A celebration of men's voices in prayer—through the ages from many faiths, cultures and traditions. "If men like us don't pray, where will emerging generations get a window into the soul of a good man, an image of the kind of man they can aspire to be—or be with—when they grow up? If men don’t pray, who will model for them the practices of soul care—of gratitude, confession, compassion, humility, petition, repentance, grief, faith, hope and love? If men don’t pray, what will men become, and what will become of our world and our future?" —from the Introduction by Brian D. McLaren This collection celebrates the profound variety of ways men around the world have called out to the Divine—with words of joy, praise, gratitude, wonder, petition and even anger—from the ancient world up to our own day. The prayers come from a broad spectrum of spiritual traditions—both East and West—including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and more. Together they provide an eloquent expression of men’s inner lives, and of the practical, mysterious, painful and joyous endeavor that prayer is. Men Pray will challenge your preconceived ideas about prayer. It will inspire you to explore new ways of prayerful expression and new possibilities for your own spiritual journey. This is a book to treasure and to share. Includes prayers from: Marcus Aurelius • Daniel Berrigan • Rebbe Nachman of Breslov • Walter Brueggemann • Bernard of Clairvaux • St. Francis of Assisi • Robert Frost • George Herbert • Gerard Manley Hopkins • St. Ignatius Loyola • Fr. Thomas Keating • Thomas à Kempis • Chief Yellow Lark • Brother Lawrence • C. S. Lewis • Ted Loder • Nelson Mandela • General Douglas MacArthur • Thomas Merton • D. L. Moody • John Henry Newman • John Philip Newell • John O’Donohue • Rumi • Rabindranath • Tagore • Walt Whitman • many others

Challenging the idea that rituals are static and emotions irrational, the volume explores the manifold qualities of emotions in ritual practices. Focusing explicitly on the relationship between emotions and rituals, it poses two central questions. First, how and to what extent do emotions shape rituals? Second, in what way are emotions ritualized in and beyond rituals? Strong emotions are generally considered to be more spontaneous and uncontrolled, whereas ritual behaviour is regarded as planned, formalized and stereotyped, and hence less emotional. However, as the volume demonstrates, rituals often reveal strong emotions among participants, are motivated by feelings, or are intended to generate them. The essays discuss the motivation for rituals; the healing function of emotions; the creation of new emotions through new media; the aspect of mimesis in the generation of feelings; individual, collective, and non-human emotions; the importance of trance and possession; staged emotions and emotions on stage; emotions in the context of martyrdom; emotions in Indian and Western dance traditions; emotions of love, sorrow, fear, aggression, and devotion. Furthermore, aesthetic and sensory dimensions, as well as emic concepts, of emotions in rituals are underscored as relevant in understanding social practice.

The Zen Way is an invaluable introduction to Zen practice. It is divided into three parts: in the first, Ven. Myokyo-ni provides an overview of Buddhist belief in general, from the perspective of Zen. In her second part, she describes the daily rituals in a Rinzai Zen training monastery; while in the third, Ven. Myokyo-ni assesses Zen practice from a modern and European perspective.

If we are honest, most of us struggle with our praying at least some of the time. Perhaps we have difficulty finding time to pray, or maybe we simply do not know what to say. Praying may seem simple and straightforward in theory, but in reality it can be hard work. In 'Praying' J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom offer hope to us in our efforts to pray better. They present praying as both a duty and a delight: an essential, expected practice for a follower of Christ, but also a privilege and joy. With wisdom, humility and sincerity they lead us through different moods or types of praying. Yet they do not just teach us about prayer; they also challenge and inspire us to do it by pointing us to a clearer understanding of the character of God. Here is practical help for active, honest praying that involves all of who we are - heart, hands and head - and moves us to deeper obedience, joy and intimacy with our Father.

Receive Your Miracle from GodGeorge Mller was the worst of sinners--a thief and a liar. But after turning to Christ, he provided for over 10,000 orphans--without ever asking anyone but God to supply his needs! He testified that he knew of at least 50,000 specific answers to his prayers. Here are his reports of a few of the most spectacular ones.From his amazing personal experiences, you will find the secret to receiving miraculous answers to your prayers.

This book is the crowning achievement of the remarkable scholar D. Dennis Hudson, bringing together the results of a lifetime of interdisciplinary study of south Indian Hinduism.
The book is a finely detailed examination of a virtually unstudied Tamil Hindu temple, the Vaikuntha Perumal (ca. 770 C.E.). Hudson offers a sustained reading of the temple as a coherent, organized, minutely conceptualized mandala. Its iconography and structure can be understood in the light of a ten-stanza poem by the Alvar poet Tirumangai, and of the Bhagavata Purana and other major religious texts, even as it in turn illuminates the meanings of those texts.
Hudson takes the reader step by step on a tour of the temple, telling the stories suggested by each of the 56 sculpted panels and showing how their relationship to one another brings out layers of meaning. He correlates the stories with stages in the spiritual growth of the king through the complex rituals that formed a crucial dimension of the religion. The result is a tapestry of interpretation that brings to life the richness of spiritual understanding embodied in the temple.
Hudson's underlying assumption is that the temple itself constitutes a summa theologica for the Pancharatra doctrines in the Bhagavata tradition centered on Krishna as it had developed through the eighth century. This tradition was already ancient and had spread widely across South Asia and into Southeast Asia. By interweaving history with artistic, liturgical, and textual interpretation, Hudson makes a remarkable contribution to our understanding of an Indian religious and cultural tradition.

"Praying" is the second in a series of books that offer Christians a new way of understanding what it means to live and worship among America's many faiths, and introduces them to the religions that make up the American neighborhood. "Praying" will explore public, family, and individual worship in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism, American indigenous spiritualities, Chinese spiritualities (Confucianism, Taoism), Shinto, and Afro-Caribbean religions. Praying answers and discusses questions such as these: How does your religion understand/measure the passage of time: daily, weekly, annually, over the course of a lifetime? What is the vocabulary of ritual and practice in your religion? (e.g., worship, prayer, meditation, pilgrimage, feasting and fasting) Is there a distinction between public and private/individual worship/practice in your religion? What are this religion's most distinctive practices? What makes them so significant? "Praying "includes a quick guide to each religion, a glossary, and recommended reading.

Providing an overall interpretation of the Buddhist monument Borobudur in Indonesia, this book looks at Mahayana Buddhist religious ideas and practices that could have informed Borobudur, including both the narrative reliefs and the Buddha images. The author explores a version of the classical Mahayana that foregrounds the importance of the visual in relation to Buddhist philosophy, meditation, devotion, and ritual. The book goes on to show that the architects of Borobudur designed a visual world in which the Buddha appeared in a variety of forms and could be interpreted in three ways: by realizing the true nature of his teaching, through visionary experience, and by encountering his numinous presence in images. Furthermore, the book analyses a particularly comprehensive and programmatic expression of Mahayana Buddhist visual culture so as to enrich the theoretical discussion of the monument. It argues that the relief panels of Borobudur do not passively illustrate, but rather creatively "picture" selected passages from texts. Presenting new material, the book contributes immensely to a new and better understanding of the significance of the Borobudur for the field of Buddhist and Religious Studies.

"Why me?" Why do we suffer? How can we heal?

"Spiritual suffering must be differentiated from physical pain, although the two are intertwined in such a way that it is nearly impossible to distinguish one from the other. We suffer spiritually when we do not grow from our illness, when we do not learn from the experience of physical and emotional pain." from the Introduction

Too many of us faced with bodily illness, whether our own or that of a loved one, feel lost as to what to do or how to handle it.

Grounded in the spiritual traditions of Judaism, this book provides healing rituals, psalms and prayers that help us initiate a dialogue with God, to guide us through the complicated path of healing and wholeness. Olitzky explores: What Judaism teaches us about healing Finding the meaning of illness in Jewish tradition How to draw on prayers, services, psalms, and other spiritual resources for healing How to grow by fully embracing the process of recovery

Olitzky brings together his inspiring guidance in using Jewish texts with his own experience dealing with illness in others including those he loves to demonstrate how the healing of the soul is an indispensable counterpart to curing the body.

The Strangeness of Gods combines studies of changes in modern interpretations of Greek religion with studies of changes in Athenian ritual. The combination is necessary in order to combat influential stereotypes: that Greek religion consisted of ritual without theological speculation, that ritual is inherently conservative. To re-examine the evidence for Greek rituals and their interpretation is also to re-examine our own preconceptions and prejudices. The argument presented by S. C. Humphreys tries to bring Greek texts closer to the "classic" texts of other civilizations, and religion, as a form of speculative thought, closer to science. Her studies of Athenian rituals put this emphasis on changing interpretations into practice, showing that the Athenians thought about their rites as well as celebrating them.

This book explores two influential intellectual and religious leaders in Christianity and Buddhism, Bonaventure (c. 1217-74) and Chinul (1158-1210), a Franciscan theologian and a Korean Zen master respectively, with respect to their lifelong endeavors to integrate the intellectual and spiritual life so as to achieve the religious aims of their respective religious traditions. It also investigates an associated tension between different modes of discourse relating to the divine or the ultimate-positive (cataphatic) discourse and negative (apophatic) discourse. Both of these modes of discourse are closely related to different ways of understanding the immanence and transcendence of the divine or the ultimate. Through close studies of Bonaventure and Chinul, the book presents a unique dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism and between West and East. In the examination of these two figures, religious traditions are explored not only from social, political, cultural, philosophical, and doctrinal perspectives, but also from a perspective that integrates both intellectual and spiritual aspects of religious life. Furthermore, the book presents unexplored models of integrating these two aspects of religious life.

From the author of Outrageous Openness and It's Not Your Money, a new oracle deck to help you access abundance by letting go. Tosha Silver's message about money is counterintuitive, fresh, and different from the norm. So many people push toward their goals, chase the means to meet their needs, and yearn for an ever-elusive feeling of security. Fear and worry are constant. Tosha takes a radical new approach: offer those desperate wishes and financial fears directly to Love, to the Divine itself--whatever that means to you. The result can bring freedom, spaciousness, and yes, even a sense of security unavailable any other way. Aligning with Divine Source as the foundation of All is the key. This beautiful deck offers a practical, soulful way to put Tosha's teachings into practice. Drawing inspiration from her book It's Not Your Money, the deck contains 51 quotes that will help you reflect on your relationship to money, career, and abundance. Your own heart will guide you to the message you need that day, helping you receive and live these liberating concepts more completely. As you work with the cards, you'll find your mind expanding so that you can truly "be" abundance rather than just chase it.

This book looks at the way in which women's making of ritual has emerged from the rapidly developing field of women's spirituality and theology. The author uses ethnographic material drawn from her personal experience in working with individuals and groups to show how the construction of ritual is a practice which uses storymaking and embodied action to empower women. She argues that ritual, far from being a timeless and universal practice, is a contextual and gendered performance in which women subvert conventional distinctions of private and public. She includes stories of women who have created or participated in their own rituals to mark significant changes and transition in their lives, and reflects on these in the light of ritual theory. The book interweaves narrative and interview material drawn from case studies with insights drawn from feminist theology and theory, social anthropology and gender studies to show that the making of ritual for women is a transformative process which empowers them in constructing identity and agency. The writer shows how women are drawing from both Christian feminist theology and broader understandings of spirituality to construct their own understanding of God/Goddess through the rituals they enact.