The Divine Dance has become a classic for fans of Richard Rohr and an important book on Christian mysticism, it provides a fresh perspective for anyone studying or teaching the trinity. The Trinity is the central doctrine of Christianity, but it is still widely considered a mystery we won't ever fully understand. Should we still try to understand it, even so? If we could, how would it transform our relationship with God? In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, internationally recognised teacher Richard Rohr explores the nature of God and the paradoxical idea of the Holy Trinity as both three and one. With clear, surefooted wisdom, he encourages us to build on the early Christian understanding of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit as a flow and dance - a Divine Dance - that we are invited to join in. An engaging, accessible look at the nature of God, The Divine Dance will challenge the way you think about the Trinity and give you a much fuller understanding of the triune relationship that is at the heart of Christian doctrine. It will leave you with a faith that is renewed and strengthened, and show you how you can engage more deeply in your relationship with God and the world through the Trinity.

The heart of this book is a dramatic love poem, the Rasa Lila, which is the ultimate focal point of one of the most treasured Sanskrit texts of India, the Bhagavata Purana. Judged a literary masterpiece by Indian and Western scholars alike, this work of poetic genius and soaring religious vision is one of the world's greatest sacred love stories and, as Graham Schweig clearly demonstrates, should be regarded as India's Song of Songs. The story presents the supreme deity as the youthful and amorous cowherd, Krishna, who joins his beloved maidens in an enchanting and celebratory "dance of divine love." Schweig introduces this work of exquisite poetry and profound theology to the Western world in the form of a luminous translation and erudite scholarly treatment. His book explores the historical context and literary genre of the work and elucidates the aesthetic and emotional richness of the composition, highlighting poignant details of this drama of divine love. Schweig illuminates the religious dimensions and ethical nuances of the drama, drawing widely from the commentaries and esoteric vision of masters of the Caitanya school of Vaishnavism, a prominent devotional Hindu tradition. Themes such as transcendence of death through love, the yoga of devotion, the contrast between worldly love and passionate love for God, and the dialectical tension between ethical boundaries and boundless love are presented. The final event of the Rasa dance, the author concludes, presents a dynamic symbol of supreme love that provides the basis for a theological vision of genuine religious pluralism.

***GITA GOVINDA***The Dance of Divine Love of Radha & Krishna>Jayadeva

The contributors to Divine Love cover a broad spectrum of world religions, comparing and contrasting approaches among Christians of several denominations, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and adherents of traditional African religions. Each chapter focuses on the definition and conceptual boundaries of divine love; its expression and experience; its instrumentality and salience; how it can become distorted, and how it has been made manifest or restored by great historic exemplars of altruism, compassion, and unlimited love. The ultimate aim for many of the world’s major faith traditions is to love and be loved by God—to live in connection with the Divine, in union with the Beloved, in reconciliation with the Ultimate. Religious scholars Jeff Levin and Stephen G. Post have termed this connection “divine love.” In their new collection of the same name, they have invited eight of the world’s preeminent religious scholars to share their perspectives on the what, how, and why of divine love. From this diverse gathering of perspectives emerges evidence that to love and to be loved by God, to enter into a mutual and covenantal relationship with the Divine, may well offer solutions to many of the current crises around the world. Only a loving relationship with the Source of being within the context of the great faith and wisdom traditions of the world can fully inform and motivate the acts of love, unity, justice, compassion, kindness, and mercy for all beings that are so desperately required to counter the toxic influences in the world. Contributors: William C. Chittick, Vigen Guroian, Ruben L. F. Habito, William K. Mahony, John S. Mbiti, Jacob Neusner, Clark H. Pinnock, and David Tracy.

"I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised, and, in fact, a little terrified, when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening." ––Sue Monk Kidd For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, Kidd experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, author of When the Heart Waits tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost in the church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats and to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women– one that retains a meaningful connection with the "deep song of Christianity," embraces the sacredness of ordinary women's experience, and has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman's life– her marriage, her career, and her religion. This Plus edition paperback includes a recent interview with the author conducted by the book's editor Michael Maudlin.

Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.

Humanity has been given access to the secrets of oneness, but we need to learn how to work with them. Working with Oneness brings mysticism into the center of the marketplace, into the world of business and technology, and shows how we can work with it in everyday life. The dynamic energy of oneness has the potential to heal the planet and revolutionize life more than we can imagine, but it requires our individual participation and awareness to become fully alive. The energy of oneness is already present but waiting to be lived, and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee provides a blueprint for working consciously with this energy. As we understand how our consciousness affects the whole fabric of life, the potential for real global change comes alive. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee stresses the need to change from hierarchical, patriarchal power structures to organic patterns that allow for the free flow of energy and ideas. Through these patterns the dynamic energy of oneness can become part of everyday life. Working with Oneness includes a number of additional important topics, including: the changing energy structure of the planet and how to work with it; the power of individual consciousness; the danger of the desire for spiritual security; the return of joy to everyday life; the awakening of the heart of the world; a new understanding of magic; the use of the imagination; and mystical participation in life with the energy of oneness. Working with Oneness offers guidance on how to work with the energy of oneness, to learn how to participate in life free of the patterns of the past, so that the divine can come alive in every moment of every day. Working with Oneness is mystical activism at its most potent. “There is a growing and eager audience waiting for a vision of unity consciousness... Working with Oneness offers a salutary antidote to worn-out antagonisms. It challenges readers to join other kindred souls in a mystical activism that can bring new hope to humanity.” —Spirituality & Health “A book filled with wonder and the kind of insights that can leap out to your heart and gladden you for having read them. It's words are simple and straightforward—always a blessing—but its message it the most vital and important for the time in which we live. I recommend it.” —David Spangler, author, Blessings: the Art and the Practice

The Dance of Ego and Essence is a 40-day journey with Dr. Pamela Gerali to a new, clear, and hopeful future. This is a fun and powerful way to get real with yourself. Join Pamela in this life-changing diva dance and follow her candid leaps of faith to guide you in a divine waltz of wholeness and oneness.This experience changed her life, and just reading it can help you as well. This process helped Pamela review and release the energies she had of past experiences. As she journaled her health, fear, and resistance was transformed. One self-affirming step at a time, this exquisite radical honesty cleansed her soul and revealed the tango of ego and essence. It showed her how we express our divinity through our humanity. Once she processed and shared my experiences, others benefited as well.

This book's theological and philosophical construction of a God of enjoyment poetically remaps views of divine love. Posing a critique to the Aristotelian unmoved mover and actus purus whose intellective enjoyment is self-enclosed, this book's affective tones paint an image of a passionate God who suffers and yearns because of love, and permeably intermingles with the cosmos, in order to intensely love the many by taking on their form as lover, even if appearing improper. The narrative of this book leads the reader onto a via eminentia or path of excess of the intemperate kind, first in the form of an intellective appetite that for St. Thomas Aquinas places God beyond the divine self, then more erotically of a silhouette of "so good a lover" whose love, as for mystics like St. Teresa de Avila, is like a delectable pain that wounds and is wounded by love. Culminating with hospitable images of banqueting, fiesta, and the carnival, it progressively deterritorializes God's affect, in that it conceives of an expansively hospitable enjoyment that stems from the many life forms and their ways of loving. With a renewed sense of welcome to pleasure, the book also upholds a disruptive ethic. Ultimately, an immoderate God of love whose passionate enjoyment stems from the sufferings as well as joys of the cosmos offers another paradigm of lovingly enjoying oneself in relationship with the many others, whose dreams and hopes, pains and ancestral memories, come to empathically be a part of one's passionate becomings.

The Divine is a multicultural 100-page coloring book for people of all ages (especially the child in all of us) inspired by folklore and spirituality from the Philippines (Diwatas), Haiti (Lwas of Vodou) and Brazil (Orixás of Candomble and deities of the Indigenous Brazilian Tupi Tribe). Thirteen divinities from each culture are represented, along with the folklore and symbolism associated with each of the divinities. Included throughout the book are inspirational quotes, mindfulness activities for children, and poetry featuring Eniafe Isis of All Her Words, Aimee Amparo, and Haitian songs by Daniel "Brav" Brevil. 40 full-page, 8.5x11 illustrations. Artists include: Andre Hora, Gabrielle Tesfaye, Fermina Caragay Armstrong, Salima Silagon Saway, Grace Bio, Rahana Dariah, Zachary "Bodinho" Present, Stephen Hamilton, Cece Carpio, Nikila Badua/MamaWisdom1, Wisthon Thime, Dee Jae Pa'este, Ubi Maya, Mitzi Ulloa, Rodney Sanon and Laylie Frazier. While many of us grew up with mythologies about Greek and Roman gods, as well as stories like Cinderella, Little Mermaid and Robin Hood, few of us have been exposed to the stories included in The Divine--stories that have been passed down from generation to generation through traditional dance, music, and oral storytelling. The Divine draws a connection between the cultures and beliefs of these diasporas, in hopes of giving them the attention they deserve. From the Americas to Africa to the islands, let's continue to carry and pass down the wisdom that lies in these stories. This book is something meant to grow with and meet the reader where they are. Read and color for yourself, or do it with a little one. Mindfulness activities are meant for children and adults to do together. The poetry, quotes and songs are meant for older youth and adults. And the folklore/symbolism is meant for older youth and grown-ups to read with little ones. Every people, every culture has its own way of honoring the sacred and the spiritual. When we apply the wisdom of these stories to our everyday lives, we discover a deeper relationship to the world around us. Before our lives began, before we believed, the Divine has been both within us and outside of us.