The articles in this issue address five aspects of meaning and spirituality. The concepts of meaning and spirituality are philosophically linked. The German theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich suggests the word spirit is understood as both the Spirit of the ground-of-being and that spirit which reflects “the unity of life-power and life in meanings”, or in condensed form, the “unity of power and meaning” (Tillich, 1963, p. 22.). Paul Tillich, as well as Viktor Frankl, discuss the term spirit. In German, Geist has two traditional definitions, that of the Divine Spirit with a capital S and the human spirit with a small s. The Divine Spirit refers to God, the human spirit suggests “the presence of what concerns us ultimately, the ground of our being and meaning” (Tillich, 1963, Systematic Theology III, p. 21) Viktor Frankl suggests that the word “spirit” can be understood as transcendence. Thus, there is self-transcendence between persons and Divine transcendence between the individual and God.
In a recent study by Stanford, Ellor, and Oxhandler (unpublished), the researchers found that different generations understand the term spirituality differently. Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation continue to employ a definition of meaning and spirituality that involves God, or for Christians, the Holy Spirit. Younger generations see the spirit as a larger force that is clearly behind interpersonal transcendence. When one considers other world religious traditions, these assumptions are all different.