"Real art for worship has no patterns to follow, no slick tricks, nothing to mimic or adapt to your local congregational space. It has no guarantees. Real art rises from interior places that require intense search, many failures, a reaching toward that which has never been done or said in quite that way before. This is its prophetic edge. The time and materials and spirit it takes to develop an artist's capacities to dream are extraordinary. What does our church do to support such a person? Do we not need to demand the same level of prayerful, disciplined formation from our artists as we do from our priests or pastors? Painter and textile artist Nancy Chinn invites you to accompany her in a wide-ranging, vigorous discussion about art for worship--from theory to technicque and from philosophy to practice."--Cover.

Are there silent, yet powerful, ingredients missing from most horse training techniques and riding instruction? In her research of horsemen and women who appear to have a gift with horses, Dr. Fay outlines the invisible things these equestrians do that make their interactions with horses appear effortless. As a research scientist and life-long equestrian, Dr. Fay spent more than two decades searching for scientific explanations for why some people are able to develop seemingly spiritual relationships with horses. She discovered that equestrians with this gift merely know how to use their natural abilities in a way that most of us were never taught. These abilities already exist inside of each one of us, so we merely need understand how to use them. But we also need to be willing to open our eyes and hearts and let go of what we believe is possible. Within the pages of this book, you will gain insights into how you can develop your gift with horses. You will learn how you are unconsciously "talking" to your horse through your mind and body. But more importantly, you will see how easy it is to turn these unconscious conversations into ones that are meaningful to your horse. This is not a book about animal communication. Instead, this is a guide to using the energy field, along with the power of your own mind and body to influence your horse in a gentle and quiet, yet highly effective way. The principles presented in this book work regardless of the type of horse you have or the discipline you ride. There is no need for special training gadgets because you already have everything you need. Once you begin to implement the principles and see the profound changes in yourself and your horse, you may never view traditional horse-training methods in the same way. Through real life stories and simple exercises, Dr. Fay guides readers to a greater awareness of their untapped abilities. She teaches us how to use our innate gifts to create a sacred space where communion with the horse occurs naturally and spontaneously.

"Freedom is Space for the Spirit" by Glen Hirshberg is a fantasy about a middle-aged German, drawn back to Russia by a mysterious invitation from a friend he knew during the wild, exuberant period in the midst of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he begins to see bears, wandering and seemingly lost. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on the southeastern United States, the book examines works ranging from James Hampton's well-known Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (now part of the Smithsonian collection), to several elaborately decorated yards and gardens, to smaller-scale acts of commemoration, protection, and witness. The authors show how the artful arrangement and adornment of everyday objects and plants express both the makers' own experiences and concerns and a number of rich and sustaining cultural traditions. They identify a "lexicon" of material signs that are frequently and consistently used in African American culture and art and then show how such elements have been used in various individual works and what they mean to the practitioners themselves."--BOOK JACKET.

Rule the world and take control of your emotional and mental health from where you sit, stand, and sleep. The Holistic Home is based on an original lifestyle concept focused on creating a dynamic, healthy, and thoughtful space within yourself and your home by combining three planes of action—mind, body, and spirit—that result in profound change. The condition of the mind affects the psychology of how you dwell: subconscious influences, decorating with intention, and allowing your emotional issues and challenges to manifest in your space. The physical aspects of your design space, such as furniture positioning, design elements, sustainability, wellness, and organization, are representative of your relationship with your body. And finally, the spirit refers to all the invisible energies within you and your home—feng shui, atmosphere, and the soul of your home. Years ago, author and holistic feng shui expert Laura Benko was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Around that time, a book serendipitously fell on her head. She took this as a much-needed sign to devote the next decade of her life to research and hundreds of transformative holistic design consultations. Her clients’ real-life, inspiring stories, along with specific actions and tips, have become the foundation for The Holistic Home. Chapter by chapter, you’ll learn how to holistically tackle it all—relationships, clutter, health, communities, inner balance, and more—by looking within your immediate environment to make direct connections in your life.

“Esther Sternberg is a rare writer—a physician who healed herself...With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health.”—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.

Mud, Space and Spirit is a warm photographic and descriptive portrayal of inhabitants of the southwestern United States who have built their own modern-day adobe dwellings-rudimentary to sophisticated, but all inspiring.

This book examines the dilemmas and contributions of African American women struggling with Eurocentric disciplines, students, faculty and administrators in predominantly white institutions.

Cosmic Commons explores terrestrial-extraterrestrial intelligent life Contact. It uses a thought experiment to consider the ecological-economic-ethical-ecclesial impacts of Contact, analyzing incidents around the world described by credible witnesses (two of whom are interviewed for the book), including Roswell and the Hudson River Valley. It discusses government and academic efforts to use ridicule and coercion to suppress Contact investigations, supports a scientific method to research ETI reports in a field that should excite scientists, and calls on academics to publicly disclose their Contact experiences. It traces Earth ecological and economic injustices to the European Enlightenment and the Discovery Doctrine by which European nations rationalized invasion of distant continents, genocide, and seizure of the territories and natural goods of native peoples. It advocates a change in humans' Earth conduct to avoid replicating in space the policies and practices that wrought economic injustice and ecological devastation on Earth, provides an innovative cosmosociological praxis ethics theory and practice toward that end, and develops a Cosmic Charter, based on UN documents, to guide humankind in space and in ETI encounters. Permeated by a profound sense of the sacred, Cosmic Commons explores a positive relationship between religion and science as humankind ventures into space.