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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Religious experience
The islands of the Outer Hebrides are home to some of the most
remote and spectacular scenery in the world. They host an
astonishing range of mysterious structures - stone circles, beehive
dwellings, holy wells and 'temples' from the Celtic era. Over a
twelve-day pilgrimage, often in appalling conditions, Alastair
McIntosh returns to the islands of his childhood and explores the
meaning of these places. Traversing moors and mountains, struggling
through torrential rivers, he walks from the most southerly tip of
Harris to the northerly Butt of Lewis. The book is a walk through
space and time, across a physical landscape and into a spiritual
one. As he battled with his own ability to endure some of the
toughest terrain in Britain, he met with the healing power of the
land and its communities. This is a moving book, a powerful
reflection not simply of this extraordinary place and its people
met along the way, but of imaginative hope for humankind.
As one of the world's most loved poets, Rumi's poems are celebrated
for their message of love and their beauty, but too often they are
stripped of their mystical and spiritual meanings. The Gift of Rumi
offers a new reading of Rumi, contextualising his work against the
broader backdrop of Islamic mysticism and adding a richness and
authenticity that is lacking in many Westernized conceptions of his
work. Author Emily O'Dell has studied Sufism both academically, in
her work and research at Harvard, Columbia, and the American
University of Beirut, and in practice, learning from a Mevlevi
master and his whirling dervishes. She weaves this expertise
throughout The Gift of Rumi, sharing a new vision of Rumi's classic
work. At the heart of Rumi's mystical poetry is the "religion of
love" which transcends all religions. Through his majestic verses
of ecstasy and longing, Rumi invites us into the religion of the
heart and guides us to our own loving inner essence. The Gifts of
Rumi gives us a key to experiencing this profound and powerful
invitation, allowing readers to meet the master in a new way.
For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear
together to give us the fullest possible portrait of this
extraordinary woman. In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and
genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid
intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were
themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to
Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and
compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's
humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.
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