discarded in favor of a more rational version: solely the mother of Jesus and the first Christian. Missing Mary examines the cultural forces of modernity that required such a radical diminution and explores the deep meanings of Mary in her fullness.