"It s hard to have a God complex when your kids expect you to play garbage truck every night. This is the game where I lie on the floor as the boys stuff trucks, action figures, and plastic dinosaurs into my shirt. When the garbage truck is full to the point of overflowing, I go to the town dump by standing up. This is repeated ad nauseum. On any given day, I might find myself absolving sins in the name of the Church one moment and serving the cause of waste management the next."

Do you believe God can be found in both the miraculous and the mundane? Through 40 insightful and engaging essays, Tim Schenck helps us encounter God through the chaos of everyday life. The divine presence weaves its way into a family room fish tank, a child s probing questions, the town pool, and the drive-thru window of the local fast food chain.

Almost every woman knows the press of busy days - days when we can't keep track of what we've done (or haven't done), much less find five minutes to rest. These daily meditations from best-selling author Barbara Crafton - wife, grandmother, priest, retreat leader, and spiritual director - will help women restore the balance and bring perspective into their daily lives. Crafton explores the things women know well: bags under the eyes, people who monopolize meetings, office politics, middle-age pride, kids leaving home, faith, love, destiny, the impossible images women's magazines perpetuate, friendship, and many more. Here she becomes the wise and funny friend every woman needs every day.

Memory loss should not be spiritual loss. "What do I do to help?" Alzheimer's is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, almost everyone knows someone with some form of dementia, yet few know how to answer that question, and very little material exists on providing spiritual care to adults with dementia-related diseases. Even seminaries rarely provide training or clinical pastoral education in this field. This book is an answer. It provides a hands-on manual that will give clergy, spiritual care providers, and family members an understanding of the ongoing spiritual needs of individuals with dementia, as well as practical tools such as how to create a religious service in a memory care unit and how one might plan a nursing home visit. Accessibly written, with real life applications and sample services for a variety of settings. More than just useful, the book inspires with shared stories that are tender, sad, funny-and sometimes all three at once, encouraging readers to develop spiritual care ministries for people with memory loss in congregations, homes, nursing facilities, or other communities-a ministry that will only gain in importance in the coming decade, as Baby Boomers age and the number of people with Alzheimer's and dementia skyrockets.

Everybody figures it out sooner or later: Even in a Botox world that promises eternal youth, some things-from aches and pains to wrinkles, from menopause to the empty nest-you just have to live with. But despite the challenges, those who are reaching middle age-yesterday's Baby Boomers-might not want to turn back the clock. Instead, as their bodies change and their priorities shift, they're looking to cull wisdom from their experience and find spiritual meaning in their re-examined lives. In Some Things You Just Have to Live With, author Barbara Cawthorne Crafton explores the "spilled milk" of our lives, the physical changes our bodies endure, and the new and energizing purpose we can discover by plunging into the middle of life in a deeper-and sometimes mystifying-relationship with God. A wonderful storyteller, Crafton writes with humor and pathos rather than a heavy hand, allowing readers to see themselves and their own lives in the unfolding pages. Some Things You Just Have to Live With is a source of inspiration-and smiles-to those navigating the turbulent waters of the middle of life.

A best-selling Morehouse author for decades Addresses one of today s most pressing topics Here is Barbara Crafton at her best funny, warm, direct, honest, and vulnerable on aging. I think growing older is both funny and sad, but mostly it just makes me grateful to be alive and able to reflect. I have been an Episcopal priest for 33 years and have had extensive experience in ministering with the elderly. Now, I am growing old myself. I hate it when people are ashamed of being old. We should be proud she proclaims. Join her in this celebration of life "

Barbara Cawthorne Crafton is among the first women ordained to the Episcopal priesthood, in which capacity she has ministered in both the richest and poorest sections of New York City. She is also a sensitive writer who addresses the human condition with plainspoken eloquence and bracing moral common sense. Cynthia Ozick writes, "The Reverend Crafton's purity of insight and pellucid voice suggest transparencies - one sees straight through them into the unshielded light of the plainest human truths. A shelf is dusted, a grandmother's sewing machine is recalled, mothers and fathers are praised and appraised, a lost child is mourned - and the weave of our lives is movingly unwound, ribbon by ribbon, until our hands are filled with rosiness and rue. Upon small moments large mercies are shed. Barbara Crafton's essays are everyone's heirlooms". These rich, moving essays will be read again and again.

365 days of meditations based on passages from the Psalms. "I hope that the ancient texts upon which these reflections are based will come alive for you in a new way," writes Barbara Crafton in Meditations on the Book of Psalms. The Psalms, written by ordinary people, are filled with all the same emotions and issues that challenge, comfort, and confound us today. Their complaints, joys, celebrations, envy, doubting, fear, and hope are ours as well. In this book of meditations for each day of the year, best-selling author Barbara Crafton combines reflection on these ancient texts with contemporary stories to help us explore the spiritual nature of our lives.

From the desire to start anew in January, to time management and remembering to lighten up in December, Crafton's meditations are the perfect daily companion for anyone who finds nourishment in biblically based devotional reading.

Koheleth's powerful guidebook for living without certainty and security in a world of constant change can become a companion for your own spiritual journey. Twenty-three hundred years ago, an unnamed Hebrew sage known only as Koheleth, the Assembler of Wisdom, rocked the ancient Jewish world with a critique of society that shattered conventional notions of God, piety, politics and power. Koheleth lived in a world of change and challenge not unlike our own. His teachings, known as the Book of Ecclesiastes, sought to empower people not unlike ourselves, which is why this book of the Hebrew Bible still speaks to us—people of all faiths—today. In this contemporary and accurate translation, Rami Shapiro presents the Book of Ecclesiastes as neither revelation nor prophecy but as a rational and inspirational guide to living well in the midst of uncertainty. Beginning with its opening broadside, "Havel havalim!"—not "futility" or "vanity" as most translations would have it, but “breath,” “vapor” and “impermanence”—Shapiro opens up Koheleth's approach to living in a world where nothing lasts and justice is illusory; a world devoted to accumulating power, wealth, pleasure and even knowledge that leaves you drowning in anxiety and needless suffering. He shows how Koheleth's God demands neither sacrifice nor adherence to commandments, offering instead a practical lifestyle rooted in moderation, meaningful work and friendship. Now you can experience the Book of Ecclesiastes and understand Koheleth’s teachings with no previous knowledge of the Hebrew Bible. This SkyLight Illuminations edition presents insightful commentary that restores this ancient text to its timeless place as a guide to living sanely in an often insane world.

Based on beautiful seasonal hymns, Crafton's daily meditations on faith, prayer, forgiveness, and healing for Advent and Christmas make an excellent companion for the season. For centuries the words and poetry of our hymns have spoken deeply to us. Many people, in fact, find that what is heard in poetry and music sinks deeper into the soul than does ordinary prose. And so it is to the beautiful seasonal hymns that Barbara Cawthorne Crafton turns for inspiration for daily meditations during the great devotional seasons of the church year: Advent/Christmas, and Lent.

For centuries the words and poetry of our hymns have spoken to us of God. Many people, in fact, find that what is heard in poetry and music sinks more deeply into the soul than anything else. And so it is to the beautiful seasonal hymns that Barbara Cawthorne Crafton turns for inspiration for daily meditations during this great devotional season of the church year.

"I hope that you find yourself humming familiar tunes to yourself as you read, and that this condition persists for the rest of the day," writes Crafton. Those who have known the hymns forever as well as those who are new to these verses will find them, and Crafton s meditations on faith, prayer, forgiveness, healing and more, an excellent companion for these important seasons of the year.

"The Geranium Farm Cook Book" is a collection of recipes and lore offered by The Geranium Farmers, the 10,000+ members of the worldwide virtual community of spiritual seekers created by Episcopal priest, author, lecturer, and spiritual director Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. As "farmers?" began sharing recipes with each other via the e-mail list and the Geranium Farm website (www.geraniumfarm.org), the idea for a cookbook was born. Because Barbara Crafton devoutly believes in the "life is short--eat dessert first" school of theology, the desserts section is first and longest. Each recipe in the book includes a description of how the recipe came to be part of the writer's family or what traditions surround its use. Each of the main dish recipes has a wine suggestion accompanying it, recommended by the executive chef at a noted restaurant in North Carolina's Smoky Mountains. And interspersed among the recipes are meditations by Barbara Crafton on food, cooking, and community.