Celebrating on the Journey - A Guide to a Catholic-Jewish Seder for 100 is a one of a kind guide that provides the reader with the essentials of a hands-on guide which will enable a spiritual encounter and "Faithing"- "Befriending" transformation. The guide is introduced with a no-nonsense set of questions and answers which will aid you in the "Plan" and "Organizational" phases of your Seder meal. These Q/A's address the critical Who, What, Why, Where, When and How issues which have to be taken into consideration in the beginning phases of your planning. If this is your communities first Seder approval steps should begin the month after Easter this year for next year. It takes 4 - 6 weeks to unfold the process before the date and time of your Seder. In the initial phase of discussion ---a short 'theological reflection' introduces a theological understanding of the Passover in reference to the Last Supper. The Seder celebration itself is symbolic of many different foods, prayers, songs and gestures. These are covered so that a complete catechesis may be done. Your guide has 14 individual appendices to which (each issue) of the process is covered. People's time is important. A core team must be developed. To achieve this end, appendices 1, 2, 3,4 and 5 are worksheets in which you can develop the core team and team members. Protocol should be followed. This must be a team effort not just several select souls. Appendix 8 contains recipies which each of the attendees of the Seder are to bring. Each family is requested to bring enough for themselves plus four extra attendees. There will be a 'sign-up' weekend at which recipes can be chosen. Concluding, the last two appendices contain: #13 Tips for a successful Seder; and, #14 Bibliography and Resources.

Although Buddhism is often depicted as a religion of meditators and philosophers, some of the earliest writings extant in India offer a very different portrait of the Buddhist practitioner. In Indian Buddhist narratives from the early centuries of the Common Era, most lay religious practice consists not of reading, praying, or meditating, but of visually engaging with certain kinds of objects. These visual practices, moreover, are represented as the primary means of cultivating faith, a necessary precondition for proceeding along the Buddhist spiritual path. In Thus Have I Seen: Visualizing Faith in Early Indian Buddhism, Andy Rotman examines these visual practices and how they function as a kind of skeleton key for opening up Buddhist conceptualizations about the world and the ways it should be navigated.
Rotman's analysis is based primarily on stories from the Divyavadana (Divine Stories), one of the most important collections of ancient Buddhist narratives from India. Though discourses of the Buddha are well known for their opening words, "thus have I heard" - for Buddhist teachings were first preserved and transmitted orally - the Divyavadana presents a very different model for disseminating the Buddhist dharma. Devotees are enjoined to look, not just hear, and visual legacies and lineages are shown to trump their oral counterparts. As Rotman makes clear, this configuration of the visual fundamentally transforms the world of the Buddhist practitioner, changing what one sees, what one believes, and what one does.

Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land - a collection of articles that deal with Holy Places from Antiquity to the present; from the lands of the Fertile Crescent to Europe, India, Japan and Mexico; from mountains and seas to temples, cities and countries; from the construction, perception and functioning of sacred sites to the psychotic breakdowns they bring on some visitors.

A celebrated Hindu pilgrimage site, Hardwar lies on the river Ganges at the edge of the Himalayas. Its identity as a holy place is inextricably tied to the mythology and reality of the Ganges, and traditional sources overwhelmingly stress this connection. Virtually nothing has been written about Hardwar's history and development, although the historical record reveals striking changes of the past few centuries. These changes have usually reflected worldly forces such as shifting trade routes, improved transportation, or political instability. Yet such mundane influences have been ignored in the city's sacred narrative, which presents a fixed, unchanging identity. The city's complex identity, says Lochtefeld, lies in the tension between these differing narratives. In this fieldwork-based study, Lochtefeld analyzes modern Hardwar as a Hindu pilgrimage center. He looks first at various groups of local residents -- businessmen, hereditary priests, and ascetics -- and assesses their differing roles in managing Hardwar as a holy place. He then examines the pilgrims and the factors that bring them to Hardwar. None of these groups is as pious as popularly depicted, but their interactions in upholding their own interest create and maintain Hardwar's religious environment. In conclusion, he addresses the wider context of Indian pilgrimage and the forces shaping it in the present day. He finds that many modern Hindus, like many modern Christians, feel some dissonance between traditional religious symbols and their 21st-century world, and that they are reinterpreting their traditional symbols to make them meaningful for their time.

Connected Places examines the words and actions of people who live in regions in the state of Maharashtra in western India to illustrate the idea that regions are not only created by humans, but given meaning through religious practices. By exploring the people living in the area of Maharashtra, Feldhaus draws some very interesting conclusions about how people differentiate one region from others, and how we use stories, rituals, and ceremonies to recreate their importance. Feldhaus discovers that religious meanings attached to regions do not necessarily have a political teleology. According to Feldhaus, "There is also a chance, even now, that religious imagery can enrich the lives of individuals and small communities without engendering bloodshed and hatred."

Each and every prayer in the Bible is now available, together and categorized. God's Book of Prayers and The Lord's Prayers both contain all the prayers of the Bible. God's Book of Prayers separates each into nine categories for convenient reading, while The Lord's Prayers lists them in biblical sequence, with an exhaustive concordance of major words or phrases. Both versions have some elementary analysis of all the prayers for better understanding of the whole of the prayers in God's Book, including the most common words in biblical praying. These volumes will help you to easily be able to pray God's own words

As a literary civilization that has been studied intensively, ancient Egypt has yielded the outlines of its religious, political, economic and social institutions. Yet despite the fact that much is known about Egyptian culture, especially Egyptian religion, until now little has been known of the actual process through which an object of daily life, such as wine, was integrated into the religious system. This innovative study shows how the religious significance of wine was actually woven into rituals and how expressions were coined, stereotyped and transmitted over a long span of time. The study begins by examining the development of viticulture in Egypt, the location of the vineyards, the religious and medical use of wine and the attitude of the Egyptians towards wine drinking. It then moves on to study representations of wine offering from the earliest times to the Graeco-Roman period, and to examine liturgies of wine offering both in funerary and in divine cults. The historical and textual documentation of wine and wine offering is then used to explore the significance of wine and wine offering in Egyptian religion.

"Harmonizing Similarities" is a study of the legal distinctions (al-furuq al-fiqhiyya) literature and its role in the development of the Islamic legal heritage. This book reconsiders how the public performance of Islamic law helped shape legal literature. It identifies the origins of this tradition in contemporaneous lexicographic and medical literature, both of which demonstrated the productive potential of drawing distinctions. Elias G. Saba demonstrates the implications of the legal furuq and how changes to this genre reflect shifts in the social consumption of Islamic legal knowledge. The interest in legal distinctions grew out of the performance of knowledge in formalized legal disputations. From here, legal distinctions incorporated elements of play through its interactions with the genre of legal riddles. As play, books of legal distinctions were supplements to performance in literary salons, study circles, and court performances; these books also served as mimetic objects, allowing the reader to participate in a session virtually. Saba underscores how social and intellectual practices helped shape the literary development of Islamic law and that literary elaboration became a main driver of dynamism in Islamic law. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS - De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World.

A devotional that teaches how to pray for our country during crisis and conflict written by two bestselling authors of the subject of prayer.

The President recently said, "Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray. We ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come."

GOD BE WITH US is the first book written specifically to deal with this crisis. It aims to guide Americans through the turbulent times yet to come. The daily meditations will help readers pray for our leaders, families, communities, churches, armed forces, civil servants and even our enemies. Each daily entry also includes a relevant Scripture and a suggested prayer. The authors will suggest prayers for thanksgiving, resolve, forgiveness, and unity. At this crucial time in our history as a nation, GOD BE WITH US implores us to do the one thing of which we are all capable—pray

A Featured Alternate with Crossings Book Club, DoubleDay Book Club, and the Literary Guild.

The book offers a foreword with a compelling story about the Word Trade Center disaster. The daily meditations will provide solace and comfort for the impending armed conflict.

A portion of the profits will go to charities aiding victims of the terrorist attack.

Winner of a 2006 Logos Book Award Do you long for a deep, fundamental change in your life with God? Do you desire a greater intimacy with God? Do you wonder how you might truly live your life as God created you to live it? Spiritual disciplines are activities that open us to God's transforming love and the changes that only God can bring about in our lives. Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a "rule of life" that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life. Each chapter includes exercises to help you begin the practices--individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation. The choice to establish your own sacred rhythm is the most important choice you can make with your life.

In this exquisite little volume, acclaimed healer Joan Borysenko offers a unique, organic means of drawing personal strength and spiritual succor from the wondrous cycles of nature. Drawing on the ancient wisdom at the core of the world's religions, the guidance of the four great Archangels that stand at the gates of the Medicine Wheel, and her own deep mystical experience, she has divided the book into twelve inspiring monthly sections. Each reflects such emotionally significant themes as Forgiveness, Rebirth in Love, and Spiritual Healing. And each provides daily meditations, prayers, and affirmations that help you let go of fear and realize the light of peace and compassion that dwells throughout the universe... and within your own heart.

Burning the Dead traces the evolution of cremation in India and the South Asian diaspora across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through interconnected histories of movement, space, identity, and affect, it examines how the so-called traditional practice of Hindu cremation on an open-air funeral pyre was culturally transformed and materially refashioned under British rule, following intense Western hostility, colonial sanitary acceptance, and Indian adaptation. David Arnold examines the critical reception of Hindu cremation abroad, particularly in Britain, where India formed a primary reference point for the cremation debates of the late nineteenth century, and explores the struggle for official recognition of cremation among Hindu and Sikh communities around the globe. Above all, Arnold foregrounds the growing public presence and assertive political use made of Hindu cremation, its increasing social inclusivity, and its close identification with Hindu reform movements and modern Indian nationhood.

In this book, Eric Montgomery and Christian Vannier provide an ethnographically informed text on the cultural meanings and practices surrounding the gods and metaphysics of Vodu, as they relate to daily life in an ethnic Ewe fishing community on the coast of southern Togo. The authors approach this spirit possession and medicinal order through "shrine ethnography," understanding shrines as parts of sacred landscapes that are ecological, economic, political, and social. Giving voice to practitioners and situating shrines and Vodu itself into the history and political economy of the region make this text pertinent to the social changes and global relevance of Millennial Africa.