This collection draws on the Mobilities approach to look afresh at notions of the sacred where they intersect with people, objects and other things on the move. Consideration of a wide range of spiritual meanings and practices also sheds light on the motivations and experiences associated with particular mobilities. Drawing on rich, situated, case studies, this multi-disciplinary collection discusses what mobility in the social sciences, arts and humanities can tell us about movements and journeys prompted by religious, more broadly ‘spiritual’ and 'secular-sacred' practices and priorities. Problematizing the fixity of sacred places and times as territorially and temporally bounded entities that exist in opposition to ‘profane’ everyday life, this collection looks at the intersection between the embodied-emotional-spiritual experience of places, travel, belief-practices and communities. It is this geographically-informed perspective on the interleaving of religious/ spiritual/ secular notions of the sacred with the material and more-than-representational attributes of associated mobilities and related practices which constitutes this volume’s original contribution to the field.

Weaving archival records, ancient maps and narratives, and the wisdom of the elders, Roberto Cintli Rodriguez offers compelling evidence that maíz is the historical connector between Indigenous peoples of this continent. Rodriguez brings together the wisdom of scholars and elders to show how maíz/corn connects the peoples of the Americas.

How do religious emotions and national sentiment become entangled across the world? In exploring this theme, The Secular Sacred focuses on diverse topics such as the dynamic roles of Carnival in Brazil, the public contestation of ritual in Northern Nigeria, and the culturalization of secular tolerance in the Netherlands. The contributions focus on the ways in which sacrality and secularity mutually inform, enforce, and spill over into each other. The case studies offer a bottom-up, practice-oriented approach in which the authors are wary to use categories of religion and secular as neutral descriptive terms. The Secular Sacred will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, political scientists, and social psychologists, as well as students and scholars of cultural studies and semiotics. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

In this forty-day devotional, Cuban American writer Kat Armas shows us that reading the Bible with fresh eyes allows us to experience God in new and liberating ways. Many Christians today are seeking to disentangle biblical teaching from power structures that marginalize women and people of color. There's a hunger for a new kind of devotional that offers refreshing and relevant ways to connect with God and the Bible--ways that challenge readers to seek out a more liberated and embodied faith. Drawing from personal narrative and Scripture, Armas highlights biblical passages that point toward decolonized themes centered on creation, wisdom, spirit, the body, and the feminine. Sacred Belonging helps us see how Scripture directs us to live a liberated faith, where we belong to God, the earth, and one another.

2018 Readers' Favorite Gold Winner 2019 IAN Book of the Year Award 2017 Nautilus Award Gold Winner Feel like you don’t belong? You’re not alone.The world has never been more connected, yet people are lonelier than ever. Whether we feel unworthy, alienated, or anxious about our place in the world — the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times. Most people think of belonging as a mythical place, and they spend a lifetime searching for it in vain. But what if belonging isn’t a place at all? What if it’s a skill that has been lost or forgotten? With her signature depth and eloquence, Toko-pa maps a path to Belonging from the inside out. Drawing on myth, stories and dreams, she takes us into the origins of our estrangement, reframing exile as a necessary initiation into authenticity. Then she shares the competencies of belonging: a set of ancestral practices to heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world.

2024 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner in "Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought" CategoryWinner of the Living Now Book Award, Church of the Wild reminds us that once upon a time, humans lived in an intimate relationship with nature. Whether disillusioned by the dominant church or unfulfilled by traditional expressions of faith, many of us long for a deeper spirituality. Victoria Loorz certainly did. Coping with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Loorz turned to the wanderings of spiritual leaders and the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually cofounding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. With an ecospiritual lens on biblical narratives and a fresh look at a community larger than our own species, Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it--and calling it church. Through mystical encounters with wild deer, whispers from a scrubby oak tree, wordless conversation with a cougar, and more, Loorz helps us connect to a love that literally holds the world together--a love that calls us into communion with all creatures.

Sacred Love, a candid and hopeful memoir for single women, will compel readers to look to God for acceptance and restoration.

Contemporary life is leaving us frazzled, overwhelmed, and out of sorts. Our life's rhythm is often borrowed from the pace of life around us. Humans have created such a loud, fast tempo of perfection and production that we often forget--if we ever knew it at all--the rhythms designed for our well-being. In The Sacred Pulse, pastor and author April Fiet invites us to examine the frantic patterns of our lives to reclaim the deeper, sacred pulses that pattern our days. Through stories, scripture, and practical guidance for daily living, she lays out twelve rhythms--including gardening, handcrafts, friendship, and holidays--that are both sustainable and sustaining. Everyday acts like mealtime and shopping, and sporadic rhythms like the occasional snow day: reclaiming these patterns can remind us of the holy movement of God in the world. In a world of hustle and bravado, silencing the noise takes practice. The Sacred Pulse shows us how to strip away all of the competing beats we have settled for so we can tap into the joyful, holy rhythms of life.

The Sacred Harp choral singing tradition originated in the American South in the mid-nineteenth century, spread widely across the country, and continues to thrive today. Sacred Harp isn’t performed but participated in, ideally in large gatherings where, as the a cappella singers face each other around a hollow square, the massed voices take on a moving and almost physical power. I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah! is a vivid portrait of several Sacred Harp groups and an insightful exploration of how they manage to maintain a sense of community despite their members’ often profound differences. Laura Clawson’s research took her to Alabama and Georgia, to Chicago and Minneapolis, and to Hollywood for a Sacred Harp performance at the Academy Awards, a potent symbol of the conflicting forces at play in the twenty-first-century incarnation of this old genre. Clawson finds that in order for Sacred Harp singers to maintain the bond forged by their love of music, they must grapple with a host of difficult issues, including how to maintain the authenticity of their tradition and how to carefully negotiate the tensions created by their disparate cultural, religious, and political beliefs.