Spirituality

Here is a fascinating and unusual addition to the acclaimed Classics of Western Spirituality(TM)series. Abraham Miguel Cardozo (1627-1706) was born to a Marrano family in Spain and raised as a Catholic. After fleeing Spain at age 22, he returned to Judaism and educated himself in rabbinics and Kabbalah. A physician by trade, Cardozo became a believer in the self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. In later years he thought himself a truer Messiah, one who would redeem the Jewish people and the entire world. A subtle and lucid theologian, Cardozo combined rabbinic learning, his Catholic training and a budding awareness of Eastern religions into a remarkable theory of comparative religion that he set forth in his treatise, This Is My God and I Will Praise Him, which appears in its entirety here. Included as well are slightly abridged texts of his apology for Sabbatai Zevi's apostasy (Epistle to the Judges of Izmir), and his lengthy autobiographical letter written near the end of his life, and the magical and messianic portions of his treatise Israel, Holiness to the Lord. An introduction provides rich background information on Cardozo's life and travels, and the meaning and context of his writings. Never before translated into English, or any language, Cardozo will hold great appeal for persons interested in Judaism, mysticism and early modern history, as well as for spiritual seekers, particularly those looking for some unorthodox variant of their current tradition. +

In this digest of his longer work, The Birth of the Messiah, Father Brown puts the adult Christ back into Christmas, treating the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke as the entire Gospel story in miniature.

LET YOUR TREE TELL THE STORY

Bring Christ back to Christmas by giving your children a devotional experience that adorns your tree with Christian symbols.

* The Advent Jesse Tree
DEVOTIONS

This book offers 25 devotions for each day from December 1st to December 25th, Christmas Day... the day Christians celebrate that God's purpose wass finally revealed in the coming of the savior, Jesus Christ.

Each devotion traces the heritage of Jesus through the stories and prophecies of the Old Testament.

The Advent Jesse Tree enables individuals and families to engage in a more meaningful celebration of the Christmas season.

These daily Advent devotions are written in two versions (one for children and one version for adults) including a scripture, a story & commentary, questions to ask, a prayer, and a song.

* The Advent Jesse Tree
ORNAMENT CRAFTS

Each devotional story is paired with a representative symbol that traces the heritage of Jesus...such as a lamb, a dove, a rainbow, a heart, a star, etc.

Children and their parents can utilize the symbolic line art printed with each daily devotion to craft meaningful ornaments.

These symbols coincide with the prayers, a memory verses, questions for children, and songs found in the devotions for that day.

Finally, on Christmas day, your tree will be filled with reminders of 25 Bible stories that led up to Christ's birth.

Other available Advent resources include:

Love, Peace Hope & Joy Gold Wire Votive Holder
Love, Peace Hope & Joy Black Wire Votive Holder
Children of the World
Nativity Star
Home Candlelight Service Set
Let's Make a Jesse Tree

Robert Fitzgerald is widely regarded as the greatest classical translator of our time, and his Aeneid has been called "a sustained achievement of beauty and power".

This is the first translation ever to make available the complete corpus of 358 fables. Aesop was probably a prisoner of war, sold into slavery in the early sixth century BC, who represented his masters in court and negotiations and relied on animal stories to put across his key points. Such fables vividly reveal the strange superstitions of ordinary ancient Greeks, how they treated their pets, how they spoilt their sons and even what they kept in their larders. As these stories became well-known, 'Aesopic' one-liners were widely quoted at drinking-parties, and the collection eventually came to include more satirical tales of alien creatures - apes, camels, lions and elephants - which presumably originate in Libya and Egypt. All have now been brought together in this definitive and fully annotated modern edition.

The reputation of Rainer Maria Rilke has grown steadily since his death in 1926; today he is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century. This Modern Library edition presents Stephen Mitchell's acclaimed translations of Rilke, which have won praise for their re-creation of the poet's rich formal music and depth of thought. "If Rilke had written in English," Denis Donoghue wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "he would have written in this English." Ahead of All Parting is an abundant selection of Rilke's lifework. It contains representative poems from his early collections The Book of Hours and The Book of Pictures; many selections from the revolutionary New Poems, which drew inspiration from Rodin and Cezanne; the hitherto little-known "Requiem for a Friend"; and a generous selection of the late uncollected poems, which constitute some of his finest work. Included too are passages from Rilke's influential novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and nine of his brilliant uncollected prose pieces. Finally, the book presents the poet's two greatest masterpieces in their entirety: the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. "Rilke's voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. Mitchell's versions more clearly than in any others," said W. S. Merwin. "His work is masterful."

Except for once, I have never heard the voice of Jesus without some person or place in the creation doing the speaking for him. So I want to witness to the power of the Incarnation alive and aloose in the ordinariness of the world for us and through us and among us. And I offer these little sketches of remembered grace to invite you to notice your own soul's companions and the thin places in your life through which grace, well, springs.

With a light touch and warm voice, and just a hint of a Southern accent, Martha Sterne tells the stories of her encounters with Christ - in the supermarket and the beauty parlor, in the garden, the kitchen, and sometimes even church.

Sterne shares her gift for storytelling, showing readers that the Incarnation is alive and loose everywhere they look, in the listening ears, kind voices, and loving hearts of people they bump into everywhere. Each essay is followed by reflection questions, making this a lovely volume for group study.

"God, are you there?" is a near universal cry of the human heart.

We have all longed for God to be tangible. Some might sway to worship music, others go on missions, others fast from food. The universal quest is to feel the divine . . . and yet the divine seems aloof, even shy. In this narrative-driven book, Tony Kriz leads the reader on a journey of "orchestrated epiphanies" along the eternal quest to tangibly encounter God, including the unpredictable moments that give us hope, and even more so, the long gaps between those moments that challenge our faith.

Written in an authentic, conversational style, Aloof is easily accessible to those who don't know much about the Bible, yet the message is still theologically informed and culturally relevant. This book will help you process how God acts uniquely towards us, depending upon each stage of life. The chapters include contemporary real-life stories that normalize the experience of an often hidden God, while also aiding the reader to acknowledge the very real moments (rare though they may be) when God has shown up in a tangible way.

A landmark anthology envisioned by Tracy K. Smith, Poet Laureate of the United States

American Journal

presents fifty contemporary poems that explore and celebrate our country and our lives. Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith has gathered a remarkable chorus of voices that ring up and down the registers of American poetry. In the elegant arrangement of this anthology, we hear stories from rural communities and urban centers, laments of loss in war and in grief, experiences of immigrants, outcries at injustices, and poems that honor elders, evoke history, and praise our efforts to see and understand one another. Taking its title from a poem by Robert Hayden, the first African American appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, American Journal investigates our time with curiosity, wonder, and compassion.

Among the fifty poets included are: Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Matthew Dickman, Mark Doty, Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Cathy Park Hong, Marie Howe, Major Jackson, Ilya Kaminsky, Robin Coste Lewis, Ada Límon, Layli Long Soldier, Erika L. Sánchez, Solmaz Sharif, Danez Smith, Susan Stewart, Mary Szybist, Natasha Trethewey, Brian Turner, Charles Wright, and Kevin Young.

This well-researched anthology looks at American history through the prayers its people have offered over the past two-and-a-half centuries. Prayers are drawn from a wide variety of faiths, including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

Sections include:
Prayers for America: for an Election, for the Government, in Times of War or Crisis, for Repentance and Renewal, for Peace, Thanksgivings and Litanies

Prayers for national occasions: Inauguration Day, Presidential birthdays, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Election Day, Thanksgiving Day, and others

Prayers from American history: Prayers said on historic occasions such as Washington's funeral, the American Revolution, the death of George Washington, the slave trade and abolition, the Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln, the Industrial Revolution, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Clinton impeachment crisis, the 9/11 attack, and more.