* Activities for celebrating secular and sacred seasons of the year * For use in churches, schools, camps, at home Many of our experiences in life happen when several generations are together- at church, at home, in our communities. Holidays and family events are times for celebration, learning, rituals, food, and fun. This edition of Faithful Celebrations focuses on the months of January and February, when secular holidays can become times to think about how we live out the gospel message in celebrating national holidays with more than a day off from school or sending a greeting card. Each event to be celebrated includes key ideas; a cluster of activities to experience the key ideas; a list of materials needed; full instructions for implementation; background history and information; music; art; recipes; and prayer resources to use in a small, intimate, or large multi-generational group. For children, youth, adults, or any combination of ages, any of these activities can take place in any setting. Faithful Celebrations: Making Time for God in Winter includes New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Super Bowl Sunday, Valentine's Day, and Snow days.

Tells the diverse story of four congregations in New York City as they navigated the social and political changes of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. In the fifty years after the Constitution was signed in 1787, New York City grew from a port town of 30,000 to a metropolis of over half a million residents. This rapid development transformed a once tightknit community and its religious experience. Including four churches belonging in various forms to the Church of England, that in some form still thrive today. Rapid urban and social change connected these believers in unity in the late colonial era. As the city grew larger, more impersonal, and socially divided, churches reformed around race and class-based neighborhoods. In Four Steeples over the City Streets, Kyle T. Bulthuis examines the intertwining of these four famous institutions-Trinity Episcopal, John Street Methodist, Mother Zion African Methodist, and St. Philip's (African) Episcopal-to uncover the lived experience of these historical subjects, and just how religious experience and social change connected in the dynamic setting of early Republic New York. Drawing on a wide range of sources including congregational records and the unique histories of some of the churches leaders, Four Steeples over the City Streets reveals how these city churches responded to these transformations from colonial times to the mid-nineteenth century. Bulthuis also adds new dynamics to the stories of well-known New Yorkers such as John Jay, James Harper, and Sojourner Truth. More importantly, Four Steeples over the City Streets connects issues of race, class, and gender, urban studies, and religious experience, revealing how the city shaped these churches, and how their respective religious traditions shaped the way they reacted to the city. This book is a critical addition to the study and history of African American activism and life in the ever-changing metropolis of New York City.

Why go to church? What happens in church and why does it matter? The Empty Church presents fresh answers to these questions by creating an interdisciplinary conversation between theater directors and Christian theologians. This original study expands church beyond the sanctuary and into life. Shannon Craigo-Snell emphasizes the importance of liturgical worship in forming Christians as characters crafted by the texts of the Bible. This formation includes shaping how Christians know, in ways that involve the intellect, emotions, body, and will. Each chapter brings a theater director into dialogue with a theologian, teasing out the ways performance enriches hermeneutics, anthropology, and epistemology. Thinkers like Karl Barth, Peter Brook, Delores Williams, and Bertolt Brecht are examined for their insights into theology, worship, and theater. The result is a compelling depiction of church as performance of relationship with Jesus Christ, mediated by Scripture, in hope of the Holy Spirit. Liturgical worship, at its best, forms Christians in patterns of affections. This includes the cultivation of emotion memories influenced by biblical narratives, as well as a repertoire of physical actions that evoke particular affections. Liturgy also encourages Christians to step into various roles, enabling them to make intellectual and volitional choices about what roles to take up in society. Through liturgical worship, the author argues, Christians can be formed as people who hope, and therefore as people who live in expectation of the presence and grace of God. This entails a discipline of emptiness that awaits and appreciates the Holy Spirit. Church performance must therefore be provisional, ongoing, and open to further inspiration.

Best-selling author Richard J. Foster offers a warm, compelling, and sensitive primer on prayer, helping us to understand, experience, and practice it in its many forms-from the simple prayer of beginning again to unceasing prayer. He clarifies the prayer process, answers common misconceptions, and shows the way into prayers of contemplation, healing, blessing, forgiveness, and rest.

Coming to prayer is like coming home, Foster says. "Nothing feels more right, more like what we are created to be and to do. Yet at the same time we are confronted with great mysteries. Who hasn't struggled with the puzzle of unanswered prayer? Who hasn't wondered how a finite person can commune with the infinite Creator of the universe? Who hasn't questioned whether prayer isn't merely psychological manipulation after all? We do our best, of course, to answer these knotty questions but when all is said and done, there is a sense in which these mysteries remain unanswered and unanswerable . . . At such times we must learn to become comfortable with the mystery."

Foster shows how prayer can move us inward into personal transformation, upward toward intimacy with God, and outward to minister to others. He leads us beyond questions to a deeper understanding and practice of prayer, bringing us closer to God, to ourselves, and to our community.

Incredible stories and the inspiration behind the most popular Christmas songs, including Jingle Bells, Mary, Did You Know?, The First Noel, O Holy Night, Silver Bells, and White Christmas. Ringing along with the chimes in Silver Bells. Laughing along with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Holding a candle while singing a chorus of Silent Night. The songs that you've sung since you were a child continue to bring Christmas to life each year. Now, you'll learn how your favorite Christmas songs came to be. Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas reveals the surprising and fascinating origins of secular and religious Christmas hits. Here are spiritual insights, heartwarming stories, and tales of the humble men and women of decades past who wrote what remain the most beloved Christmas songs today. Discover how: Iconic artists such as Judy Garland and Nat King Cole were influenced and inspired to record instant classics like Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and The Christmas Song. God-inspired words given to an unlikely musician became Mary, Did You Know? One of the oldest Christmas songs still sung today, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, changed from a hymn sung in Latin only in Catholic masses to a carol embraced by every Christian denomination in the world. The songs of Christmas reveal the true joy to be found in the celebration of Christ's birth and the spirit of the season that is anticipated each year all over the world. These stories will warm your heart and bring extra significance to the carols you sing each December.

Mexican statues and paintings of figures like the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Lord of Chalma are endowed with sacred presence and the power to perform miracles. Millions of devotees visit these miraculous images to request miracles for health, employment, children, and countless everyday matters. When requests are granted, devotees reciprocate with votive offerings. Collages, photographs, documents, texts, milagritos, hair and braids, clothing, retablos, and other representative objects cover walls at many shrines. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico studies such petitionary devotion-primarily through extensive fieldwork at several shrines in Guanajuato, Jalisco, Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, and Zacatecas. Graziano is interested in retablos not only as extraordinary works of folk art but: as Mexican expressions of popular Catholicism comprising a complex of beliefs, rituals, and material culture; as archives of social history; and as indices of a belief system that includes miraculous intercession in everyday life. Previous studies focus almost exclusively on commissioned votive paintings, but Graziano also considers the creative ex votos made by the votants themselves. Among the many miraculous images treated in the book are the Cristo Negro de Otatitlan, Nino del Cacahuatito, Senor de Chalma, and the Virgen de Guadalupe. The book is written in two voices, one analytical to provide an understanding of miracles, miraculous images, and votive offerings, and the other narrative to bring the reader closer to lived experiences at the shrines. This book appears at a moment of transition, when retablos are disappearing from church walls and beginning to appear in museum exhibitions; when the artistic value of retablos is gaining prominence; when the commercial value of retablos is increasing, particularly among private collectors outside of Mexico; and when traditional retablo painters are being replaced by painters with a more commercial and less religious approach to their trade. Graziano's book thus both records a disappearing tradition and charts the way in which it is being transformed.

The great mystery of the human condition and God's action to save us is too vast to be contained in a single image or one kind of language. The Bible uses a kaleidoscope of word pictures of human life and God's intervention in it. Exploring God's Mercy is a short course for small groups that focuses on five classic images of the Christian gospel which are woven through scripture and the Christian tradition: Lost and finding the way Trapped and set free Sick in soul and healed In turmoil and being at peace Barren and becoming fruitful Each chapter explores one of these images through stories, popular culture, biblical material and Christian tradition, supported by YouTube clips and further film suggestions. Discussion starters, questions, prayers and a leader's guide are included making this ideal for Lent groups or as an introductory course to the Christian faith at any time of the year.

The aim of this course is to explore the Beatitudes, which encapsulate the teaching of Jesus. Jesus himself lived out the Beatitudes in his earthly life and called his followers to do the same. This five-session group study course encourages Christians to examine their lifestyle in the light of Jesus' radical teaching and to live out these kingdom values - now. This course takes a two-pronged approach to studying the Beatitudes, deepening our understanding of Jesus and challenging our deepest personal values; and helping us understand how they should impact on our approach to major global issues, such as environmental pollution and the deep-seated hostilities and injustices that afflict our world. Each session of the course contains enough material for 90 minutes and includes guidelines for group study, with full background notes for leaders, interactive activities, including questions for group discussion and multimedia suggestions, a wide range of suggestions for Lenten prayer and meditation, and a challenge to practical action.

A Hermeneutics of Contemplative Silence: Paul Ricoeur, Edith Stein, and the Heart of Meaning brings together the work of Paul Ricoeur and Edith Stein and locates the role of silence in the creation of meaning. Michele Kueter Petersen argues that human being is language and silence. Contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable human being whereby a shared world of meaning is constituted and created. The analysis culminates with the claim that a hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests a deeper level of awareness as a poetics of presencing a shared humanity. The term "awareness" refers to five crucial levels of meaning-creating consciousness that are ingredients in the practice of contemplative silence. Contemplative awareness includes both the experience and the understanding of the proper ordering of relational realities. The practice of contemplative silence is a spiritual and ethical activity that aims at transforming reflexive consciousness. Inasmuch as it leads to openness to new motivation and intention for acting in relation to others, contemplative awareness elicits movement through the ongoing exercise of rethinking those relational realities in and for the world. The texts of Ricoeur and Stein reveal a contemplative discourse of praise and beauty for capable human beings whose actions and suffering respond to word and silence.

Coronations are the grandest of all state occasions. This is the first comprehensive in-depth study of the music that was performed at British coronations from 1603 to the present, encompassing the sixteen coronations that have taken place in Westminster Abbey and the last two Scottish coronations. Range describes how music played a crucial role at the coronations and how the practical requirements of the ceremonial proceedings affected its structure and performance. The programme of music at each coronation is reconstructed, accompanied by a wealth of transcriptions of newly discovered primary source material, revealing findings that lead to fresh conclusions about performance practices. The coronation ceremonies are placed in their historical context, including the political background and the concept of invented traditions. The study is an invaluable resource not only for musicologists and historians, but also for performers, providing a fascinating insight into the greatest of all Royal events.

An alarming number of Christians have been fed the

notion that our God is a mean and angry god. Nothing

could be further from the truth. In fact, Larry Huch suggests

that God's eyes are constantly searching "to and fro

throughout the whole earth" (2 Chronicles 16:9), looking

for someone to heal, someone to bless, someone to prosper,

and someone to favor.

In his new book, Unveiling Ancient Biblical Secrets, Huch

reveals God's ancient blessings for your life, such as:

the hundredfold breakthrough in the parable of the seed

the secret of prayer revealed in Jacob's ladder

the protective power of the mezuzah

Purim's miracle for turning your life story around

biblical faith for the last days

God's covenant of success

God's power multiplied in your life with the four cups of

Communion

By understanding and tapping into these timeless truths in

the Torah, Christians can rediscover the destiny that God

intends for His people. We were not meant to live lives

of empty religious ritua

What is it like in practice to come close to the presence of God? Are there words which can, in some way, explain the nature of that experience? In this compelling study, Paul Murray draws attention to both the wisdom and lived experience of those men and women who knew, at first hand, of the light and fire of which they speak. Murray demonstrates how important and relevant for us today are the writings of authors such as Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, and Teresa of Avila. To the often bewildered hearts and minds of our generation, the writings of these remarkable men and women speak with a unique authority.

Christianity Today's Book of the Year Award of Merit What happens when a diverse church glorifies the global God? We live in a time of unprecedented intercultural exchange, where our communities welcome people from around the world. Music and media from every culture are easily accessible, and our worship is infused with a rich variety of musical and liturgical influences. But leading worship in multicultural contexts can be a crosscultural experience for everybody. How do we help our congregations navigate the journey? Innovative worship leader Sandra Maria Van Opstal is known for crafting worship that embodies the global, multiethnic body of Christ. Likening diverse worship to a sumptuous banquet, she shows how worship leaders can set the table and welcome worshipers from every tribe and tongue. Van Opstal provides biblical foundations for multiethnic worship, with practical tools and resources for planning services that reflect God's invitation for all peoples to praise him. When multiethnic worship is done well, the church models reconciliation and prophetic justice, heralding God's good news for the world. Enter into the praise of our king, and let the nations rejoice!

Many Christians go on pilgrimage, whether to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago, or some other destination, but few think hard about it from the perspective of their faith. This book fills that gap, looking at the biblical and theological elements in pilgrimage and asking how we could do pilgrimage differently. A Exploring the current resurgence of pilgrimage from a Christian viewpoint, this book seeks to articulate a theology of pilgrimage for today. Examination of pilgrimage in the Old and New Testaments provides a grounding for thinking through pilgrimage theologically. Literary, missiological and sociological perspectives are explored, and the book concludes by examining how such a theology could change our practice of pilgrimage today, raising such questions as how tourism to the Holy Land should reflect the situation in the region today. Pilgrims, students and all interested in contemporary pilgrimage will find this accessible book a valuable articulation of the different elements in a Christian theology of pilgrimage.

The fourth volume of Thomas Merton's complete journals, one of his final literary legacies, springs from three hundred handwritten pages that capture - in candid, lively, deeply revealing passages -- the growing unrest of the 1960s, which Merton witnessed within himself as plainly as in the changing culture around him.

In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and the irresistible pull of social concerns. Precisely when he longs for more solitude, and convinces himself he could not cut back on his writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about the contemporary culture ("the 'world' with its funny pants, of which I do not know the name, its sandals and sunglasses"), war, and the churches role in society.

Thus despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his celebrity and growing concerns for social issues fuel his writings on civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with those who urge him to leave the moral issues to bishops and theologians.

This pivotal volume in the Merton journals reveals a man at the height of a brilliant writing career, marking the fourteenth anniversary of his priesthood but yearning still for the key to true happiness and grace. Here, in his most private diaries, Merton is as intellectually curious, critical, and insightful as in his best-known public writings while he documents his movement from the cloister toward the world, from Novice Master to hermit, from ironic critic to joyous witness to the mystery of God's plan.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, writer and peace activist. His spiritual classics include New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sign of Jonas, Mystics and Zen Masters and The Seven Story Mountain

Pilgrimage was a central feature of medieval English life which affected history, politics, art and literature. The shrines were destroyed during the Reformation and pilgrimage stopped, yet the idea of pilgrimage continued - refashioned - in Protestant theology and in the exploration of the newly discovered world. By reaching beyond the Reformation to explore the transformation of the idea of the pilgrim in Protestant spirituality, this book confronts the religious experience of the English laity over half a millennium. The attractions for pilgrims of journeys to Jerusalem and to Canterbury and other English religious shrines are considered, while the political aspects of pilgrimage are discussed in relation to the architectural, documentary and pictorial evidence for the expression of lay piety in late medieval England. The cult of St Thomas of Canterbury is studied in particular detail, up to the suppression and in the revival of the cult in the sixteenth century.

2022 Catholic Media Association first place award in church professional Presiding over the liturgy takes more than following instructions. Good presiding is artful presiding. It is knowledgeable and inspirational. It faithfully grasps the church's heritage and gives it personal expression. In Ars Celebrandi, Father Paul Turner offers a guide for priests in preparing for and celebrating the Mass. Building on a liturgy which adheres to the liturgical books, Turner examines styles of presiding and reflects on principles that will help the presider to foster active participation of the faithful.

More than a series of rites of passage through the landmarks of growing up and growing old, Jewish and Christian life-cycle rituals give the members of each religious tradition theological and ritualized definitions of what a life should be. In this volume, the fourth in the acclaimed series "Two Liturgical Traditions", eight scholars explore the models of human life implicit in Judaism and Christianity by unraveling and exploring the evolution and current condition of their life-cycle liturgies. The essays presented here emphasize the wholeness of a life as illustrated by the religious metaphors inherent in life-cycle rites. The contributors examine the history and shape of each life-cycle rite - including the rituals and practices associated with birth, adolescence, marriage, sickness, and death - and analyze the theological message that each rite represents.

Anne Fedele offers a comprehensive ethnography of alternative pilgrimages to French Catholic shrines dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene. Drawing on more than three years of extensive fieldwork, she describes how pilgrims from Italy, Spain, Britain, and the United States interpret Catholic figures, symbols, and sites according to spiritual theories and practices derived from the transnational Neopagan movement. Fedele pays particular attention to the life stories of the pilgrims, the crafted rituals they perform, and the spiritual-esoteric literature they draw upon. She examines how they devise their rituals; why this kind of spirituality is increasingly prevalent in the West; and the influence of anthropological literature on the pilgrims. Among these pilgrims, spirituality is lived and negotiated in interaction with each other and with textual sources: Jungian psychology, Goddess mythology, and ''indigenous'' traditions merge into a corpus of theories and practices centered upon the worship of divinities such as the Goddess, Mother Earth, and the sacralization of the reproductive cycle. The pilgrims' rituals present a critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the medical establishment and have critical implications for contemporary discourses on gender. Looking for Mary Magdalene is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in ritual and pilgrimage.

By focusing on the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf -- and powerfully linking it to our lives today -- this comprehensive resource offers a compelling approach to observing Lent that truly prepares worshipers to experience Easter's new hope, new possibilities, and new life. Based on the ancient tradition of the five wounds of Christ, Wounded For Us identifies places where we find ourselves hurting, then connects them to one of the wounds Jesus suffered and explores how Christ's resurrection offers reconciliation and healing. Wounded For Us draws an imaginative analogy between Jesus' wounds and these areas in our lives where we are wounded: * Head (crown of thorns) -- our thoughts * Side (piercing) -- our spirit and emotions * Back (scourging) -- our hopes and dreams * Hands (nails) -- our relationships * Feet (nails) -- our actions With sermon and worship material for Ash Wednesday, the Sundays in Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, Wounded For Us provides a complete package with everything needed for developing meaningful, thematically unified services throughout the Lenten season. Each sermon suggests an action plan that applies the "cure" of the gospel to our wounds, and reproducible outlines that help the congregation focus on the main themes are also included. C. David Hogsett served several congregations in the North Indiana conference of the United Methodist Church during nearly four decades of active ministry. Hogsett holds degrees from Purdue University (B.S. in math), Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology (B.D., S.T.M.), and McCormick Theological Seminary (D.Min.).

A plain language exploration of the theology of worship Professional theological terminology is often inaccessible to the average Christian. A House of Meanings presents liturgical theology in accessible ways, free of technical language. The book is designed for individual reading and structured to be a resource for a series of parish workshops, especially during the Easter season. Chapters conclude with a discussion guide intended to assist parishioners in developing their own sense of the value of worship and its relationship to our daily lives. Dedicated to deepening parishioners' understandings of the Church and how it has both gathered and sent into service to the world, A House of Meanings will be useful not only to congregations, but to seminarians and anyone planning or evaluating worship.

Thomas Csordas's eloquent analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal answers one of the primary callings of anthropology: to stimulate critical reflection by making the exotic seem familiar and the familiar appear strange. Csordas describes the movement's internal diversity and traces its development and expansion across 30 years. He offers insights into the contemporary nature of rationality, the transformation of space and time in Charismatic daily life, gender discipline, the blurring of boundaries between ritual and everyday life, the sense of community forged through shared ritual participation, and the creativity of language and metaphor in prophetic utterance. Charisma, Csordas proposes, is a collective self-process, located not in the personality of a leader, but in the rhetorical resources mobilized by participants in ritual performance. His examination of ritual language and ritual performance illuminates this theory in relation to the postmodern condition of culture.