Parabola Magazine

HEALING THROUGH THE DARK EMOTIONS:
The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair
By Miriam Greenspan (Shambhala), 2004. PP. 336. $19.95

Born in a displaced-persons camp in Germany at the end of WWII, Miriam Greenspan is no stranger to the dark emotions. Her first four years of life were spent there, amid the anguished survivors of the Holocaust. After thirty-five years as a psychotherapist and twenty-five years practicing mindfulness meditation, she now shares with us her understanding of how the heart can heal itself.

While Greenspan recognizes how hard it is for most of us to tolerate the dark emotions-many people spend a lifetime avoiding them-she points out that our present culture suffers as never before from depression, anxiety, addiction, psychic numbing, and irrational violence, all of which, she believes, are related to intolerable dark emotions. We have "emotion-phobia," she says, as well as a blanket disapproval of "bad feelings."

To consider grief, fear, and despair "negative" fails to recognize their value and leads people to avoid the experience of their own suffering as they distract themselves, compartmentalize feelings, escape into a variety of addictions, or medicate the suffering body/psyche. This will inevitably result in accumulated stress and what Greenspan calls "toxified emotional energy," which brings on a host of physical and emotional symptoms from simple aches and pains and indigestion to chronic anxiety. But since all emotions have a cause, it would be more helpful to view them not as good or bad but as sources of information. Only by "befriending and mindfully surrendering to our most dreaded emotions [can] we discover the heart's native intelligence."

Greenspan called herself a "a deeply committed agnostic" until a major confrontation with grief changed her forever: the agonizing death of her two-month-old first child. But as she shoveled earth on his tiny casket, an inner voice told her she was "looking in the wrong place." Lifting her eyes to the sky, she saw "a magnificent radiance" which she felt to be his presence. Suddenly she was filled with peace. "In this most unlikely place," she writes, "where my child's body was laid to rest, I discovered the invincibility of spirit."

The transformation of feeling from inconsolable grief to acceptance of the vulnerability of human life depends on whether we can allow ourselves to open our hearts to the events of our lives and the feelings they produce. The dark emotions of grief, fear, and despair may be at the heart of the human condition, but so are gratitude, joy, faith, and other spiritual qualities that come to us when we are able to accept and transform the darkness. As Greenspan affirms: "when we are most vulnerable, we are most alive, most open to all the dimensions of existence. In our vulnerability is our power."

Nevertheless, her transformatory experience didn't eliminate pain and grief over the loss of her son. It's one thing to recommend acceptance in the face of the inevitable suffering of life, but another to find the way to it, even though, as she says, "a grief deferred is a grief prolonged." When our world is shattered, we need time to receive and digest the blow. She describes that process as "keeping an open heart in hell."

The three pillars of Greenspan's work on grief, fear, and despair are attending, or awareness of how emotions express themselves in the body; befriending, or developing our tolerance for these emotions; and surrendering to them with complete acceptance. "Riding the wave of emotion on the surfboard of awareness" guides us to learning what emotions have to teach us and to acting mindfully when we experience them. It also helps us expand out of the narrowness of personal complaints, blaming ourselves or our parents, as we learn to connect with the world's pain and see our suffering in the context of a much larger human condition.

Healing through the Dark Emotions exhorts us to respect our painful feelings as the basic material of what Greenspan calls "emotional alchemy," a process through which these feelings become seeds of spiritual strength. The reader receives practical advice on how to tolerate mindfully what's passing through us and through our bodies. Seven major steps of healing are described, with thirty-three exercises to practice them, with the intention that grief might evolve into gratitude, fear expand our capacity for joy, and despair build faith.

Listening is a major key. Whether I listen to myself or open to another's pain, inarticulate anguish in the face of tragic circumstances becomes a painful sensation and finally evolves into a story. A fundamental step is to connect ourselves to our bodies. "When we can broaden the story of our suffering from a place of rootedness in the body, emotional alchemy happens quite naturally," she says.

The fact that our Western culture has for centuries affirmed the split between the head and the heart only adds to the profound disconnection between mind and feelings. Emotions live in the body. According to Greenspan, we need to "attend to emotions as bodily energies, as distinct from our mental reactions to them."

What's more, this journey through pain and vulnerability to wisdom and acceptance is important not only to help each of us resolve our private pain. Greenspan asserts that a central motive for writing her book was to call attention to "the inescapable relationship between individual heartbreak and the brokenheartedness of the world." In an age of global threat, emotions like grief, fear, and despair are widespread and overwhelming but our culture can no longer afford to view them as symptoms of mental disorder or spiritual inadequacy. "The dark emotions are shared by the human family" in what she calls the "emotional ecology" of our age.

Emotional energy flows through and among us and is in some sense transpersonal, carrying information that we need to understand for the sake of our future on this planet. Greenspan calls on us to recognize that "in the human family, dense emotional mushroom clouds of unredeemed grief, fear and despair daily contaminate our world." Stoical endurance, denial, self-medication, or fascination with excess and violence on TV are no longer viable alternatives. When we are unable to tolerate our fear of terrorism, our grief about environmental devastation, and our despair that things will ever change, we numb ourselves to reality. More helpful would be to learn how to transform these dark emotions into gratitude for the forces of good within and without us and to wonder at the extraordinary recuperative powers of the human spirit.

Patty de Llosa, author of The Practice of Presence: Five Paths for Daily Life, is a writer and teacher of the Alexander technique who lives in New York City.

REIMAGINING EDUCATION: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning
Edited by Dennis Patrick Slattery & Jennifer Leigh Selig. Spring Journal Books (WWW.springjournalandbooks.COM), pp. xxii + 189. $25.95 paper

While there is general agreement in many lands and cultures on the importance of education, there has always been tremendous disagreement on the best means of educating a child. In Reimagining Education: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning, editors Dennis Patrick Slattery, a teacher with forty years of experience as well as a professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute and author of many books including A Limbo of Shards: Essays on Memory, Myth, and Metaphor, and Jennifer Leigh Selig, a teacher, professor, and author of What Now? Words of Wisdom for Life after Graduation, seek to examine what is lost when testing, standards, and accountability become more important than imagination and creativity in the classroom. As the editors wrote the contributors, "Write a 'memoir', a reminiscence, or a reverie on teaching's more imaginal geography as you have both discovered and created it in your students over the years." The resultant anthology of eighteen essays from celebrated and lesser teachers share insights into their reflections. Since many of the contributors are also affiliated with Pacifica Graduate Institute, a university in California with the mission of "tending soul in and of the world," it is not surprising that most of the essays have a lyrical and mythical quality.

The collection opens with an essay by James Hillman, the world-renowned archetypal psychologist and author of The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling and many other books. Hillman challenges the reader to distinguish between the bureaucracy that he associates with the city and the rise of civilization and art, poetry, and abandonment of the soul. Contrasting Athene and Dionysos, Hillman writes: "Civilization gets the job done as well and reasonably as possible. Culture is song; the song that breaks out in the midst of the job. Civilization looks back to learn and forward with hope. Culture pops up, sprouts in a Petri dish." Other essays include examinations of homeschooling, public education, and the kinds of classrooms in which a desire for something greater than standardized tests and measurements occur-or not. Filled with references from classical mythology, Reimagining Education shows readers an alternative to the current No Child Left Behind thinking. As Selig writes about her decision to leave public education after sixteen years in her native northern California in her essay "Trying to Touch What Matters: Confessions of a High School Dropout," "I am the teacher 'No Child Left Behind' left behind. I am the High School dropout." Reimagining Education offers an alternative educational landscape, a realm where students interact not only with great ideas but with their souls or that inner experience of perception, feeling, and interactions with ideas as compared to mere memorization. As Evans Lansing Smith writes in his essay "Teaching Joseph Campbell and the Arthurian Romance," "The classroom is a temenos, a sacred space of revelation and transformation, where the mysteries of soul-making are undertaken and reflected upon."

Perhaps the essay that summarizes the spirit of the anthology best is the one by Ruth Meyer. Dr. Meyer had been teaching history for ten years before she discovered Carl Jung. At the height of Great Britain's "testing frenzy" in 1997, she began to notice an increased anxiety over test scores permeating the corridors of her school. In Jungian fashion, she viewed the changes she saw as the rise of Chronos in the educational culture. In her words, Chronos, the Greek god, "is characterized by the nervous clock-watching that teachers observe when proctoring tests. Like sprinters the students take on the God of Time as they race for the finish line, trying to outpace him by ever-faster thinking and writing. Chronos history is dominated by the testing calendar.…" She contrasts Chronos with Kairos time or a time that can be "playful, elastic, and unbounded…a soul moment" and explains how the rigidity of Chronos makes it impossible for students to meaningfully interact with information, to develop empathy for the people they study, and to fully understand the nuances of any given history. She reminds the reader that tests cannot measure the depth and intensity of learning. Tests can only measure whether particular questions were answered correctly. In fact, the particular questions may not even be the most essential questions for a particular learner. These insights lead her to a determination and a kind of manifesto "to defend the right of every student to an experience of history based on empathy and imagination."

Reimagining Education challenges readers to examine the purpose of education. As a teacher with nearly twenty years experience in the classroom, I found myself agreeing enthusiastically with the contributors while simultaneously worrying about the elimination of state and national testing. Without any oversight, would all students master the essential skills necessary to economically survive and thrive in a modern economy? If the dominant culture of the modern nation is a Chronos culture of appointments and schedules and formulas, don't educators have a responsibility to train children to live in the world as it is and not as they would like it to be? Simultaneously, if we only prepare children for life in a giant machine, aren't we denying them their fundamental humanity? As editor Dennis Patrick Slattery, author of the essay "What White Whale Breaches? Classroom as a Sacred Space," quotes one of his students, "I read Dante's poem and know full well that I understand little of it, but having read and then discussed it in class, I understand so much of my own life." Is the ability to know oneself more fully through an interaction with great ideas and great thoughts not the most important goal of education?

In "Teaching Thinking," Edward S. Casey writes, "Teaching then has the primary task of instilling a sense of agency in the person learning. It aims not just at getting people to think…but at inculcating the conviction that it is their own thinking that is occurring." To educate a child to memorize rather than to understand, to accept rather than to question, to be passive rather than to be active, may be fulfilling a quota but it is not teaching. Reimagining Education explores why the interaction among creativity, questioning, imagining, and learning is vital. Without these elements, the classroom becomes a barren and infertile landscape. As we teachers strive to instill competence and to meet our own standards of accountability, we must never forget that some of the great inventions of history, the inventions that have transformed the quality of our lives, were created by the dreamers, the ones who saw the world they lived in but who imagined something greater. Reimagining Education deserves to be on every educator's bookshelf because it engages the teacher to reflect not just on the particulars of a lesson but on the mission of education. For to teach without a mission is to leave a child behind.

Elizabeth Napp has been teaching Social Studies in a public high school for twenty years and is the creator of "Parabola in the Classroom."

A CHRISTIAN WOMAN'S SECRET: A Modern-Day Journey to God
By Lilian Staveley, Foreword by Philip Zaleski, Edited by Joseph A. Fitzgerald. World Wisdom (www.worldwisdom.com), 2009. pp. 168. $17.95 paper

"In and out of every day persistently, desperately, endlessly we seek. And because we seek amongst the near-to-hand, the visible, the small, we seek in vain: we discover there is nothing in this world which can wholly and permanently satisfy either of these desires. God Himself is Happiness." Lilian Staveley

Amidst the bombarding selection of book titles that clad the myriad bookstore shelves pertaining to mysticism, spirituality, or religion, the contemporary seeker will find that this unique work-A Christian Woman's Secret-is not another book amongst other books, but a remarkable source of modern-day illumination. Another significant facet of this work is that it was written by a woman, allowing the narrative and substance within to embody the feminine spirit while simultaneously capturing the essence of what it means to be fused or in proximity to the Beloved or the Absolute. "Clothed in the body of either man or woman, the soul is predominantly feminine-the Feminine Principle beloved of, and returning to, the Eternal Masculine of God."

Given that this work is written by a woman, it discloses many aspects of spiritual life that are all-too-often taken for granted by the dominant male representation within the traditions. "Men had souls, I was sure of that; and they asserted the possession of them very positively-but women?" Staveley continues to reflect on how women are underrepresented in the sacred traditions, perhaps underscoring how many women have felt and continue to feel to this day:

In Revelation I found no mention whatever of Woman in the life of the Resurrection. All this hurt me. What profound injustice-to suffer so much and to receive no recognition whatever whilst men walked off with all the joys after leading very questionable lives!

Readers will be interested to know that the author, Lilian Staveley (1878-1928), was a rather unknown Protestant lady of the aristocracy who has been hailed by some to be an extraordinary Christian saint of recent times. The present work is an edited compilation of three previously published works of Staveley that were originally published anonymously by the legendary esoteric bookshop John M. Watkins of London: The Golden Fountain (1919), The Romance of the Soul (1920), and The Prodigal Returns (1921).

Although this book is contextualized within the Christian tradition, it portrays the unanimous tradition that is neither of the East or West, as her inner life was said to be comparable to that of the preeminent Indian sage Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886),[1] St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226), and St. Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897). Staveley informs the reader that she did not come from a religious family per se, yet she explains that her "father's daily life and acts were full of Christianity." That Staveley lived in the day-to-day world and yet remained in a state of perpetual remembrance adhering to apostle Paul's dictum "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) in the very matrix of worldly life challenges many of the present-day assumptions about what is considered essential to spiritual life-"this world is the very place in which we can most easily and quickly get into communication with God." This essential prayer is known in different forms throughout the world's religions and even the shamanic traditions: "Prayer is the golden wedding-ring between ourselves and God." Staveley kept her inner life intimately to herself, hidden from friends and family, even her husband.

Her wisdom exposes trappings pertaining to the spiritual path that many contemporary seekers face. "Our attitude to God is not one of love, but of an expectancy of favors." Staveley explains that the consciousness known to the human individual limited to the five senses is only a fraction of what is beyond the psycho-physical domain.

If the natural [animal] man were asked, "What is life? What is it to live?" he would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further consciousness? This is the secret of the soul.

In the identification with the five senses the human individual mistakenly defines what he or she is in the relative domain. This analogously illustrates the perennial psychology known to both East and West: "As a man's desire is so is he." What is beyond the human senses, also known as the Intellect (Latin: intellectus, Arabic: al-'aql, Sanskrit: buddhi) or the "eye of the heart," provides the human individual with a transcendent faculty that allows him or her to see what is blind to the terrestrial eye: "I had no need for eyes to see outwardly, because of the immense magnetism of this inward Awareness." Staveley insists on the distinction between the soul and the Spirit: "We confuse in our minds the two separate essences-that of the soul and that of the human spirit," which is often the case with modern psychology.

Very few in the postmodern era can visualize, for example, an individual shopping in London's Bond Street while abiding in a state of God-intoxication, let alone a representative of the Victorian and Edwardian British upper class accessing such transcendent states. Staveley unequivocally demonstrates the perennial wisdom that weds both transcendence and immanence within the human microcosm: "to identify ourselves with the spiritual while still in the flesh." And what spiritual pointers can she offer human individuals in the modern and postmodern era where time appears to ever quicken? "'But life is so busy I have no time,' you say. What of those hours spent in the train, those moments spent waiting for an appointment, that half-hour taken for a rest, but which is not a rest because of the rushing inharmonious turmoil of your thoughts?"

Staveley directs the reader to not only acknowledge the axiom "The kingdom of God is within you" theoretically but in fact, explaining that the soul is content only when transcendence becomes immanence itself:

[A]lthough He is present in His Two Persons, the soul is not filled: she is unspeakably blest and happy, but not wholly satisfied till He is present to her in His First Person also. She knows immediately when He so comes, and then the Three become One, and when They become One to her, in that moment the soul enters Bliss. It is love alone which enables her to possess Him, and this love that she knows how to shed to Him is His own gift to her.

This volume speaks directly to the heart of those yearning not only to bridge but to integrate the inner dimension of spiritual life with that of day-to-day outer existence. The affirmation that human individuals can access the grace of the Absolute and make contact here and now with the transcendent is a paramount facet of Staveley's message to the contemporary world, which faces an unprecedented disintegration of spiritual life: "Stand still! Just where we are is the place where we can meet Him. Just where we stand today can be as sacred, as blessed, as the Holy Land." What is most captivating about this book is that it is written in everyday terminology. That the sacred can be found here and now in this very moment is affirmed through this personal and yet paradoxically transpersonal account of a twentieth-century saint who lived in the midst of the modern world.

1. Francis Younghusband, Modern Mystics (London: John Murray, 1935)

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos has received graduate degrees in Education and in Psychology. He has travelled throughout the world to visit sacred sites, and had contact with noted spiritual authorities. He currently works as a mental health clinician in northern California.

Kyoto Journal
(www.kyotojournal.org), 2009, PP 96. $12 or $39 for four issues

Every issue of the Kyoto Journal is like a beautiful paperbound book, ninety-six pages of the most beautifully and straightforwardly designed magazine around. It is the unofficial English language rag of expatriate foreigners in Japan, though it tends to cover the whole of Asian culture from nation to nation. It has been around for about two decades, and no writers or artists are ever paid for their contributions, making it one of the most consistently high-quality "open source" publications anywhere, the recipient of countless awards for content and production.

Book-length poetry is a trademark of Anne Waldman's work, and Manatee/Humanity further develops this approach. Different from many conventional books of poetry, Manatee/Humanity is presented more as a piece of radical nonfiction than as a quaint collection of rhymed musings. The book contains six sections, and while in scope they seem to reflect traditional chapters in a book of nonfiction, in name they evoke something far less predictable. Listed collectively as:

{undercurrent}
~ outer ~ day 1
~ inner ~ day 2
~secret ~ day 3
{outercurrent}
bibliography

the Table of Contents calls into question equally the conventions of nonfiction and poetry alike.

We leap and hop from Sung Dynasty China to present day Hawaii, alighting on numerous and varied points between, as we travel through Robert Aitken's new collection, Miniatures of a Zen Master. The cover's doubled image is the Chinese starting point, a painting called "A Scholar in His Study" and chosen by Aitken himself. (This information comes from Counterpoint Press; the painting is not identified in the book.) At a glance, one might expect this to be a study of small paintings by a Chinese Zen master. Instead, Aitken's juxtaposition of title and image creates an elegant parallel: his short essays, anecdotes and parables are the miniatures. And he himself, retired Roshi (or priest or abbot, although he might disapprove of such translations) of Hawaii's Diamond Sangha, is the Zen Master.

Unbounded Wholeness: Dzogchen, Bon, and the Logic of the Nonconceptual
By Anne Carolyn Klein and Geshe Tenzin
Wangyal Rinpoche. Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2006. PP. 424. $85

It is a rare event when a book is able to uncover some aspect of ancient knowledge that has been hidden in the recesses of prehistory. Not since the publication of Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth by Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend has a book reached back so far and revealed something so fundamental in the history of consciousness. Unbounded Wholeness translates a text that dates back in stages: first to its discovery in eleventh century Tibet and then, in another leap, to the pre-Buddhist eighth-century Himalayan kingdom of Zhang Zhung and, in yet another leap, back much deeper into a prehistoric strata of human culture and intellectual development.

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands
By Rosalie Winard
Welcome Books (www.welcomebooks.com), 2008. PP. 128. $39.95

Wild Birds of the American Wetlands is significant. It is a penetratingly beautiful book with black and white photographs by artist/activist Rosalie Winard with a moving introduction by Terry Tempest Williams. To look at any picture here is to remember birds and their role in our world. To linger with any image revives our innate capacity to know we are not separate from nature. To spend time viewing each page is to be penetrated by the terrible loss of a world without birds; hence, a world without the ability to see beyond our human-centered concerns.

Further Reading
A selected list of books referenced or cited in Vol. 34, Issue 2 of Parabola

The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years
Lee I. Levine
Yale University Press 2005

“In this comprehensive history of the synagogue from the Hellenistic period through Late Antiquity, Lee Levine traces the origins and development of this dynamic and revolutionary institution. He examines a wide spectrum of issues related to ancient synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora—their architecture, art, role in the community, leadership, and liturgy, as well as their integration of social and religious patterns from the surrounding non-Jewish society. This revised paperback edition reflects the latest information in the field, drawn from a wealth of recently published material, ranging from excavation reports and monographs to articles appearing in edited volumes and scholarly journals.” –Back cover

Attaining Unlimited Life: Teachings of Chuang Tzu
Hua Ching Ni
Seven Star Communications 1989

"Master Ni draws upon his extensive training to re-work the entire book of Chuang Tzu, which is the foundation of Taoist and Zen philosophies. Hidden meanings of this ancient treasure are finally presented to modern readers." --Publisher's product description

The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Anicent Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales
John T. Koch and John Carey
Celtic Studies Pulications 2000

“A new edition of an invaluable collection of literary sources, all in translation, for Celtic Europe and early Ireland and Wales. The selections are divided into three sections: the first is classical authors on the ancient celts-a huge selection including both the well-known-Herodotos, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Diogenes Laertius, and Cicero-and the obscure-Pseudo-Scymnus, Lampridius, Vopsicus, Clement of Alexandria and Ptolemy I. The second is early Irish and Hiberno-Latin sources including early Irish dynastic poetry and numerous tales from the Ulster cycle and the third consists of Brittonic sources, mostly Welsh.” –Publisher’s product description

Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Biblical Drama of Divine Omnipotence
Jon D. Levenson
Princeton University Press 1994

“This paperback edition of Creation and the Persistence of Evil brings to a wide audience one of the most innovative and meaningful models of God for this post-Auschwitz era. In a thought-provoking return to the original Hebrew conception of God, which question accepted conceptions of divine omnipotence, Jon Levenson defines God’s authorship of the world as a consequence of his victory in his struggle with evil. Classic doctrines of God’s creation of the universe from the void do not do justice to the complexity of that hard-fought battle, which is uncertain in its outcome. Levenson traces this more flexible conception of God to the earliest Hebrew sources. He argues that Genesis 1 does not describe the banishment of evil but the attempt to contain the menace of evil in the world, a struggle that continues today.” –Back cover

A Cycle Of Myths: Native Legends From Southeast Alaska
John E. Smelcer
Salmon Run Press 2006

“Folklore. Mythology. With an introduction by the editor and a map of Alaska Native Peoples. This "collection of twenty myths is an excellent introduction into the world of southeast Alaska Native cultures.’ (--Dr. Alexandr Vaschenko) John Smelcer has dedicated his professional life to recording the traditionally oral tales of Alaskan Native peoples; his latest book contains narrative myths and legends from the Eyak, Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian Peoples of Southeast Alaska. Thoroughly enchanting as literature and crucially important, along with The Raven and the Totem and Alaska Native Oral Narrative Literature by the same editor, as a reference resource, A Cycle of Myths "keenly captures the mystical world of Alaska Native legend and lore--a world in which the supernatural is natural.’ (--Tobin Morrison)” –Publisher’s product description

Divine Sparks: Collected Wisdom of the Heart
Karen Speerstra
Morning Light Press 2005

Quotations and sayings from all paths of spiritual wisdom. From "Abundance’ to "Zoroastrianism,’ the 509 topics are arranged alphabetically. What makes this collection unique is the author’s vision of a broadly-defined spiritual spectrum — covering all the familiar topics of spirituality, but wide enough to include topics such as ambiguity, bees, chaos, fractals, gambling, humor, identity, journey, knots, living systems, stones, whales and yew trees. Believing that spirituality and creativity are intricately linked, Speerstra includes many insights on such topics as: art and artists, beauty, color, dance, icons, imagination, music, painting, poetry, sculpture, storytelling and writing. Women will find here a ready affinity with such topics as: abuse, birth, blood, care-taking, circles, depression, dreams, feminine energy, friendship, goddess, healing, home, interconnectedness, moon, play, ritual, etc. Consultants and others in business and organizational development will find wise insights on such diverse topics as: achievement, balance, communication, community, complexity, control, creativity, dialogue, discovery, entropy, failure, future, goals, innovation, knowledge, language, leaders/leadership, listening, living systems, motivation, order/disorder, possibilities, potential, quantum theory, questions, relationships, responsibility, service, synchronicity, synergy, talent, technology, values, vocation, and, of course, work.” –Publisher’s product description

The Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade
Macmillan 2004

“Among Library Journal's picks of the most important reference works of the millennium -- with the Encyclopedia Judaica and the New Catholic Encyclopedia -- Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion won the American Library Associations' Dartmouth Medal in 1988 and is widely regarded as the standard reference work in the field.

This second edition, which is intended to reflect both changes in academia and in the world since 1987, includes almost all of the 2,750 original entries -- many heavily updated -- as well as approximately 600 entirely new articles. Preserving the best of Eliade's cross-cultural approach, while emphasizing religion's role within everyday life and as a unique experience from culture to culture, this new edition is the definitive work in the field for the 21st century. An international team of scholars and contributors have reviewed, revised and added to every word of the classic work, making it relevant to the questions and interests of all researchers. The result is an essential purchase for libraries of all kinds.” –Publisher’s product description

The Gospel of Buddha
Paul Carus
Open Court 2004

The Gospel of Buddha, the classic text on Buddhism that first introduced many Westerners to Buddha and his teachings, was first published in 1894 and immediately became a worldwide bestseller. Author Paul Carus (1852-1919) collected many accounts of Buddha's life, teachings, and death, and fashioned a coherent and gripping narrative. It was easily understood and popular with Americans because it resembled a Christian "gospel." Martin Verhoeven's detailed introduction describes the circumstances surrounding Carus's achievement, and the book's relation to other strands of Buddhist teaching. This edition also includes 25 newly rediscovered paintings by the renowned Buddhist artist Yamada.” –Publisher’s product description

This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue During the Greco-Roman Period
Steven Fine
University of Notre Dame Press 1999

This work describes in detail the long and creative process by which holiness became ascribed to synagogues. The author reaches back to the earliest history of the synagogue to explore the ideological development of the synagogue as well as important trends in the history of Judaism.” –Publisher’s product description

Immram Brain: Bran's Journey to the Land of the Women
Séamus Mac Mathúna
Tübingen 1985

An edition of the old Irish tale with linguistic analysis, notes and commentary.

The Inner Kingdom: Volume 1 of the Collected Works
Bishop Kallistos Ware
St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 2000

This is a revised and expanded version of a book that has appeared in French, Italian, and Greek. It focuses on themes central to Eastern Christian worship and spiritual life and serves as an introduction to the series of six volumes of Bishop Kallistos' collected works.

The opening chapter recounts the author's journey to Orthodoxy. The next two chapters provide profound and illuminating insights on death, bereavement and resurrection in Christ, and on repentance. Chapters four through seven invite us into the world of the desert ascetics and hesychast monks. Combining scholarly rigor with practical counsels on prayers, Bishop Kallistos makes the wealth of the Orthodox tradition accessible to today's Christians. The next three chapters concern personal vocation, martyrdom, spiritual guidance, and the strange path of the fool for Christ's sake. There follows a brief essay on time and eternity. The final chapter is a challenging discussion of Origen and Ss Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac the Syrian and Silouan the Athonite, and in conversation with them Bishop Kallistos asks, "Dare we hope for the salvation of all?’” –Publisher’s product description

Ireland and the Grail
John Carey
Celtic Studies Publications 2007

“This is the first book-length study of the origins of the Grail legend to have been undertaken by a specialist in medieval Irish literature. Drawing on a detailed reexamination of the relevant texts in Irish, Welsh, Latin and French, extensive sections of which are presented in new translations, the author argues that the roots of the Grail legend are to be sought in the lost Old Irish manuscript known as the Book of Druimm Snechtai.” --Publisher's product description

Jewish Mystical Testimonies
Louis Jacobs
Schocken 1997

“A unique and inspiring collection of accounts by people who have encountered God, from Biblical times to the present.

The Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies brings together the few accounts we have by Jewish mystics of their encounters with the divine. The sources collected in this volume--spanning two thousand years and including material from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East--include depictions of peak religious experiences and visions, examples of ecstatic prayer, and counsel on how to keep company with the divine.

Supplemented with commentary by Louis Jacobs, one of the world's most knowledgeable scholars of Jewish mysticism, these accounts offer an exciting new window on Jewish religious experience and inspiration to spiritual seekers of all persuasions.” –Publisher’s product description

Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period.
Lawrence Fine
Princeton University Press 2001

“This collection of original materials provides a sweeping view of medieval and early modern Jewish ritual and religious practice. Including such diverse texts as ritual manuals, legal codes, mystical books, autobiographical writings, folk literature, and liturgical poetry, it testifies to the enormous variety of practices that characterized Judaism in the twelve hundred years between 600 and 1800 C.E. Its focus on religious practice and experience--how Judaism was actually lived by people from day to day--makes this anthology unique among the few sourcebooks available.

The volume encompasses the broad scope and complex texture of Jewish religious practice, taking into account many aspects of Jewish culture that have hitherto been relatively neglected: the religious life of ordinary people, the role and status of women, art and aesthetics, and marginalized as well as remote Jewish communities. It introduces such remarkable personalities as Moses Maimonides, Leon Modena, and Gluckel of Hameln, and presents extraordinary texts on festival practice, Torah study, mystical communities, meditation, exorcism, the practice of charity, and folk rites marking birth and death.

Representing state-of-the-art scholarship by distinguished academics from around the world, the volume includes many materials never before translated into English. Each text is preceded by an accessible introduction, making this book suitable for college and university students as well as a general audience. Whether read as a deliberate course of study or dipped into selectively for a glimpse into fascinating Jewish lives and places, Judaism in Practice holds rich rewards for any reader.” –Publisher’s product description

The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales
Diane Wolkstein
Schocken 1997

“When Diane Wolkstein, herself a well-known storyteller, traveled throughout the Haitian countryside in search of stories, she harvested a rich collection of twenty-seven tales, each of which is illuminated by fascinating introductory notes. From orange trees growing at the command of a child to talking fish, these stories present us with a world of wonder, delight, and mystery.” –Back cover

The Mark
Maurice Nicoll
Shambhala 1985

“Essays discuss our spiritual existence, the nature of truth, the meaning of life, human will, and individual growth.” –Publisher’s product description