Provides the requisite knowledge and practical guidelines for some of the most common counseling situations. Today's rabbis, in addition to being spiritual leaders of their congregations, are also expected to be competent counselors to members of their community. Yet rabbis often feel inadequately prepared for the difficult challenges of their counseling role. To many, rabbinic counseling appears deceptively simple, requiring no more than good intuition, fair judgment and sincere empathy. Good counseling, in reality, is a complex process requiring a combination of knowledge, skill, self-awareness and an understanding of human dynamics. This groundbreaking book—written specifically for community rabbis and religious counselors—reflects the wisdom of seasoned professionals, who provide clear guidelines and sensible strategies for effective rabbinic counseling.

How is it possible to pray when God is dislocated from heaven, dispersed all around us, and more of a creative force than an all-knowing father?

Why do we pray? On the one hand, prayer offers us a way to meditate on the knowledge of God and have intimate interaction with a personal creator. And for many Jews, it offers a sense of community and fulfils a need for daily connection with a venerable tradition and language. Yet for many modern Jews, prayer is at best old fashioned-or at worst, no longer necessary. In Jewish Prayers to an Evolutionary God: Science in the Siddur, author Dr. Joel Rutman provides a new way of understanding the existing language of Jewish prayer, and he integrates science with Jewish liturgy-all the while striving to preserve the passion that makes prayer matter. The aim is to enable Jews to daven (pray) with kavanna (intent), trusting that science will not pull the rug out from under their prayer. The poems also continue the ancient tradition of hazzanim (cantors) who author new prayer-poems.

By fusing the wisdom of luminaries such as Charles Darwin, Bruce Cockburn, Emily Dickinson, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Brian Swimme, and Thomas Berry with the ancient wisdom traditions of Christianity, Bruce Sanguin writes prayers for the contemporary mystic. When the science of evolution is told as sacred story, the human heart requires new prayers to express itself. These cosmological prayers awaken the soul to its essential unity with Spirit and creation, and support a new Reformation emerging from the conversation between religion, science, and the arts.

An essential feature of religious experience across many cultures is the intuitive feeling of God's presence. More than any rituals or doctrines, it is this experience that anchors religious faith, yet it has been largely ignored in the scientific literature on religion.Starting with a vivid narrative account of the life-threatening hike that triggered his own mystical experience, biologist John Wathey takes the reader on a scientific journey to find the sources of religious feeling and the illusion of God's presence. His book delves into the biological origins of this compelling feeling, attributing it to innate neural circuitry that evolved to promote the mother-child bond. Dr. Wathey argues that evolution has programmed the infant brain to expect the presence of a loving being who responds to the child's needs. As the infant grows into adulthood, this innate feeling is eventually transferred to the realm of religion, where it is reactivated through the symbols, imagery, and rituals of worship. The author interprets our various conceptions of God in biological terms as illusory supernormal stimuli that fill an emotional and cognitive vacuum left over from infancy. These insights shed new light on some of the most vexing puzzles of religion, like the popular belief in a god who is judgmental and punishing, yet also unconditionally loving; the extraordinary tenacity of faith; the greater religiosity of women relative to men; religious obsessions with sex; the mysterious compulsion to pray; the seemingly irrepressible feminine attributes of God, even in traditionally patriarchal religions; and the strange allure of cults. Finally, Dr. Wathey considers the hypothesis that religion evolved to foster reproductive success, arguing that, in an age of potentially ruinous overpopulation, magical thinking has become a luxury we can no longer afford, one that distracts us from urgent threats to our planet.Deeply researched yet elegantly written in a jargon-free and accessible style, this book presents a compelling interpretation of the evolutionary origins of spirituality and religion.

A New York Times Notable Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 A bold approach to understanding the American evangelical experience from an anthropological and psychological perspective by one of the country's most prominent anthropologists. Through a series of intimate, illuminating interviews with various members of the Vineyard, an evangelical church with hundreds of congregations across the country, Tanya Luhrmann leaps into the heart of evangelical faith. Combined with scientific research that studies the effect that intensely practiced prayer can have on the mind, When God Talks Back examines how normal, sensible people—from college students to accountants to housewives, all functioning perfectly well within our society—can attest to having the signs and wonders of the supernatural become as quotidian and as ordinary as laundry. Astute, sensitive, and extraordinarily measured in its approach to the interface between science and religion, Luhrmann's book is sure to generate as much conversation as it will praise.

From a leading authority on the evolution debates comes this critically acclaimed investigation into one of the most controversial topics of our times

This title explores the meaning of Christian theology in light of the scientific discoveries of our age. Like Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry, Delio opens out eyes to the omni-active, all-powerful, all-intelligent Love that forms and guides the interrelatedness and interbeing of everything and everyone - ourselves included.

'All religions evolve, and Christianity is evolving rapidly today. Don MacGregor's book is a lucid and thoughtful guide to this process, and shows how the essential core teachings of Christianity can be disentangled from unhelpful interpretations that stand in the way of a living Christian faith in the twenty-first century. I found this book stimulating and inspiring. It is also admirably brief and clear.' Dr Rupert Sheldrake, biologist and author of A New Science of Life Christianity Expanding - Into Universal Spirituality takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the areas that need updating if Christianity is to flourish in the 21st Century. New science, ecological concern and the need for new theology are all converging into a maelstrom of change. With broad brushstrokes on a big canvas, a path of personal transformation is charted, drawing on the mysterious Perennial Wisdom teachings that have survived down the ages. Pulling no punches, Don MacGregor delves into typically taboo subjects such as reincarnation, drawing a distinction between Jesus and the Christ. This dynamic first volume of The Wisdom Series is an initial outline of areas that demand ongoing exploration.

From activist, spiritual leader, New York Times-bestselling author, and 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson comes a prayer for healing America Prayer is practical, Williamson tells us. “To look to God is to look to the realm of consciousness that can deliver us from the pain of living.” Illuminata delivers prayer into our daily lives with prayers on topics from releasing anger to finding forgiveness, from finding great love to achieving intimacy. There are prayers for couples, for parents, and for children, prayers to mend broken relationships and prayers to overcome obsessive and compulsive love. There are prayers to heal the soul, prayers to heal the body, and prayers for work and creativity. Williamson also gives us prayers for the healing of America, including a prayer of amends on behalf of European Americans to African Americans and one to Native Americans. How, Williamson asks, can we expect anyone to forgive when we have made no formal apology? “Read my prayers or someone else’s,” Williamson says. “By all means, create your own.” Illuminata brings prayer into practical use, creating a sweeter, more abundant life. “No conventional therapy,” she says, “can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace that is not of this world.”