Spirituality

Life hurts -- everyone. The death of a child or spouse, serious illness, divorce, failures, the loss of a job -- how can we, when the time comes, deal with life's invevitable storms? How can we possibly struggle through and pick up the broken pieces of our lives to make them, and ourselves, whole again!

Rabbi Wayne Dosick, successful author and revered spiritual leader, faced just such questions when a devastating blaze consumed his home -- his office, his every cherished possesion, his memories -- in the California wildfires of 1996. In these pages, Dosick shares a profoundly personal and deeply inspiring meditation on rebuilding after the fires of tragedy. "When Life Hurts" instructs, by generous example, how to create a new and deeper life in the aftermath of pain. Candidly discussing the feelings that devastating events bring -- anger, grief, despair -- Dosick offers pragmatic advice on coping with adversity and explores the daunting spiritual questions tragedy provokes: How can we keep faith in a supposedly just and loving God when life seems so unfair? Where is God when we need God most? Adjusting to the painful discovery that life can never be the same after such momentous events ("Our lives will now and forever be defined 'before the fire' and 'after the fire, '" he writes), he also discovers that new lessons of caring, joy and meaning canemerge.

This is a story of the God who makes himself known in broken places. In prose that is at once lyrical and utterly honest, a brave new voice takes readers on a windswept journey down the path of brokenness to healing, satisfaction, and true intimacy with God. Amber calls readers to dispense with the pretty bows we use to dress up our stories and instead trust God to take our untidy, unfinished lives and make them free, authentic, and whole. Anyone who struggles with doubt or holds secrets, anyone who feels marginalized or like she is missing something, will find in Amber a sister and an inviting voice back home, into the heart of God.

Beautiful essays by Fanny Howe, a poet praised for her "private quest through the metaphysical universe . . . the results are startling and honest" (The New York Times Book Review)

Fanny Howe's richly contemplative The Winter Sun is a collection of essays on childhood, language, and meaning by one of America's most original contemporary poets.

Through a collage of reflections on people, places, and times that have been part of her life, Howe shows the origins and requirements of "a vocation that has no name." She finds proof of this in the lives of others--Jacques Lusseyran, who, though blind, wrote about his inner vision, surviving inside a concentration camp during World War II; the Scottish nun Sara Grant and Abbé Dubois, both of whom lived extensively in India where their vocation led them; the English novelists Antonia White and Emily Brontë; and the fifth-century philosopher and poet Bharthari. With interludes referring to her own place and situation, Howe makes this book into a Progress rather than a memoir.

The Winter Sun displays the same power as found in her highly praised collection of essays, The Wedding Dress, a book described by James Carroll as an "unflinching but exhilarating look at real religion, the American desolation, a woman's life, and, always, the redemption of literature."

A non-denominational treatise on the benefits of meditation.Laurence Freeman, Swami Satchidananda, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Edward McCorkell, Swami Shankarananda, Shree Chitrabhanu, Wayne Teasdale, and Bhante Gunaratana agree: meditation is for everyone. It is the practical, experience-based wisdom at the core of all religions and at the very heart of the spiritual life. This book of plain-speaking conversations brings together outstanding contemporary teachers of meditation from quite diverse yet very accessible wisdom traditions, including Christian Meditation, Contemplative Prayer, and Christian Sannyasa; Buddhist Bon Dzogchen and Theravada Vipassana; Jain Meditation; Integral Yoga and Kirya/Advaita Vedanta. This book does not focus on the theological or philosophical differences of its contributors but on the actual practice of meditation-how to meditate and get the most out of it. What emerges in the course of the book is how much the different roads of wisdom agree on the goal of the journey and the means to get there.

"Known for poems of universality of feeling, expressive lyricism of reflection, and heartrending allure" (Major Jackson), award-winning poet Matthew Dickman returns with a collection that engages the traces of his own living past, suffusing these poems with ghosts of longing, shame, and vulnerability. In the southeast Portland neighborhood of Dickman's youth, parents are out of control and children are in chaos. With grief, anger, and, ultimately, understanding, Dickman confronts a childhood of ambient violence, well-intentioned but warped family relations, confining definitions of identity, and the deprivation of this particular Portland neighborhood in the 1980s. Wonderland reminds us that, while these neighborhoods are filled with guns, skateboards, fights, booze, and heroin, and home to punk rockers, skinheads, poor kids, and single moms, they are also places of innocence and love.

Madeleine L'Engle's ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic, soon to be a major motion picture.

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

Wild nights are my glory, the unearthly stranger told them. I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.

A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg's father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.

A Wrinkle in Time is the winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal. It is the first book in The Time Quintet, which consists of A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time.

A Wrinkle in Time is soon to be a movie from Disney, directed by Ava DuVernay, starring Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.

This title has Common Core connections.

Praise for A Wrinkle in Time:

"A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart. Meg Murry was my hero growing up. I wanted glasses and braces and my parents to stick me in an attic bedroom. And I so wanted to save Charles Wallace from IT." --Meg Cabot

"A book that every young person should read, a book that provides a road map for seeking knowledge and compassion even at the worst of times, a book to make the world a better place." --Cory Doctorow

"[L'Engle's] work is one of the things that made me a writer, a science fiction and fantasy fan, an avid reader. Hers were the first books I read that mixed math and magic, the quest and the quantum." --Scott Westerfeld

"A Wrinkle in Time taught me that you can tackle even the deepest and most slippery concepts of physics and philosophy in fiction for young readers. It's a great lesson for all writers, and a tough tesseract to follow." --David Lubar

"A coming of age fantasy story that sympathizes with typical teen girl awkwardness and insecurity, highlighting courage, resourcefulness and the importance of famiyl ties as key to overcoming them." --Carol Platt Liebau, author, in the New York Post

"An exhilarating experience." --Kirkus Reviews

"This imaginative book will be read for a long time into the future." --Children's Literature

Books by Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time Quintet
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters
An Acceptable Time

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Madeleine L'Engle; adapted & illustrated by Hope Larson: A graphic novel adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic.

Intergalactic P.S. 3 by Madeleine L'Engle; illustrated by Hope Larson: Visit the world of A Wrinkle in Time in this standalone story!

The Austin Family Chronicles
Meet the Austins (Volume 1)
The Moon by Night (Volume 2)
The Young Unicorns (Volume 3)
A Ring of Endless Light (Volume 4) A Newbery Honor book!
Troubling a Star (Volume 5)

The Polly O'Keefe books
The Arm of the Starfish
Dragons in the Waters
A House Like a Lotus

And Both Were Young

Camilla

The Joys of Love

Have you ever wondered what God truly expects of women? Is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Does the Bible's idea of womanhood have a place in modern Christianity? New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans embarks on a year-long study of what it means to live by the standards of biblical womanhood.

Strong-willed and independent, Evans couldn't sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment--a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decided to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a full year.

Along the way, Evans explores the rich heritage of scriptural heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor that we come to know in the Bible. She consults with women who practice these ancient biblical mandates in their own lives--from an Orthodox Jewish woman who changed the way Evans reads the Bible to an Amish community that taught her the true meaning of modesty.

In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Evans shares her courageous and often humorous journey of:

Join Evans as she dives deep into the lives of the women we meet in Scripture and redefines what it means to live biblically.