"Every time you eat, you give expression to what you think the world ought to be," says Norman Wirzba, a professor of theology, ecology, and rural life at Duke Divinity School.

The vocation of healing is a central theme in the acclaimed novel "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese, who writes that doctors "must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. But it can also deepen the wound."

"Patients require that one-on-one encounter, the Samaritan function of being a physician," says writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese. "I'm convinced that when the physician examines the patient, this is an incredibly important ritual."

Paul Wolpe, director of Emory University's Center for Ethics, says ethics should precede our economic and political judgments and our response to events like the Gulf oil spill.

"The issue here is not BP's behavior, it's not the Obama administration's behavior. It's our behavior. That is where the deepest change has to happen."

A Cleveland-based welding-equipment manufacturer combines its no-layoffs policy with rigorous productivity standards, generous bonuses, and a labor-management culture that respects the dignity of employees.

Comic strip artist Patrick McDonnell has collaborated with spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle on a book about the oneness of all life.

According to the majority, the Christian Legal Society is not entitled to a "preferential exemption." But according to the dissent, the Court's decision in Christian Legal Society v Martinez is "a serious setback for freedom of expression."

Sixteen years after a mostly peaceful transition and elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power, the verdict on South Africa is decidedly mixed.

"Hoping against hope even when things are really rough—that’s what carried us during our days of our struggle, knowing that this is a moral universe.”

"The psalms continue to be wholly relevant to our spiritual quests today," says poet, writer, and former rabbinical student Pamela Greenberg.

Watch more of producer Susan Goldstein's interview with writer Pamela Greenberg, whose new translation of the Book of Psalms is being praised for its literary beauty.

"Blood samples are sacred," says Carletta Tilousi, a Havasupai Indian, and "a major part of our spiritual, cultural, and religious identity." The tribe was recently involved in a dispute that raised ethical questions about research subjects and the use of genetic material.

"As the mind becomes a little more quiet the sacredness of everything, within and without, becomes clear," says Norman Fischer, who has been teaching meditation for more than thirty years.

"There's no such thing as a hermetically sealed religion or culture. We human beings have been talking to each other since the beginning, and every time we talk to each other we change each other."

Watch University of Notre Dame peace studies and political science professor George Lopez, currently a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, comment on the consequences of the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding a federal law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to ...

"The concern I have with a lot of families is that when they adopt they may not always see it as a permanency nowadays, because there’s a lot of availability to disrupt adoptions," says Dr. Ronald Federici, a neuropsychologist.

"As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their depth of spiritual despair," says Dennis Gibbs, an Episcopal chaplain at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles. "In many ways we hold for these inmates what they cannot hold for themselves."

Catholic Charities set up five relief centers in Louisiana fishing villages to respond to the oil spill catastrophe with financial assistance and spiritual support, says Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Is the promise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing being oversold? What ethical and public policy concerns does selling genetic tests directly to the public raise?