In a world that increasingly sees religion as a source of violence, this book explores resources from within religious traditions that might help build peace. Drawing from the rich textual histories of Christianity and Islam, the contributors mine their faith traditions for ways of thinking and ways of being that help shift perceptions about religion, and actively contribute to the growth of peace in our troubled times. Not content with retreat into religious exclusivism, these essays are an act of sharing something held dear. In sharing, the thing offered no longer remains the possession of the one who offers, and so these essays are an act of vulnerability and trust-building. In sharing precious things together, in giving and receiving, peace becomes not only a matter of dialogue, but also shared commitments to ways of being.

Belian is an exceptionally lively tradition of shamanistic curing rituals performed by the Luangans, a politically marginalized population of Indonesian Borneo. This volume explores the significance of these rituals in practice and asks what belian rituals do - socially, politically, and existentially - for particular people in particular circumstances. Departing from the conception that rituals exist as ethereal, liminal or insulated traditional domains, this volume demonstrates the importance of understanding rituals as emergent within their specific historical and social settings. It offers an analysis of a number of concrete ritual performances, exemplifying a diversity of ritual genres, stylistic modalities and sensual ambiences, from low-key, habitual affairs to drawn-out, crowd-seizing community rituals and innovative, montage-like cultural experiments.

Just as the popular One Year Bible reinforces your habit of daily Bible reading, this new companion volume helps you focus your prayer life. Based on key verses from each day's reading in The One Year Bible, each devotion in The One Year Book of Praying through the Bible also offers a prayer and a relevant quote from a well-known Christian to help you weave together your personal prayers and God's Word for the day. Includes index of dates and Scripture references.

Min HaOo aretzOo fosters discussion of the ways both contemporary and Jewish values can help us make choices.

In this, his most recent work, Martin Lings discusses the significance of the pilgrimage to Mecca, made annually by several million Muslims, in the light of the tradition of Abraham. Drawing upon his own experience of performing the pilgrimage first in 1946 and then in 1978, as well referring to the traditional sources, he considers the timeless spiritual meaning of the Hajj, which was proclaimed and established by Abraham and Ishmael and renewed by the Prophet Muhammad, in the context of its long history and comes to some surprising conclusions.

Tel-Aviv's annual Purim celebrations were the largest public events in British Palestine, and they played a key role in the development of the urban Jewish experience in the Promised Land. Carnival in Tel-Aviv presents a historical-anthropological analysis of this mass public event in order to explore the ethnographic dimension of Zionism. This study sheds new light on the ideological world of urban Zionism, the capitalistic aspects of Zionist culture, and the urban nature of the Zionist project, which sought to create a nation of warriors and farmers, but in fact nationalized the urban space and constructed it as its main public sphere.

A comprehensive collection of essays exploring the interstices of Eastern and Western modes of thinking about the self, Crossroads in Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Mindfulness: The Word and the Breath documents just some of the challenges, conflicts, pitfalls, and "wow" moments that inhere in today's historical and cultural intersections of theory, practice, and experience. As this collection demonstrates, the crossroads between Buddhist and psychoanalytic approaches to mindfulness are rich beyond belief in integrative potential. The surprising and fertile connections from which this book originates, and the future ones which every reader in turn will spur, will invigorate and intensify this specific form of contemporary commerce at the crossroads of East and West. Analytically-oriented psychotherapists, themselves of different "climates" and cultures, break out of the seclusion of the consulting room to think, translate, meditate on, and mediate their experiences-generated via the maternal order-in such a way as to make those experiences thinkable via the necessary filters of the paternal order of language. In this light the "word and the breath" of the book's subtitle are addressed as the privileged "instruments" of psychoanalysis and meditation, respectively.

This source of strength and solace for millions of Christian clergy and laypeople throughout the world can be a companion for your own spiritual journey. For centuries, Christians of different traditions and seekers from various backgrounds have found strength for their spiritual journey in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). First composed in 1549 by Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury, the BCP, alongside Shakespeare's works and the King James Bible, helped shape the English language. Today almost eighty million Anglican Christians throughout the world use the BCP in public worship, and countless people—Anglican and otherwise—use it in their private devotional life. In this unique presentation of selections—organized by themes such as "Blessings in Times of Joy and Pain," "Called to Serve" and “Praise and Petition”—with facing-page commentary, C. K. Robertson offers fascinating insights into the history and heritage of the BCP. He also makes available the riches of this spiritual treasure chest for all who are interested in deepening their life of prayer, building stronger relationships and making a difference in the world.

Compelled to seek something more than what modern society has to offer, Robert Sibley turned to an ancient setting for help in recovering what has been lost. The Henro Michi is one of the oldest and most famous pilgrimage routes in Japan. It consists of a circuit of eighty-eight temples around the perimeter of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. Every henro, or pilgrim, is said to follow in the footsteps of K b Daishi, the ninth-century ascetic who founded the Shingon sect of Buddhism. Over the course of two months, the author walked this 1,400-kilometer route (roughly 870 miles), visiting the sacred sites and performing their prescribed rituals.Although himself a gaijin, or foreigner, Sibley saw no other pilgrim on the trail who was not Japanese. Some of the people he met became not only close companions but also ardent teachers of the language and culture. These fellow pilgrims' own stories add to the author's narrative in unexpected and powerful ways. Sibley's descriptions of the natural surroundings, the customs and etiquette, the temples and guesthouses will inspire any reader who has longed to escape the confines of everyday life and to embrace the emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of a pilgrimage."

For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams, has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worshippers. Through their lives, movements, and materiality, Shaligrams then reveal fascinating new dimensions of religious practice, pilgrimage, and politics. But as social, environmental, and national conflicts in the politically-contentious region of Mustang continue to escalate, the geologic, mythic, and religious movements of Shaligrams have come to act as parallels to the mobility of people through both space and time. Shaligram mobility therefore traverses through multiple social worlds, multiple religions, and multiple nations revealing Shaligram practitioners as a distinct, alternative, community struggling for a place in a world on the edge.