Poetry and prose to encourage us to grow. Watering the Soul is a timeless reminder that everyone needs time, love, and forgiveness. In the deepest, most enchanting part of the forest, a creature hands you a seed. Within the seed is your soul, ready to be grown again. From internationally bestselling author Courtney Peppernell comes her new book of poetry and prose, Watering the Soul. In true Peppernell style, the book is divided into sections, this time following a step-by-step recipe, to heal your soul. Filled with themes that focus on forgiveness, gratitude, togetherness, and equality, Peppernell takes you on a journey to find a precious yet profound understanding; that a seed is not grown with haste and nor is becoming whole, that in each and every step, we find the meaning of watering the soul. This is the story of your soul and how it can be grown again.
A remakable story of God's constancy and provision for all lovers of history, romance and faith... Based on historical characters and events, Love to Water My Soul recounts the dramatic story of an abandoned white child rescued by Indians. Among Oregon's Paiute people, Shell Flower seeks love and a pace of belonging...only to be cast away from her home. In the years that follow, she faces a new life in the world of the white man--a life filled with both attachment and loss--yet finds that God faithfully unites her with a love that fills all longing in this heartwarming sequel to Jane Kirkpatrick's award-winner, A Sweetness to the Soul.
Poet and author Luci Shaw guides you into a deeper understanding of how to cultivate the life of the soul in relationship to God. Water My Soul speaks of the interior life in images of garden and wilderness, seed and soil, watering and waiting-metaphors for the process that leads to the spouting of the seed, the greening of the leaf, and the eventual harvest of flower and fruit. This book speaks straight to the heart, helping you enjoy a lifelong partnership with God as you cultivate a rich inner life-a life characterized by growth in wisdom and godliness. "Luci Shaw is one of our best writers. Read this wonderful book, and for heaven's sake pick up some copies for your friends!" -Annie Dillard "Water My Soul is a profoundly rooted book that reminds us all to slow down, breathe deeply, and experience God at work. Luci Shaw displays the wisdom of a woman who has lived well and the child-like wonder of a believer who continues to discover new reasons to believe. This book will be a classic-a volume to be reread whenever life seems to spin out of control." -Dale Hanson Burke Publisher, Religion News Service
Darla Weaver writes out of her own struggles with Christian discipleship so that others will know Old Order Mennonites are human too and often long to walk closer to God. She bares her heart in these 90 devotionals drawn from her home-centered life in western Ohio’s hills. While family, gardening, cooking with home grown food, and living as naturally as possible off the land are the focus of her days, her utmost goal is to serve and honor the Christ she loves and serves through all aspects of her life. Women especially will relate to these meditations generously sprinkled with stories from Darla’s children, marriage, community and wider friends and family. Daily scripture readings, poignant prayers and journal prompts or ideas for active responses are included with each inspiring devotional.
Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul) is one of the great classics of philosophy. Aristotle examines the nature of the soul-sense-perception, imagination, cognition, emotion, and desire, including, memory, dreams, and processes such as nutrition, growth, and death.
The soul, a reflection based on my own experiences and conversations with the souls of the deceased, with mediumistic people and a great deal of research. No religions are discussed here and no beliefs are explained or treated, but messages and transmissions are quoted verbatim. For example, the soul‘s view of our earthly life and what may await us after life. Anyone with an open mind and a desire for new ideas will find much inspiration here. The soul says: „From our point of view, life on Earth is very different to how you see it...“ So, be curious.
In Search of Soul explores the meaning of “soul” in sacred and profane incarnations, from its biblical origins to its central place in the rich traditions of black and Latin history. Surveying the work of writers, artists, poets, musicians, philosophers and theologians, Alejandro Nava shows how their understandings of the “soul” revolve around narratives of justice, liberation, and spiritual redemption. He contends that biblical traditions and hip-hop emerged out of experiences of dispossession and oppression. Whether born in the ghettos of America or of the Roman Empire, hip-hop and Christianity have endured by giving voice to the persecuted. This book offers a view of soul in living color, as a breathing, suffering, dreaming thing.
"A gold mine of information for American social scientists. It is a 'must have.'" -Choice "Calling in the Soul" (Hu Plig) is the chant the Hmong use to guide the soul of a newborn baby into its body on the third day after birth. Based on extensive original research conducted in the late 1980s in a village in northern Thailand, this ethnographic study examines Hmong cosmological beliefs about the cycle of life as expressed in practices surrounding birth, marriage, and death, and the gender relationships evident in these practices. The social framework of the Hmong (or Miao, as they are called in China, and Meo, in Thailand), who have lived on the fringes of powerful Southeast Asian states for centuries, is distinctly patrilineal, granting little direct power to women. Yet within the limits of this structure, Hmong women wield considerable influence in the spiritually critical realms of birth and death. Patricia Symonds situates her study within the landscape of northern Thai mountain life and anthropological perspectives on the Hmong, and then focuses on "Flower Village," telling detailed stories of births, marriages, and deaths. Recurring motifs emerge: the complementarity of women's and men's roles in daily life and in the otherworld, and their reversal at critical moments; the importance of the brother-sister relationship; the social and spiritual significance of the ceremonial clothing women create, especially their embroidered "flower cloth" and the ambiguously nuanced sev, or "modesty aprons," they wear; the endlessly cyclical nature of life, from birth to death to birth again; the importance of sound and silence at times of transition; the complex connections between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Hmong women's primary source of power in the patriline is their fecundity, through which they influence key spiritual aspects of the life cycle. This value and power is evident in the division of bride-price into two parts: "milk and care money," which compensates a woman's parents for her upbringing; and payment for the "birth shirt," or placenta, of the child the young wife will produce. Through provision of birth shirts for fetuses and of elaborately embroidered cloth shirts for the dead, women literally clothe the soul through cycles of rebirth. An epilogue and appendixes provide a discussion of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Hmong of Thailand, cultural factors in HIV transmission, and strategies for containment; complete Hmong texts and English translations of "Calling in the Soul," and "Showing the Way," the chant which guides the soul of the deceased through the land of darkness and back to reincarnation in a new body in the land of light; Flower Village demographic information; and an account of a shamanic healing and outline of Hmong health care issues in the United States. Calling in the Soulwill be of interest to sociocultural anthropologists, medical anthropologists, Southeast Asianists, and gender specialists. Patricia V. Symondsis adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Brown University. She is the coauthor (with Brooke G. Schoepf) ofHIV/AIDS: The Global Pandemic and Struggles for Control. "Despite the now quite substantial literature on the Hmong, until now, there has been very little that explores gender issues. . . .Calling in the Soulalso makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge about Hmong death rites and religious beliefs." - Charles Keyes, University of Washington "The volume's strength is its ethnography, . . . in the numerous engaging accounts of particular events - marriages, births, etc." - Nicola Tannebaum, Lehigh University "A fascinating ethnography. Its firm grounding in an ethnic minority village in Thailand provides an interesting setting for thinking about the life cycle." - Hjorleifur Jonsson, Arizona State University
