Religious Life

In this memoir, Luke Timothy Johnson draws on his rich experience to invite listeners into the scholar’s life—its aims, commitments, and habits. In addition to sharing his own story from childhood to retirement, Johnson reflects on the nature of scholarship more generally, showing how this vocation has changed over the past half century and where it might be going in the future. He is as candid and unsparing about negative trends in academia as he is hopeful about the possibilities of steadfast, disciplined scholarship.

He's a comedian. He's a YouTube sensation. And now he becomes an author. Best known for his song parodies and riffs on yoga pants and homeschooling, Tim Hawkins now shares his perspective on life in the 21st century in his long-awaited debut book. Tim's topics are as wide-ranging as his stand-up comedy, including marital communications ("Marriage needs a challenge flag, like in pro football"), worship music ("Pick the right key, because I'm not Barry White and I'm not a Bee Gee"), and food ("Eating a Krispy Kreme donut is like eating a baby angel").

U.G. Krishnamurti famously described enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being with no religious, psychological or mystical implications. He did not lecture, did not set up organizations, held no gatherings and professed to have no message for mankind. Known as the ‘anti-guru’, the ‘raging sage’ and the ‘thinker who shuns thought’, U.G. spent his life destroying accepted beliefs in science, god, mind, soul, religion, love and relationships--all the props man uses to live life.

A timely, accessible, and beautifully written story exploring themes of food, friendship, family and what it means to belong, featuring sixth graders Sara, a Pakistani American, and Elizabeth, a White, Jewish girl taking a South Asian cooking class taught by Sara’s mom.

THE recurrence of a religious note in the verse inspired by the war, in many of the stories and essays, and especially in soldiers’ letters, is due to a closer contact with reality and expresses an enhanced sense of personality. It seems extraordinary only to the spiritually dull. Those who but the other day said that religion was not talked about, except pro¬fessionally by propagandists, must have forgotten their youth. Among those for whom life is still an adventure no important subject is talked about more. We may count out, of course, that mere repetition of news which is hardly talk...

In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing.

Following the success of several recent inspirational and practical books for would-be writers, Poemcrazy is a perfect guide for everyone who ever wanted to write a poem but was afraid to try. Writing workshop leader Susan Wooldridge shows how to think, use one's senses, and practice exercises that will make poems more likely to happen.

In 2000, end-of-life therapist William Peters was volunteering at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco when he had an extraordinary experience as he was reading aloud to a patient: he suddenly felt himself floating midair, completely out of his body. The patient, who was also aloft, looked at him and smiled. The next moment, Peters felt himself return to his body…but his patient never regained consciousness and died.

Jack Miles's book is a provocative and revisionary look at the life of Jesus, in which many of the most well-worn truths about Christ are recontextualized and revisited. It does not look for the historical Jesus, but takes the Gospels as the sole source about his life.

Felix and Zelda - they escaped from the Nazis, but how long can they now survive when there are so many people ready to hand them over for a reward? Thanks to the courage of a kind, brave woman they are able to hide for a time in the open, but Felix knows he has a distinguishing feature that identifies him as a Jew and that it is only a matter of time before he is discovered, which will mean death for them all. Even though he promised Zelda he would never leave her, he knows he has to, before it is too late....

Will Wilder yearns to join the Perilous Falls Middle School football team. But he was never big enough or strong enough to make the cut, until he comes in contact with a talisman containing the fabled locks of Samson. But using the Amulet of Power attracts dark forces to Perilous Falls like moths to a flame. Suddenly, hunched creatures are shadowing people around town, graves are being disturbed, the music of a mysterious DJ lulls half of Perilous Falls into a stupor, and to top it all off, Will is convinced that a teammate may be a demon himself!

In his first-ever memoir, Fr. Benedict Groeschel introduces you to the men and women who have influenced him over the course of his life. Some are unknown, such as Mr. Graff, a Jewish man who tailored the suit the young man would wear to the seminary. His advice: "Look, I don't understand about monasteries, but I'll give you a piece of advice. Be a good boy."

Where do we go when we die? Or is there nowhere to go? Is death something we can do or is it just something that happens to us? Now in his ninth decade, former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, has spent a lifetime at the bedsides of the dying, guiding countless men and women towards peaceful deaths. In The Last Bus, he presents a positive, meditative and profound exploration of the many important lessons we can learn from death.

Theologian and reformer John Wycliffe never had the opportunity to take his doctrines outside of his native England, but he could never have imagined that his teachings would one day travel as far as 920 miles east to Bohemia. In fact, while his contentious convictions aroused much ado at home, receiving both praise and contempt from followers and ecclesiastical figures, his messages would be far more resonant across the Channel than they ever were back home.

Fans of Maeve Binchy will love this entertaining read that transcends time with history repeating itself, proving it’s not our circumstances that define us but the power within to change. A story of life, love, loss and seeking more, three generations of women are all on a journey to change their circumstances and find the life they believe they were destined for . . . revealing a terrible secret that changes it all. In 1960s Ireland, Maggie Treacy has never felt she belongs. Determined to change her life, the transformation doesn’t come without cost, but she isn’t going to let ...

Cold Tangerines is a collection of stories that celebrate the extraordinary moments hidden in our everyday lives. It is about God, and about life, and about the thousands of daily ways in which an awareness of God changes and infuses everything. It is about spiritual life, and about all the things that we have called nonspiritual life that might be spiritual after all.

Adoniram Judson, a figure of intimidating success and legacy, receives a worthy telling of his story in this memoir by J. Clement. Clement describes Judson’s thirst for theological knowledge, his understanding and acceptance of salvation, and his journey into and on the mission field. It is detailed how he listened to the Holy Spirit’s call for him to heed the Great Commission and how, despite all legal and practical obstacles, he secured his way into the field as the first American foreign missionary.

Six-year-old Angela looks at the naked baby Jesus in her local church in Limerick, Ireland, circa 1912, and thinks he looks cold. She wonders why his mother, or one of the shepherds, doesn't put a blanket over him. She decides to take him to her bedroom and wrap him in her own blanket. The journey home is a bit difficult and when the disappearance is discovered, the whole parish is very, very upset. But Angela does carry the baby back to church, and all turns out well.

Jake wants to see for himself whether his mother is having a mid-life crisis or a later-in-life adventure. He's betting on the second. Mallie’s oldest son checked up on her not long after she returned to the canyon and the home she grew up in…the home where she raised her children until a tragedy forced her to make the difficult decision to leave. Now her youngest son is on his way... Jake Westin is returning to the canyon where he grew up. It’s been ten years since the last time he was there. He can still vividly remember the circumstances that led to his family’s departure all ...

Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings. Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth's environment.