It is Alfredo who speaks in these pages, his Love for those of us who follow the Way under his guidance and for those who seek but have not yet found, because his teaching is transmitted from Heart to Heart. Simple, but not easy, essential: Attention, Intention, Dedication practiced with patience and moved forward with impeccability and joy. Immersed in this Love, Caterina offers her extraordinary experience with delicacy and poetry, with the intention of giving pearls that come from the master and offering us another opportunity now that "the solar winds blow stronger," until for us as well, the Love, the Lover, and the Beloved are One.

A key comic writer of the past three decades has created his most heartfelt and hard-hitting book. Father Joe is Tony Hendra’s inspiring true story of finding faith, friendship, and family through the decades-long influence of a surpassingly wise Benedictine monk named Father Joseph Warrillow. Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen-year-old Tony found himself entangled with a married Catholic woman. In Cold War England, where Catholicism was the subject of news stories and Graham Greene bestsellers, Tony was whisked off by the woman’s husband to see a priest and be saved. Yet what he found was a far cry from the priests he’d known at Catholic school, where boys were beaten with belts or set upon by dogs. Instead, he met Father Joe, a gentle, stammering, ungainly Benedictine who never used the words “wrong” or “guilt,” who believed that God was in everyone and that “the only sin was selfishness.” During the next forty years, as his life and career drastically ebbed and flowed, Tony discovered that his visits to Father Joe remained the one constant in his life—the relationship that, in the most serious sense, saved it. From the fifties and his adolescent desire to join an abbey himself; to the sixties, when attending Cambridge and seeing the satire of Beyond the Fringe convinced him to change the world with laughter, not prayer; to the seventies and successful stints as an original editor of National Lampoon and a writer of Lemmings, the off-Broadway smash that introduced John Belushi and Chevy Chase; to professional disaster after co-creating the legendary English series Spitting Image; from drinking to drugs, from a failed first marriage to a successful second and the miracle of parenthood—the years only deepened Tony’s need for the wisdom of his other and more real father, creating a bond that could not be broken, even by death. A startling departure for this acclaimed satirist, Father Joe is a sincere account of how Tony Hendra learned to love. It’s the story of a whole generation looking for a way back from mockery and irony, looking for its own Father Joe, and a testament to one of the most charismatic mentors in modern literature.

As in other mystic traditions, Sufism sees the relationship between the seeker and God as that of lover and beloved. This wise, beautiful book, written by the spiritual successor to Irine Tweedie (Daughter of Fire), describes the inner journey that takes the lover back to the God he refers to as "the beloved".

I want to lose weight, but dieting just doesn't seem to work. I've tried everything, and I'm still three sizes too big. Help! I hate the way my body looks. Sound familiar? Like many women and men, perhaps you have tried virtually every wtight-loss plan that exists only to give up in disappointment and despair. Have you faithfully counted fat grams and calories? Have you subjected yourself, week after week, to the humiliation of hearing what your current weight should be compared to what it is? Have you exercised excessively, given up your favorite foods, and felt guilty when you've failed to meet your weight goals? Time tested for more than 30 years, Thin Within is the original hunger-fullness plan. Tens of thousands of participants in the program have joyfully reported the release of unwanted weight. More importantly, they have maintained that weight with a new and incomparable peace with themselves and with the One who designed them. Thin Within makes it possible to: Identify and resolve issues that cause you to eat more than your body needs Leave diets behind forever Discover and enjoy those foods that promote health and vitality Experience the abundant life as you reach and maintain your natural God-given size

Maira Kalman, with wit and great sensitivity, reveals why dogs bring out the best in us Maira Kalman + Dogs = Bliss Dogs have lessons for us all. In Beloved Dog, renowned artist and author Maira Kalman illuminates our cherished companions as only she can. From the dogs lovingly illustrated in her acclaimed children’s books to the real-life pets who inspire her still, Kalman’s Beloved Dog is joyful, beautifully illustrated, and, as always, deeply philosophical. Here is Max Stravinsky, the dog poet of Oh-La-La (Max in Love)-fame, and her own Irish Wheaton Pete (almost named Einstein, until he revealed himself to be “clearly no Einstein”), who also made an appearance in the delightful What Pete Ate: From A to Z. And of course, there is Boganch, Kalman’s in-laws’ “big black slobbering Hungarian Beast.” And that’s just the beginning. With humor and intelligence, Kalman gives voice to the dogs she adores, noting that they are constant reminders that life reveals the best of itself when we live fully in the moment and extend unconditional love. “And it is very true,” she writes, “that the most tender, complicated, most generous part of our being blossoms without any effort, when it comes to the love of a dog.”

The social system of 'courtly love' soon spread after becoming popularized by the troubadours of southern France in the twelfth century. This book codifies life at Queen Eleanor's court at Poitiers between 1170 and 1174 into "one of those capital works which reflect the thought of a great epoch, which explain the secret of a civilization."