Barbara Lundblad contends that to preach is to engage a specific community of Christians in a process of gradual growth and change. While every parish has its unique attributes and needs, there are some basic dynamics at work in moving a congregation through resistance and toward transformation. Lundblad focuses our attention on these dynamics as she describes a program of preaching meant to re-fashion a people. The steps include building a foundation of grace, re-imaging Jesus, naming and honoring the wounds of community members, naming and removing obstacles to change, describing alternative futures, and daring hope. The author addresses each of these themes separately in chapters that include a brief introduction, two sample sermons, and a conclusion. This book for preachers provides a model for transformation preaching.
This is a guide to converting your greatest fears -- fear of dying, fear of poverty, fear of annihilation, fear of the unknown -- into energy you can use to burst the limitations that bind you and expand into your full human potential. Dr Stone demonstrates this metamorphosis with a variety of inspiring case histories from her psychotherapy practice using her step-by-step Soul Detective Detrimental Energy Protocol. The protocol calls in angelic protection, identifies harmful influences, finds the cognitive distortions running the fears, and shines the golden light of consciousness into the dark places to heal the heart and restore the soul.
Finalist for the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers It is the mid-1800s. Fela, taken from Africa, is working at her second sugar plantation in colonial Puerto Rico, where her mistress is only too happy to benefit from her impressive embroidery skills. But Fela has a secret. Before she and her husband were separated and sold into slavery, they performed a tribal ceremony in which they poured the essence of their unborn child into a very special stone. Fela keeps the stone with her, waiting for the chance to finish what she started. When the plantation owner approaches her, Fela sees a better opportunity for her child, and allows the man to act out his desire. Such is the beginning of a line of daughters connected by their intense love for one another, and the stories of a lost land. Mati, a powerful healer and noted craftswoman, is grounded in a life that is disappearing in a quickly changing world. Concha, unsure of her place, doesn't realize the price she will pay for rejecting her past. Elena, modern and educated, tries to navigate between two cultures, moving to the United States, where she will struggle to keep her family together. Carisa turns to the past for wisdom and strength when her life in New York falls apart. The stone becomes meaningful to each of the women, pulling them through times of crisis and ultimately connecting them to one another. Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa shows great skill and warmth in the telling of this heartbreaking, inspirational story about mothers and daughters, and the ways in which they hurt and save one another.
We've all been let down by so-called community. Why is it so hard for us to connect and grow together for the long haul? Veteran spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton helps us get personal and practical about experiencing transformation together. This interactive guide allows us to grow through and by the experience of transforming community.
Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan’s medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life—eating, sleeping, even one’s deluded thinking—is the Buddha’s conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts. Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute non-dualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According other readings, it represents a dangerous anti-nomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan’s medieval period. Jacqueline Stone’s groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized several medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in pre-modern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received a little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of “corruption” in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between “old” and “new” Buddhism and the long-standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that “original enlightenment thought” represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between “old” and “new” institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.
After one thousand, three hundred and fifteen days of silence, it feels as if I am coming to you from a totally different world. In fact it is so. The world of words, language, concepts, and the world of silence are so diametrically opposite to each other, they don’t meet anywhere. They can’t meet by their very nature. Silence means a state of wordlessness; and to speak now, it is as if to learn language again from ABC. But this is not a new experience for me; it has happened before too.
Critiques neo-liberalism and provides an alternative understanding of contemporary world politics by arguing that the neo-liberal approach to international relations is deeply flawed, reproducing violence, instability, insecurity and marginalization.
A comprehensive manual for using crystals, gems, and stones to address physical, emotional, and spiritual health conditions • Includes an extensive Materia Medica detailing the healing and spiritual properties of 200 crystals and stones based on Classical Chinese Medicine • Explores the role played by the color of each stone, its Yin and Yang qualities, crystalline structure, chemical composition, and topical and internal applications • Explains how to make stone and crystal elixirs, wear stones as healing jewelry, use them in massage and energy work, and cleanse and recharge them • Based on the oral teachings of Dr. Jeffrey C. Yuen, a Taoist priest from the ancient lineage of the Jade Purity School (88th generation) masters In addition to herbalism and acupuncture, Chinese Medicine has a rich tradition of using stones as medicine, passed from generation to generation for thousands of years. In this comprehensive guide and extensive Materia Medica, Leslie J. Franks presents the Stone Medicine teachings of Dr. Jeffrey C. Yuen, an 88th generation Taoist priest from the ancient lineage of the Jade Purity School, which dates to the Han dynasty, 206 BCE. Detailing the therapeutic properties of 200 gems, stones, minerals, and crystals, Franks begins with an extensive look at 15 different forms of quartz, followed by chapters on transformative stones, protective stones, nourishing stones, source energy stones, and alchemical stones. She explains the physical, emotional, and spiritual conditions each stone can treat and how their color, form, hardness, and energetic qualities affect us according to Chinese Medicine. She discusses how to make stone and crystal elixirs for internal and topical use, how to charge quartz with the healing properties of other stones, how to cleanse and recharge a stone after use, and how to combine stones to create healing formulas for individual conditions. She explains different techniques of wearing stones as healing jewelry and how to use them in massage and energy work. She examines the chemistry and sacred geometry of crystal structure, revealing how the minerals contained in the stones affect our physiology by supporting our Jing (Essence); by nourishing Qi (energy), blood, and fluids; and by clearing Wind, Cold, Damp, and Heat conditions that can lead to disease. Including a thorough primer on Traditional Chinese Medicine and backed by modern scientific research, this book explains how stones access our deepest layers, vibrating ever so slowly, to initiate deep lasting change.
