The Taft Talks speaker series continued with Dr. Lisa Miller, who guided the community through an exploration of what spirituality can mean, what forms it can take, the role it can play in each of our lives, and the importance of spiritual health. In addition to her Morning Meeting talk, Dr. Miller met with community members in classrooms and smaller group gatherings.⁠ She will return to Taft for a virtual visit with parents on February 27^th at noon Eastern.

“Parenting is hard, and spirituality is a tough topic to tackle with fewer resources if you don’t have a handle on it yourself,” Miller notes. “This is the question so many parents feel with such great urgency: What should I do and how should I do it?”

Dr. Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain. She is a full professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology and has held over a decade of joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical School. Her innovative research has been published in more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including Cerebral Cortex, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. ⁠
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A graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Miller is editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality (Editions 1 & 2), founding co-editor-in-chief of the APA journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice, an elected Fellow of The American Psychological Association (APA) and the two-time President of the APA Society for Psychology and Spirituality. Dr. Miller speaks and consults around The Awakened Brain and The Spiritual Child for the US Military, businesses (including tech, finance, HR and sales), personal development, faith-based organizations, schools and universities, and for mental health and wellness initiatives.  

Dr. Miller’s visit to Taft was part of the 2024-25 “Taft Talks” speaker series. Each school year, the Taft community engages with a guiding question through an all-school read, community conversations, Morning Meeting talks, and discussions with outside speakers. This year, the guiding question is How do we know another person? The conversation continues on February 20^th with Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., New York Times Bestselling Author & James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University.