The teachings of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, offer a startling resolution to many contemporary problems. This book outlines the main tenets of Sufism as taught by the Sufi masters of Central Anatolia. A discussion of Sufi psychology and its seven levels of selfhood heralds the possibility of psychological evolution for all human beings to higher stages of consciousness. Using the promise of the Sufi vision, the author builds a bridge between the West and Islam.

The annual Lenten pilgrimage to dozens of Rome’s most striking churches is a sacred tradition dating back almost two millennia, to the earliest days of Christianity. Along this historic spiritual pathway, today’s pilgrims confront the mysteries of the Christian faith through a program of biblical and early Christian readings amplified by some of the greatest art and architecture of western civilization. In Roman Pilgrimage, bestselling theologian and papal biographer George Weigel, art historian Elizabeth Lev, and photographer Stephen Weigel lead readers through this unique religious and aesthetic journey with magnificent photographs and revealing commentaries on the pilgrimage’s liturgies, art, and architecture. Through reflections on each day’s readings about faith and doubt, heroism and weakness, self-examination and conversion, sin and grace, Rome’s familiar sites take on a new resonance. And along that same historical path, typically unexplored treasures—artifacts of ancient history and hidden artistic wonders—appear in their original luster, revealing new dimensions of one of the world’s most intriguing and multi-layered cities. A compelling guide to the Eternal City, the Lenten Season, and the itinerary of conversion that is Christian life throughout the year, Roman Pilgrimage reminds readers that the imitation of Christ through faith, hope, and love is the template of all true discipleship, as the exquisite beauty of the Roman station churches invites reflection on the deepest truths of Christianity.

Between the rolling cadences of this peripatetic choo-choo and the vigorous swaths of color left in its tracks, this picture book practically redefines locomotion." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

An imaginative way to pray the Stations of the Cross every day of the year. “As Jansen walks with us from station to station, he points us from pain toward love and hope, toward strength and endurance, toward transformation.” —Jessica Mesman Griffith, from the introduction Throughout the centuries, Christians have asked, “Why is there suffering?” or, on a more personal level, “Why am I suffering?” Answers abound, but none are likely to suffice or satisfy. A far more helpful question might be, “How should I respond to suffering?” And the answer to that question, believes Gary Jansen, can be found by looking closely at the Passion of Jesus. In Station to Station, Jansen uses the scriptural Way of the Cross to focus our minds and hearts on Jesus’ anguish and death. Walking through each station, we see the unique ways in which Jesus responded to suffering, and we are challenged to react similarly in our own struggles. Furthermore, through various Ignatian exercises, Jansen encourages us to imaginatively pray our way through the stations and to gradually respond more as Jesus would when we are weighed down by life’s burdens. Whether you are bearing your own cross or helping someone else carry theirs, Station to Station will show you how Christ’s character in the midst of suffering can, with time and prayer, become your character too.

The Station by Robert Byron is Byron's in-depth record of his travels to Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism. Excerpt: "Letters from foreign countries arrive in the afternoon. Each envelope advertises a break in the monotony of days; each reveals on penetration only one more facet of a standard world. But latterly another kind has come, strangely addressed, stranger still within. "We learn," runs one, "that you are safely returned to your own glorious country and are already in the midst of your dearest ones, enjoying the best of health..."

The Station brings a profound message that reminds one to embrace the journey of life. Designed as a keepsake, the beautiful colour illustrations and texture make this a great gift for everyone who is focusing on the destination rather than relishing the moment. The book's simple message that there is no one destination or station in life has the power to change lives.

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when our experiences are mediated by language, technology, medication, and the arts? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's "research" becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? A witness to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, does he participate in historic events or merely watch them pass him by? In prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle. Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979, Ben Lerner is the author of three books of poetry The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a 2010-2011 Howard Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie. Leaving the Atocha Station is his first novel.