Around the year 1200, the Cistercian Engelhard of Langheim dedicated a collection of monastic stories to a community of religious women. Martha G. Newman explores how this largely unedited collection of tales about Cistercian monks illuminates the religiosity of Cistercian nuns. As did other Cistercian storytellers, Engelhard recorded the miracles and visions of the order's illustrious figures, but he wrote from Franconia, in modern Germany, rather than the Cistercian heartland. His extant texts reflect his interactions with non-Cistercian monasteries and with Langheim's patrons rather than celebrating Bernard of Clairvaux. Engelhard was conservative, interested in maintaining traditional Cistercian patterns of thought. Nonetheless, by offering to women a collection of narratives that explore the oral qualities of texts, the nature of sight, and the efficacy of sacraments, Engelhard articulated a distinctive response to the social and intellectual changes of his period. In analyzing Engelhard's stories, Newman uncovers an understudied monastic culture that resisted the growing emphasis on the priestly administration of the sacraments and the hardening of gender distinctions. Engelhard assumed that monks and nuns shared similar interests and concerns, and he addressed his audiences as if they occupied a space neither fully sacerdotal nor completely lay, neither scholastic nor unlearned, and neither solely male nor only female. His exemplary narratives depict the sacramental value of everyday objects and behaviors whose efficacy relied more on individual spiritual formation than on sacerdotal action. By encouraging nuns and monks to imagine connections between heaven and earth, Engelhard taught faith as a learned disposition. Newman's study demonstrates that scholastic questions about signs, sacraments, and sight emerged in a narrative form within late twelfth-century monastic communities.

Recounts the events surrounding the murders of nine Buddhist temple members near Phoenix, Arizona, and the arrest of four men known as "The Tucson Four" who were coerced into confessing and held despite there being no physical evidence to connect them tothe crime, and discusses how the suspects were treated by the media, even after the real killers were discovered.

Sharing experiences and insights from his visits to monasteries over the years, popular speaker and university professor Randy Harris invites us into a richer, fuller life in the Spirit. Today there is a new hunger in the Christian community to live out radical and authentic faith in Christ. The days of easy answers and sound-bite Christianity are fading. Where do you go to find such faith being lived out? Randy Harris--popular college teacher and well-known preacher--turned to monasteries and hermits in his search for answers. "When I decided I wanted to learn how to pray," he explains, "I sought those who had spent their lives praying. When I wanted to learn to 'be still and know that he is God, ' I sought those for whom silence is a way of life. As I sought stability and balance, I found a way of life that has endured for 1500 years. I didn't exactly want to become a monk or hermit, but I did want to learn what they know--and it has become a life-changing journey." Most of us don't have time to visit a monastery or a hermit's retreat for a week or a month. So Randy Harris shows how the monastery can come to us. With wisdom, gentle humor, and captivating insight, Harris guides us on an unforgettable spiritual journey into a hidden world that very few will ever experience. You will learn prayer, humility, surrender, and quietness along this well-traveled path. And you may find yourself becoming a radical Jesus follower.