'Sharanya's poems are, in her own phrase, a form of phosphorescence - glowing in darkness, simmering with wonder, mythic in resonance, boldly embodied, hence surprisingly spiritful, even spiritual in the finest sense of the word. They are also skeptical and reflective, tempering and enhancing the glowing flame. Riptides of Tamil hide beneath or within her honed English, for those who can hear and see.' - David Shulman. Sita in a forest, loved and left behind, looks towards the night sky and sees Lucifer's fall from grace. Inanna enters the underworld, holding her heart before her like a torch. It is not easy to bear the weight of light; wilderness takes time to turn into sanctuary. These are poems of exile, resurrection, impossible love, lasting redemption - and above all else, the many meanings of grace.

In the New York Times bestseller An Altar in the World, acclaimed author Barbara Brown Taylor continues her spiritual journey by building upon where she left off in Leaving Church. With the honesty of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and the spiritual depth of Anne Lamott (Grace, Eventually), Taylor shares how she learned to find God beyond the church walls by embracing the sacred as a natural part of everyday life. In An Altar in the World, Taylor shows us how to discover altars everywhere we go and in nearly everything we do as we learn to live with purpose, pay attention, slow down, and revere the world we live in. The eBook includes a special excerpt from Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark.

Inspired by the tales of four grandmothers - Thuan Le Elston's and her husband's - Rendezvous at the Altar: From Vietnam to Virginia traces Anne's Southern upbringing to her Mad Men-like married life; Kim's family as they survive French colonialism and the Vietnam War; Mary's transformations through the Great Depression and two marriages; and Ty's migration from Hanoi businesswoman to Arizona matriarch. Through a mother's journal to her children and the four grandmothers' narrations that bridge punk band names to the Temple of Literature, Elston compares gender roles, parenting, aging, and dying in a multicultural family.

A profound and timely examination of the moral underpinnings of the War Between the States The Civil War was not only a war of armies but also a war of ideas, in which Union and Confederacy alike identified itself as a moral nation with God on its side. In this watershed book, Harry S. Stout measures the gap between those claims and the war’s actual conduct. Ranging from the home front to the trenches and drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Stout explores the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield. At a time when our country is once again at war, Upon the Altar of the Nation is a deeply necessary book.

Rooted in the crisis over slavery, disagreements about child labor broke down along sectional lines between the North and South. For decades after emancipation, the child labor issue shaped how Northerners and Southerners defined fundamental concepts of American life such as work, freedom, the market, and the state. Betsy Wood examines the evolution of ideas about child labor and the on-the-ground politics of the issue against the backdrop of broad developments related to slavery and emancipation, industrial capitalism, moral and social reform, and American politics and religion. Wood explains how the decades-long battle over child labor created enduring political and ideological divisions within capitalist society that divided the gatekeepers of modernity from the cultural warriors who opposed them. Tracing the ideological origins and the politics of the child labor battle over the course of eighty years, this book tells the story of how child labor debates bequeathed an enduring legacy of sectionalist conflict to modern American capitalist society.

A Novel. A shocking story of cruel genetic experiments done in the name of national security ... and, most disturbing of all, tied to a secret history of the Book of Genesis.

In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the Rg Veda, was man. And from man’s sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. The Head Beneath the Altar is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory of the sacrificial origin of religion and culture. For those interested in Girard and comparative religion, the book also performs a careful reading of Girard’s work, drawing connections between his thought and the work of theorists like Georges Dumézil and Giorgio Agamben. Brian Collins examines the idea of sacrifice from the earliest recorded rituals through the flowering of classical mythology and the ancient Indian institutions of the duel, the oath, and the secret warrior society. He also uncovers implicit and explicit critiques in the tradition, confirming Girard’s intuition that Hinduism offers an alternative anti-sacrificial worldview to the one contained in the gospels.

In her third and most important work, Juliet Diaz, the bestselling author of Witchery, offers an approach to Magic, spirituality, and healing like no other and takes readers through the deep work of decolonizing their spirituality. The Altar Within: A Radical Devotional to Liberate the Divine Self is a work of spiritual revolution for all peoples, offering them practices and rituals in the arts of self-worship, self-discovery, and self-activism. The Altar Within is like no other approach to Spirituality, breaking through the vicious cycles of harmful and toxic spiritual practices and beliefs. Diaz speaks for those victimized and enslaved by colonization and offers a new take on personal development based in the resounding plea of our ancestors to live our Divined lives, the ones they could not have for themselves. In the book, Diaz leads the reader through an exploration of: Self-Worship: Here, the reader comes to ritualize the experiences of self-compassion, mindfulness, self-acceptance, and radical self-honesty, creating practices that help them to see their Divinity and Altar within. Through these rites, readers will have a better understanding of what it means to decolonize their Spirituality, giving birth to new spiritual practices while honoring the experiences of our ancestors. Dismantling the idea that Divinity must only exist from without, Diaz takes readers on a journey of powerful Self-Worship, connecting them into the Divinity that resides within all of us. Self-Discovery: In this section, Diaz helps the reader to discover their Divined lives, but in a way that most teachers haven't offered. As Diaz shares, it isn't through our achievements that we find our purpose but through understanding the Divine self. Here, Diaz leads readers through practices in self-love, self-patience, and self-forgiveness, helping them to experience the stillness and wholeness needed to hear the messages shared by the Divine. Self-Activism: Unlike traditional manifestation teachers, Diaz recognizes that manifestations are not brought forth by #goodvibesonly but by a real and committed process of activism, standing in our deep worth and sharing our humanity. In this section, Diaz offers a series of Devotionals to guide readers in the practice of Community Care, connecting the work not only with the Magic of manifestation but with our communities, our ancestors, and the Divine Self within. Pushing back on #lightandlove and #goodvibesonly, Diaz dismantles the wellness industry, releasing readers from the practice of spiritual bypassing into a far more powerful experience of self, healing, hope, and Spirit. This book is for anyone, including those who can't afford to buy all the tools, pay for the expensive memberships, people who have real-life issues, illnesses, and hardships. Through The Altar Within, Diaz brings the Magic to real life, acknowledging our humanness by connecting with our Spirit. The Altar Within will help readers create success in every area of their lives—from wealth, health, relationships, and personal development, to the nourishment of their relationship with the Divine self. As Diaz explains, when we can finally decolonize our spiritual beliefs, Divinity can be a super force in our lives, making us whole, stronger, wiser, and setting us on a path of transcendent activism. #magicalaf Bonus Gifts: Your copy of The Altar Within comes with a very special gift for readers. Look inside for a QR-Code that leads you to a magical space full of bonus content created just for the book. You can expect mini-courses, video tutorials, downloadable worksheets, journaling prompts, meditations, workbooks, and more!

A history of our time.