Art Religion

Dan Brown's immensely popular New York Times best-selling The Da Vinci Code is one of the most successful books of recent history. It has captivated millions the world over with its enthralling suspense and its provocative questions about the true nature of Jesus' life.

Story captures our hearts and feeds our imaginations. It reminds us who we are and where we came from. Story gives meaning and direction to our lives as we learn to see it as an affirmation of God’s love. Drawing upon her own experiences, well-known tales in literature, and selected narratives from Scripture, Madeleine L’Engle gently leads the way into the glorious world of story in The Rock That Is Higher. Here she acknowledges universal human longings and considers how literature, Scripture, personal stories, and life experiences all point us toward our true home.

You are in the process of becoming. Every day is an opportunity to be shaped and formed by what moves your heart, drives your thoughts, and captures your gaze. Is it any wonder that where you direct your eyes and your heart matter in your day-to-day? We become what we behold when we set our hearts and minds on Christ and His redemption story here in the details of our daily lives - not just on Sunday, not just on holidays, not just when extraordinarily hard or wonderful things happen...but today.

The Ramayana: The Lost Manuscript offers a sweeping, newly illuminated vision of one of humanity’s oldest and most sacred epics, restoring its grandeur, spiritual depth, and mythic resonance while bringing fresh vitality to the story of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Hanuman, and the eternal struggle between righteousness and chaos.

Margaret Guenther uses the images of the spiritual director as host, teacher, and midwife to describe the ministry of spiritual direction today. She pays particular attention to spiritual direction for women, and addresses such down-to-earth questions as setting, time, and privacy. The stories of real people bring the practice of spiritual direction alive.

Free yourself from the limitations of the earth plane and the laws of space and time. Astral Voyages presents more than 65 exercises that train you to safely leave your physical body and return unharmed from explorations of the upper astral plane and the causal, mental, or etheric realms. You might even venture to the soul plane and observe the process of selecting your next lifetime!

Monastic life and its counter-cultural wisdom come alive in the stories and lessons of Br. Paul Quenon, OCSO, during his more than five decades as a Trappist at the Abbey of Gethsemani. He served as a novice under Thomas Merton, and he also welcomed some of the monastery's more well-known visitors to Merton's hermitage. In Praise of the Useless Life includes Quenon's quiet reflections on what it means to live each day with careful attentiveness. The humble peace and simplicity of the monastery and of Quenon's daily life are beautifully portrayed in this memoir.

Aquinas at Prayer draws attention to important aspects of Aquinas's life and work which have been all too often overlooked or forgotten. Today Aquinas is almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that Aquinas was, first and last, a teacher of the Bible - a Master of the Sacred Page. Moreover there is a distinctly mystical character to his theology. And, as a writer, he was not only a poet but, arguably, the greatest Latin poet of the Middle Ages.

One of the first pieces of Krishna-conscious literature widely distributed in the western world, this work inspired many to investigate the spiritual dimension of their lives. This is the opportunity to understand the deepest truth of devotional yoga. If you miss this opportunity in the human form of life—the developed consciousness—you will slip again into the cycle of 8 million, 400 thousand species of life one form after another.

Let's be honest - nobody has more fun than atheists. Don’t believe it? Well, consider this: For nonbelievers, every day you’re alive is a day to celebrate! And no one celebrates life to the fullest like Penn Jillette - the larger, louder half of legendary magic duo Penn & Teller - whose spectacularly witty and sharply observant essays in Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday! will entertain zealots and skeptics alike.

The Art of Self-Mastery presents 11 timeless classics and the greatest inspirational works of our time condensed and introduced by PEN Award-winning historian and New Though Scholar Mitch Horowitz.

It was the splendor and the scandal of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe, the millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle's grave, to build a better basilica.

By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.

Extreme physical effort, especially when coupled with risk and deprivation, has been known to produce strong effects in people. These range from "runner's high" or being "in the zone" to far more mystical experiences: visions, hallucinations, and superhuman performance. Bone Games is the story of Rob Schultheis' exploration of this strange terrain - the altered states of consciousness that can be an elusive product of extreme sports.

Those who enjoy J. R. R. Tolkien—even those new to his classic stories—will love A Hobbit Devotional, featuring 60 humorous, challenging, and encouraging devotionals. The Hobbit has fascinated readers for more than 70 years. Now, this tale of humble folk who overcome fear, discouragement, and despair through steadfastness, courage, and hope forms the basis of a brand-new devotional book.

The Art and Practice of Geomancy teaches readers how to divine the answers to life's everyday questions about health, luck, new jobs, and love, as well as finding buried treasure, predicting the weather, and identifying secret enemies. Greer delivers to readers an ancient system of divination in an easy-to-use form requiring little more than a pen and a piece of paper.

Le Dalaï-Lama poursuit sa réflexion sur le bonheur en s'interrogeant sur la relation que chacun entretient avec les autres. D'un côté, il aborde sans concession la question des préjugés, de la violence, de la peur, du racisme... De l'autre, il souligne l'effet positif que peuvent avoir l'empathie et la compassion sur notre capacité à atteindre le bonheur. Soucieux d'éviter la pure spéculation religieuse ou philosophique, le Dalaï-Lama propose dans ces entretiens avec Howard Cutler des conseils empreints d'une lumineuse sagesse, mais aussi pragmatiques et en phase avec notre temps.

In this book, Mark Westmoquette speaks from a place of profound personal experience. A Zen monk, he has endured two life-changing traumas caused by other people: his sexual abuse by his own father, and his stepfather’s death and mother’s very serious injury in a car crash due to the careless driving of an off-duty policeman. He stresses that by bringing awareness and kindness to these relationships, our initial stance of “I can’t stand this person, they need to change” will naturally shift into something much broader and more inclusive.

In these classic essays, which began as talks on the BBC during World War II, Lewis creatively and simply explains the basic tenets of Christianity. Taken from the core section of Mere Christianity, this book provides an accessible way for people to discover these timeless truths. For those looking to remind themselves of what they hold true, or those looking for a snapshot of Christianity, this book is a wonderful introduction to the faith.

Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. Awake Where You Are provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and, in the process, to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom. The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life.