Loosening the Roots of Compassion

Loosening the Roots of Compassion
Author: Ellen Bradshaw Aitken
Publisher: Cowley Publications
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2006-02-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1461707684

Here is Holy Week and Eastertide reading to which you will return time and again. Here is real nourishment for body, mind, and soul, and for the remaking of the world. Ellen Bradshaw Aitken’s meditations will “help you to send forth deep roots from your life into scripture and into the contemplation of Jesus’ risen life. . . . Take what you need to help you pray your life and to discern new pathways of the resurrection in yourself and in the world around you—to loosen the roots of compassion within your heart.” These meditations sing that “the resurrection is somehow at work everywhere,” building in us a new creation. Beautifully written, deeply considered, they invite us to tilt and turn the scriptural text as though it were a hologram—and then to do the same with our lives in light of those texts.

Imagining the Fetus

Imagining the Fetus
Author: Vanessa R Sasson
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0195380045

In contemporary Western culture, the word "fetus" introduces either a political subject or a literal, medicalized entity. Neither of these frameworks does justice to the vast array of religious literature and oral traditions from cultures around the world in which the fetus emerges as a powerful symbol or metaphor. This volume presents essays that explore the depiction of the fetus in the world's major religious traditions, finding some striking commonalities as well as intriguing differences. Among the themes that emerge is the tendency to conceive of the fetus as somehow independent of the mother's body — as in the case of the Buddha, who is described as inhabiting a palace while gestating in the womb. On the other hand, the fetus can also symbolically represent profound human needs and emotions, such as the universal experience of vulnerability. The authors note how the advent of the fetal sonogram has transformed how people everywhere imagine the unborn today, giving rise to a narrow range of decidedly literal questions about personhood, gender, and disability.

Living Into Hope

Living Into Hope
Author: Joan B. Campbell
Publisher: SkyLight Paths Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1594732833

Inspires and challenges us to live life fully--not carefully or cautiously, but wholly engaged with the world and with the messiness of humanity--and dares us to claim our freedom to care, to risk and to step out into the unknown and live as people of hope.

Hebrews in Contexts

Hebrews in Contexts
Author: Gabriella Gelardini
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2016-05-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004311696

Scholars of Hebrews have repeatedly echoed the almost proverbial saying that the book appears to its reader as a "Melchizedekian being without genealogy". For such scholars the aphorism identified prominent traits of Hebrews, its enigma, its otherness, its marginality. Although Franz Overbeck might unintentionally have stimulated such correlations, they do not represent what his dictum originally meant. Writing during the high noon of historicism in 1880, Overbeck lamented a lack of historical context, one that he had deduced on the basis of flawed presuppositions of the ideological frameworks prevalent of his time. His assertion made an impact, and consequently Hebrews was not only "othered" within New Testament scholarship, its context was neglected and by some, even judged as irrelevant altogether. Understandably, the neglect created a deficit keenly felt by more recent scholarship, which has developed a particular interest in Hebrews’ contexts. Hebrews in Contexts, edited by Gabriella Gelardini and Harold W. Attridge, is an expression of this interest. It gathers authors who explore extensively on Hebrews’ relations to other early traditions and texts (Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman) in order to map Hebrews’ historical, cultural, and religious identity in greater, and perhaps surprising detail.

Roots of Transformation

Roots of Transformation
Author: Robin Stockitt
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2015-10-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498220797

The call towards transformation lies at the heart of the Christian message. It is a call to create something beautiful that bears all the hallmarks of the kingdom of heaven. The journey towards transformation however is a demanding one, requiring us to engage in a process of negotiation with a number of key issues. These issues cluster around the themes of Narrative, Permission, Discomfort, Culture, Language, Other, and Silence. This book explores these themes in the company of brave individuals who have shared their own stories as well as some significant thinkers who have already left their mark on our world.

Dancing Bodies of Devotion

Dancing Bodies of Devotion
Author: Katherine C. Zubko
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0739187295

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities. In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work. Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.

The Four Seasons of the Heart

The Four Seasons of the Heart
Author: Cynthia J. Morton
Publisher: Boolarong Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2016-08-08
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1925236986

Within this quartet of books that I have titled The Four Seasons of The Heart, I will share the deepest pivotal parts of my journey as a recovering alcoholic/addict and survivor of childhood abuse with you. One day at a time, I have lived clean and sober consistently since 1995. However, allowing myself to emotionally grow by not just giving but also receiving love and to genuinely feel deserving of my life’s hard-earned rewards, has presented many challenges. Please allow me as we journey through these pages together to suggest ways that we can heal our heart, dust off our doubt, intercept self-sabotage and invest in self-respect.