"Winner of the 2010 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award."

The author of the New York Times bestseller Minding the Body, Mending the Mind reveals the power of spiritual optimism: a philosophy that sees life crises as opportunities for personal growth and spiritual transformation.

This unique book will open your mind to the power of incorporating Optimism into your spiritual life. Mr. Rankin uses his twenty-five years on writing and lecturing on the subject of Optimism. He uses the timeless wisdom from Christian Larson's creed entitled, Promise Yourself, written back in 1910 to launch this life changing project. You will learn innovative ways to pray, witness and deepen your relationship with your fellow man and with God. There is a Optimistic Psalm that will touch your heart and equip you to take on life's challenges.

The pioneering spiritual scholar discusses how to find genuine optimism in times of crisis by contemplating the ultimate reality of God. Dr. Beatrice Bruteau was an inspiration to some of the most influential spiritual thinkers of our time. With a background in Vedanta, Catholic contemplation, and the natural sciences, she developed a broadly inclusive, interspiritual vision of human reality. In Radical Optimism she shines new light on the deepest truth we can know about ourselves: each of us is one with God, here and now. In a series of essays exploring the concepts of Leisure, Stillness, and Meditation—as well as examining the distinctions between the Finite and the Infinite and Sin and Salvation—Bruteau offers a path to recognizing our own unity with God. She provides a blueprint for understanding it, knowing the happiness it brings, and cultivating a contemplative consciousness amid the hectic uncertainty of daily life.

In this refreshing new take on spirituality, bestselling author Deepak Chopra uses a fictional tale of a comedian and his unlikely mentor to show us a path back to hope, joy, and even enlightenment—with a lot of laughter along the way. Meet Mickey Fellows. A successful L.A. comedian, he’s just a regular guy, with his fair share of fears, egocentricities, and addictions. After his father’s death, Mickey meets a mysterious stranger named Francisco, who changes his life forever. The two begin an ongoing discussion about the true nature of being. Reluctantly at first, Mickey accepts the stranger’s help and starts to explore his own life in an effort to answer the riddles Francisco poses. Mickey starts to look at those aspects of himself that he has hidden behind a wall of wisecracks all his life. Eventually Mickey realizes that authentic humor opens him up to the power of spirit—allowing him to finally make real connections with people. After taking the reader on a journey with Mickey, Chopra then spells out the lessons that Mickey’s story imparts to us: ten reasons to be optimistic, even in our challenging world. Chopra believes that the healthiest response to life is laughter from the heart, and even in the face of global turmoil, we can cultivate an internal sense of optimism. Rich with humor and practical advice, Why Is God Laughing? shows us without a doubt that there is always a reason to be grateful, that every possibility holds the promise of abundance, and that obstacles are simply opportunities in disguise. In the end, we really don’t need a reason to be happy. The power of happiness lies within each of us, just waiting to be unleashed. And Mickey Fellows’s journey shows us the way.

A sense of optimism is a key ingredient to success in life. Guide young children to develop a positive outlook and discover how the choices they make can lead to feeling happy and capable. This friendly, encouraging book introduces preschool and primary-age children to ways of thinking and acting that will help them feel good about themselves and their lives, stay on course when things don’t go their way, and contribute to other people’s happiness, too. Being the Best Me Series: From the author of the popular Learning to Get Along® books come the first two books in this one-of-a-kind character-development series. Each book focuses on specific attitude or character traits—such as optimism, courage, resilience, imagination, personal power, decision-making, and work ethics. Also included are discussion questions, games, activities, and additional information adults can use to reinforce the concepts children are learning. Filled with diversity, these read-aloud books will be welcome in school, home, and childcare settings.

Explore how Anglican traditions enrich Episcopal worship. With its great heritage from English mystics, the Episcopal Church has been “spiritual” since before it was trendy, and modern Episcopalians have been in the forefront of exploring practices beyond Anglican boundaries. Yet, perhaps only rarely do they grasp the implications of the theology embedded in these practices or in the liturgies of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which has shaped Episcopalians in this country with its emphasis on baptismal spirituality and the centrality of the Eucharist. Julia Gatta wants to change that with her book, Life in Christ. Applying her years of experience as pastor and spiritual director combined with her study of the spiritual wisdom of the past, she explores common Christian practices and their underlying theology through an Episcopal lens. In the tradition of Esther de Waal, Martin Smith, and Martin Thornton, with particular reference to scripture, the Book of Common Prayer, and the wisdom of the Christian spiritual tradition, she illuminates methods readers may already be practicing and provides insight and guidance to ones that may be new to them.

In her book Wildly Optimistic, Al Carraway offers new methods and perspectives for life's inevitable challenges. With her trademark honesty, optimism, and love for the Lord, she addresses how to stay close to God even when He is silent, how to keep going when too much time passes, and how to be hopeful when it's not what we wanted, when things don't work out, and when we want to give up.

Stuck in a rut? Need an attitude adjustment? This inspirational classic from American author Helen Keller is bound to fit the bill. Rendered deaf and blind by scarlet fever in her infancy in a time when the disabled were often shunned and ignored, Keller managed to learn to read, write, and speak, not in only in her native English, but in several other languages, as well. Keller regards optimism as "the faith that leads to achievement," and this treatise lays out her views on making the best of even the direst of circumstances.

Finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry Yehoshua November's second poetry collection, ''Two Worlds Exist,'' movingly examines the harmonies and dissonances involved in practicing an ancient religious tradition in contemporary America. November's beautiful and profound meditations on work and family life, and the intersections of the sacred and the secular, invite the reader--regardless of background--to imaginatively inhabit a life of religious devotion in the midst of our society's commotion.