These are challenging times we are living in. Depression, grief, anger, fear and hate are familiar words to most people. Lack of direction, self-awareness and unfulfilled passion can lead us into a state of mental confusion and emotional stress. When you stray from your life's mission or purpose, you begin to feel out of sync and life looses inspiration and meaning without a purpose, we tend to lack passion and we start to feel like mechanical androids, clocking in and out of the different functions we need to perform in order to survive. Increasing our self-awareness (Both spiritual & worldly) and confidence is not only vital for our emotional and mental states of being, but your physical and spiritual ones as well. Spiritual magazines with good articles are a simple way to come to terms with these feelings. Good spiritual articles will take you upon a journey of self-realization that will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.

We live in a media-dominated society. Most communities publish monthly journal, Magazine or book to provide a valuable springboard for critical reflection to its members. Journals, magazines and books are tools for facilitating critical reflection, but may not necessarily assure critical reflection unless they are specifically structured to do so. They should offer written comments, questions and feedback that will encourage, challenge and essentially deepens the community members thought process.

The pervasive presence of books, magazines and journals in all our lives demands that, as thinking persons, we reflect on certain questions. How do we inculcate the relevance and role of books, magazines or journals in our community? What is our relationship to the content and form of articles and write-ups that we receive through books, magazines, journals published by the community? How do we receive these articles and write-ups and in what manner are we shaped by them? We need to be cognizant of the effect these magazines have on value-formation, societal trends and lifestyle choices on our community members, as well as on the sense of inclusion and exclusion within our larger social environment. These books, magazines or journals should alter our sense perceptions, our behavior patterns and our capacity to change. Ultimately, as knananites our primary concern should be with the spiritual mind - with an alert, awake mind, that is conscious of what is around and within it, which can engage actively with the multiple challenges of life. Understanding our culture and beliefs and learning to put them in their place must therefore become an inextricable part of books, magazines, and journals in our community.

One of the values that we ascribe to books, magazines or journals in our small community is the awareness that it can generate about realities outside the realm of one's own personal experiences. Community journals, books or magazines should be responsible for identifying important issues and news in the community and informing the members of these issues. In this struggle the service to one's community shouldn't be compromised in an attempt to fight for advertising revenues? As a magazine continues to take the approach of putting the community first in its reporting, a bond develops between the magazine and the community over time and then the magazine often finds itself promoting the community more than it had before. This promotion comes from the idea of "Who else is there to make us look good?" but also is done subconsciously as the journal develops a pride in the community. It should provide true representation of the lived experience of the vast numbers of people who partake of it? If we concentrate on advertisements more than the content, then this comes at the expense of 'substance': serious articles and people's issues are either blanked out, relegated to receiving minimal coverage, or simply reported in a populist manner.

 CONTENT

We should publish articles and stories that will motivate and guide people of faith as they apply their beliefs to life crisis. We need to develop at least four main content streams:

 THE RIGHT MIX OF CONTENT

The RIGHT mix of contributions from the community has broken down like this:

This calls for people's initiatives and those of concerned individuals to work from within the community to start a magazine that truly reflects the community its culture and beliefs. To do this, we need to have editors serve on strategy committees, along with learned people, to determine what community members want and how to influence and transform people in the right way. The church and our association, even as it performs the corporal works, must work single mindedly at this critical juncture for a magazine through which the members can realistically live with the expectations expressed in the Rig Veda (1.116): "Let me be lord over this world, with good cattle and good sons; let me see and win a long life-span and enter old age as if going home." 

 Thanks & regards,
--
Vinod Kuriakose
http://vinodk.page.tl

"Justitia fiat coelum ruat"--Let justice be done though the Heavens may fall."