Sacred Play

Explores the significance of levity and humor in South Asian religious traditions.

Examination of the soul and spirituality in Irish theatre

Sacred Playgrounds explores the wisdom of camping ministry for Christian education and faith formation, examining its rich history and fundamental characteristics with compelling stories, groundbreaking research, and theological grounding. Christian summer camp is an integral part of the ecology of faith formation in North America, though it has received surprisingly little attention in the scholarly community until now. Camping ministry is often dismissed as simple fun and games or a brief spiritual high that does not last. However, camp experiences often serve as deeply relational and immersive faith experiences that have lasting impacts on participants. Five fundamental characteristics combine dynamically in the effective camp experience: participatory, faith-centered, safe space, relational, and unplugged from home. Together, they open the space for participants to consider new understandings of God, to have time for deep self-reflection, and to build intentional Christian community. These camp experiences are essential components in a larger ecology of faith formation, including the home and congregation. The insight and evidence presented in this book demonstrate that the contributions of camping ministry must be taken seriously among scholars, Christian educators, and ministry professionals.

Written for mothers seeking to fulfill their soul’s work while simultaneously raising future generations, Sacred Motherhood offers women on the path of motherhood a guide back to themselves. It will help you embrace the reality that this is your spiritual life—every moment of every day, whether you are at the grocery store, changing diapers, arguing with your partner, snuggling with your baby, or dyeing your teenager’s hair pink. Greet the moments when you fall down as awakening opportunities, every bit as holy and powerful as the moments you can drop in and bliss out. Spanning the sacred and the mundane, Sacred Motherhood is both a guide and a journal, enticing you to pause momentarily to reflect and write, and then return to your mothering tasks armed with a fresh perspective, renewed vision, practical tips, and creative ideas for enriching family life. For fifty-two weeks—a year of sacred motherhood—the chapters illuminate subjects that are likely to arise as the mothering journey unfolds, and present thoughtful prompts and helpful reminders relating to you, your soul, and your child.

The living and learning that happen through play offers each child their best chance for health, happiness, and success in education and living both now and in the future. There is no hurry for school learning. Study after study shows that leaving formal cognitively-based learning until after the brain has laid down firm foundations gives our children a head start when it comes to higher learning.

This book argues that the liturgical reforms initiated by the second Vatican Council may have seriously undermined contemporary Roman Catholic worship. Drawing on important work by Durkheim, Bauman, Foucault, Turner, Duffy, Flanagan and Pickstock, David Torevell focuses on the most crucial element of Catholic worship - the experience of the sacred - and examines how it has been eroded since pre-modern times, largely due to the marginalisation of ritual expression, and its consequences. A devastating critique of the loss of the sacred in worship, this striking interdisciplinary study is a call for revitalisation of Roman Catholic liturgy through a 'reform of the reform' and the reclamation of the importance of the body in ritual expression.

""Disenchantment" is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly do we mean when we use this concept? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber's view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? This book is an attempt to divest this concept of its enduring enchantment. The first chapters of the book deal with the three empirical disciplines history, psychology and sociology of religion to develop an understanding of religion that then lays the groundwork for what is presented in chapter 4, namely the most thorough study of Weber's views on disenchantment that has ever been undertaken. It turns out that Weber's use was highly ambiguous and that his grand narrative leading from the prophets of ancient Judaism to the crisis of meaning on the eve of the First World War collapses when we recognize this ambiguity. This makes it possible to construct an alternative that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in the light of the values of a universalist morality and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. This book constitutes a challenge - for believers and non-believers alike"--

The national bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the ability to play. "Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that puts us in a rapturous mood and awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves. As Diane Ackerman ranges over a panoply of artistic, spiritual, and athletic activities, from spiritual rapture through extreme sports, we gain a greater sense of what it means to be "in the moment" and totally, transcendentally human. Keenly perceived and written with poetic exuberance, Deep Play enlightens us by revealing the manifold ways we can enhance our lives.