A Genealogy of Devotion
A Genealogy of Devotion

Author: Patton E. Burchett

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 0231548834

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In this book, Patton E. Burchett offers a path-breaking genealogical study of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism that traces its understudied historical relationships with tantra, yoga, and Sufism. Beginning in India’s early medieval “Tantric Age” and reaching to the present day, Burchett focuses his analysis on the crucial shifts of the early modern period, when the rise of bhakti communities in North India transformed the religious landscape in ways that would profoundly affect the shape of modern-day Hinduism. A Genealogy of Devotion illuminates the complex historical factors at play in the growth of bhakti in Sultanate and Mughal India through its pivotal interactions with Indic and Persianate traditions of asceticism, monasticism, politics, and literature. Shedding new light on the importance of Persian culture and popular Sufism in the history of devotional Hinduism, Burchett’s work explores the cultural encounters that reshaped early modern North Indian communities. Focusing on the Rāmānandī bhakti community and the tantric Nāth yogīs, Burchett describes the emergence of a new and Sufi-inflected devotional sensibility—an ethical, emotional, and aesthetic disposition—that was often critical of tantric and yogic religiosity. Early modern North Indian devotional critiques of tantric religiosity, he shows, prefigured colonial-era Orientalist depictions of bhakti as “religion” and tantra as “magic.” Providing a broad historical view of bhakti, tantra, and yoga while simultaneously challenging dominant scholarly conceptions of them, A Genealogy of Devotion offers a bold new narrative of the history of religion in India.

Deadly Devotion
Deadly Devotion

Author: Alysia Sofios

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-07-26

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1451665199

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Even the most avid true crime fans will be shocked by the story of Marcus Wesson of Fresno, California, the worst mass-murderer in the city’s history. But the horrors he inflicted upon his family are nothing compared to the strength of the survivors, and one brave reporter who risked everything to help them. Originally published as Where Hope Begins. For decades, the family of Marcus Wesson—his wife, Elizabeth, and seventeen children—lived sequestered in a social and emotional prison, enduring his tyrannical reign of physical, sexual, and mental abuse. Then came the terrible day when a family confrontation erupted into a harrowing standoff: with police and SWAT teams descending on a small blue house in central Fresno, Marcus Wesson murdered nine of his children. Television reporter Alysia Sofios got the first tip about Wesson’s arrest and was witness to every twist and turn of the horrific case through to Wesson’s trial. Risking her job and her life to offer friendship and support to the traumatized family members—scarred by memories and guilt, reviled for having the Wesson name—Sofios chronicles the case that shocked the nation, and gives voice to their astounding stories of survival. This is a stunning account of healing from one man’s unimaginable acts, and how each, in time, learned to break free from a deadly devotion.

Mrs. Oswald Chambers
Mrs. Oswald Chambers

Author: Michelle Ule

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2017-10-17

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1493406965

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Among Christian devotional works, My Utmost for His Highest stands head and shoulders above the rest, with more than 13 million copies sold. But most readers have no idea that Oswald Chambers's most famous work was not published until ten years after his death. The remarkable person behind its compilation and publication was his wife, Biddy. And her story of living her utmost for God's highest is one without parallel. Bestselling novelist Michelle Ule brings Biddy's story to life as she traces her upbringing in Victorian England to her experiences in a WWI YMCA camp in Egypt. Readers will marvel at this young woman's strength as she returns to post-war Britain a destitute widow with a toddler in tow. Refusing personal payment, Biddy proceeds to publish not just My Utmost for His Highest, but also 29 other books with her husband's name on the covers. All the while she raises a child alone, provides hospitality to a never-ending stream of visitors and missionaries, and nearly loses everything in the London Blitz during WWII. The inspiring story of a devoted woman ahead of her times will quickly become a favorite of those who love true stories of overcoming incredible odds, making a life out of nothing, and serving God's kingdom.

A Genealogy of the Modern Self
A Genealogy of the Modern Self

Author: Alina Clej

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1995-08-01

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 0804780765

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As this book's title suggests, its main argument is that Thomas De Quincey's literary output, which is both a symptom and an effect of his addictions to opium and writing, plays an important and mostly unacknowledged role in the development of modern and modernist forms of subjectivity. At the same time, the book shows that intoxication, whether in the strict medical sense or in its less technical meaning ("strong excitement," "trance," "ecstasy"), is central to the ways in which modernity, and literary modernity in particular, functions and defines itself. In both its theoretical and practical implications, intoxication symbolizes and often comes to constitute the condition of the alienated artist in the age of the market. The book also offers new readings of the Confessions and some of De Quincey's posthumous writings, as well as an extended analysis of his relatively neglected diary. The discussion of De Quincey's work also elicits new insights into his relationship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, as well as his imaginary investment in Coleridge.

Bhakti Religion in North India
Bhakti Religion in North India

Author: David N. Lorenzen

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1994-11-09

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 143841126X

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In India, religion continues to be an absolutely vital source for social as well as personal identity. All manner of groups--political, occupational, and social--remain grounded in specific religious communities. This book analyzes the development of the modern Hindu and Sikh communities in North India starting from about the fifteenth century, when the dominant bhakti tradition of Hinduism became divided into two currents: the sagun and the nirgun. The sagun current, led mostly by Brahmins, has remained dominant in most of North India and has served as the ideological base of the development of modern Hindu nationalism. Several chapters explore the rise of this religious and political movement, paying particular attention to the role played by devotion to Ram. Alternative trends do exist in sagun tradition, however, and are represented here by chapters on the low-caste saint Chokhamel and the tantric sect founded by Kina Ram. The nirgun current, led mostly by persons of Ksand artisan castes, formed the base of both the Sikh community, founded by Guru Nanak, and of various non-Brahmin sectarian movements derived from such saints as Kabir, Raidas, Dadu, and Shiv Dayal Singh. Two chapters discuss the formation of a distinctive Sikh theology and a Sikh community identity separate from that of the Hindus. Other chapters discuss the validity of the sagun-nirgun distinction within Hindu tradition and the interplay of social and religious ideas in nirgun hagiographic texts and in sectarian movements such as the Adi Dharma Mission and the Radhasoami Satsang.

Devotion
Devotion

Author: Dani Shapiro

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-01-26

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0061628344

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In her midforties and settled into the responsibilities and routines of adulthood, Dani Shapiro found herself with more questions than answers. Was this all life was—a hodgepodge of errands, dinner dates, e-mails, meetings, to-do lists? What did it all mean? Having grown up in a deeply religious and traditional family, Shapiro had no personal sense of faith, despite repeated attempts to create a connection to something greater. Feeling as if she was plunging headlong into what Carl Jung termed "the afternoon of life," she wrestled with self-doubt and a searing disquietude that would awaken her in the middle of the night. Set adrift by loss—her father's early death; the life-threatening illness of her infant son; her troubled relationship with her mother—she had become edgy and uncertain. At the heart of this anxiety, she realized, was a challenge: What did she believe? Spurred on by the big questions her young son began to raise, Shapiro embarked upon a surprisingly joyful quest to find meaning in a constantly changing world. The result is Devotion: a literary excavation to the core of a life. In this spiritual detective story, Shapiro explores the varieties of experience she has pursued—from the rituals of her black hat Orthodox Jewish relatives to yoga shalas and meditation retreats. A reckoning of the choices she has made and the knowledge she has gained, Devotion is the story of a woman whose search for meaning ultimately leads her home. Her journey is at once poignant and funny, intensely personal—and completely universal.

Walk Through the Word
Walk Through the Word

Author: Thomas Nelson

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1400323789

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This year, take an insightful journey through the pages of the New Testament. Fifty-two pastors bring New Testament scripture alive in Walk Through the Word. Each day offers a passage of the New Testament and a meaningful devotional, and each week readers will be encouraged to journal their thoughts on the scriptures and commentary they have read. As readers continue their walk through God’s Word, their knowledge of Him will grow, and they will find themselves becoming more like Christ. Coupled with New Testament scriptures, daily devotionals help readers absorb biblical truths and practically apply scriptures to everyday life. Devotional topics include: the vastness of Christ’s love, investing in the growth of others, how repentance leads to transformation, how God uses His children to accomplish His purpose, and more.

The Madonna of 115th Street
The Madonna of 115th Street

Author: Robert A. Orsi

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0300157525

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A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Robert A. Orsi's classic study of popular religion in Italian Harlem. In a new preface, Orsi discusses significant shifts in the field of religious history and calls for new ways of empirically studying divine presences in human life. "The Madonna of 115th Street has over the last quarter century become a classic of American religious history. There are few books that I have enjoyed teaching more over the years and even fewer that have taught me as much about American Catholic history."—Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

A Testament of Devotion
A Testament of Devotion

Author: Thomas R. Kelly

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1996-08-02

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0060643617

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Since its first publication in 1941, A Testament of Devotion, by the renowned Quaker teacher Thomas Kelly, has been universally embraced as a truly enduring spiritual classic. Plainspoken and deeply inspirational, it gathers together five compelling essays that urge us to center our lives on God's presence, to find quiet and stillness within modern life, and to discover the deeply satisfying and lasting peace of the inner spiritual journey. As relevant today as it was a half-century ago, A Testament of Devotion is the ideal companion to that highest of all human arts-the lifelong conversation between God and his creatures. I have in mind something deeper than the simplification of our external programs, our absurdly crowded calendars of appointments through which so many pantingly and frantically gasp. These do become simplified in holy obedience, and the poise and peace we have been missing can really be found. But there is a deeper, an internal simplification of the whole of one's personality, stilled, tranquil, in childlike trust listening ever to Eternity's whisper, walking with a smile into the dark."

Family Trees & Olive Branches
Family Trees & Olive Branches

Author: Christina Hergenrader

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780758657848

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Families are equal parts blood, duty, history, fights, and future. Families are beautiful, complicated, and infuriating. Pastors' doors revolve with families looking for healing from one another. Siblings hold grudges for years. Parents stop speaking to their kids. People want to escape their families and fix them, celebrate them, and never speak to them again. But what can break our generational curses? What can shine bright light into our dark hearts? What can change everything - even our ugliest family feuds? God's grace and His forgiveness. Family Trees and Olive Branches points readers to the authority and comfort of Scripture as they seek to repair and improve their family relationships. Inspired by Matthew 18:22, Family Trees and Olive Branches is a conversation about grace, the oil that unsticks fighting families. No matter how black the sheep of your family is, how hurtful your parents can be, or how long it has been since you've spoken to your brother, God's answer to family fallouts is always grace. In this book, readers will look at the different types of olive branches in the Bible with the purpose of opening their hearts and minds to spiritual transformation through the work of the Holy Spirit. Each chapter offers lessons of forgiveness, tips on reflecting God's grace in our toughest relationships, journal and prayer prompts, and discussion starters.