My name is Jack LaValley. Everyday Spiritual Health grew out of questions I have been living with for much of my life.

For many years, I was part of a faith community that offered a comprehensive way of understanding God, human life, history, and our place within it. I spent a substantial part of my adult life inside that world. Over time, some of the convictions that had once seemed settled to me became less certain.

What followed was not a search for another system to replace the old one. If anything, I became more interested in what happens when we resist the urge to replace one set of answers with another.

That interest eventually became Everyday Spiritual Health.

The word spiritual can mean many things. I don’t use it here to describe a particular religion, theology, or set of practices. I’m interested in something more ordinary and perhaps more fundamental. How do we orient ourselves toward being alive? What happens when the explanations that once helped us make sense of things no longer do? How do we live with uncertainty, suffering, meaning, mortality, relationships, and the limits of what we can know?

The essays on this site usually begin there.

Many begin with something quite ordinary. A conversation. A memory. An encounter with another person. Something noticed while walking. An experience from decades ago that unexpectedly returns. I try to stay with these experiences long enough to see what they might reveal without requiring them to produce a lesson.

I don’t write from the position of someone who has figured these things out. I’m interested in what becomes visible when we give some of life’s questions enough room to remain questions.

Everyday Spiritual Health isn’t therapy, coaching, self-help, or a belief system. There is nothing here you are required to accept, practice, or become.

You are welcome simply to read.

And if something you encounter here connects with your own experience, raises a question, prompts a disagreement, or leaves you wanting to say something about it, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

That’s increasingly part of what I hope Everyday Spiritual Health can become. Not only a place where I publish what I’m thinking about, but a place where reflection can sometimes lead to conversation.

Jack LaValley