Zen rituals—such as chanting, bowing, lighting incense before the Buddha statue—are ways of recognizing the sacredness in all of life. A ritual is simply a deliberate and focused moment that symbolizes the care with which we should be approaching all of life, and practicing the Zen liturgy is a way of cultivating this quality of attention in order to bring it to everything we do. Here, John Daido Loori demystifies the details of the Zen rituals and highlights their deeper meaning and purpose. We humans are all creatures of ritual, he teaches, whether we recognize it or not. Even if we don’t make ritual part of some religious observance, we still fall into ritual behavior, whether it be our daily grooming sequence or the way we have our morning coffee and paper. We run through our personal rituals unconsciously most of the time, but there is great value to introducing meaningful symbolic rituals into our lives and to performing them deliberately and mindfully—because the way we do ritual affects the way we live the rest of our lives. The book includes instructions for a simple Zen home liturgy, as it is practiced by students of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen.

Sacred Passages takes an entirely new approach to the way we understand and experience the sacraments. Foregoing dry, technical explanations, Bert Ghezzi explores the meaning and benefits of the sacraments in a practical and highly personal manner. Interweaving scripture, the writings of the saints, and personal stories, Ghezzi reveals the dynamic realities that the sacraments provide believers. In chapters devoted to each of the seven sacraments--Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick--Ghezzi restores a sense of wonder and excitement in the sacraments and instills an understanding of what is really happening. For example, in the section devoted to Communion, the effectiveness of the sacrament is explained: The eating of the bread and wine cleanse, strengthen, and nourish the spirit. Reconciliation is seen as an opportunity for direct access to God through prayer and the continued participation in Christ's ministry. Each chapter includes practical teachings on applying the grace of the sacraments in daily life, inspiring believers to participate fully in all the stages and important moments of the Christian life, from birth, growth, and coming-of-age, through vocation and service, and finally to death. One of America's most popular writers on topics of interest to Catholics, Ghezzi's engaging prose, easy-to-understand explanations, and thoughtful insights offer readers a life-changing vision of the role of the sacraments, and helps them experience the practical and spiritual rewards of each sacred passage.

Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life offers inspiring and practical guidance for reconnecting to the sacred in every day life and transforming our relationship with the Earth. Describing the power of simple, daily practices such as Walking, Gardening, Cooking with Love, and Prayer, this small book supports profound changes in how we think about and respond to the ecological crisis of our times. Our groundbreaking book, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, (now in its second edition)—which included spiritual perspectives on climate change, species loss, deforestation, and other aspects of our present environmental crises from renowned spiritual teachers, scientists, and indigenous leaders—drew an overwhelmingly positive reaction from readers, many of whom are asking: "What can I do?" Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life answers that question with inspiring, personal anecdotes from the author—Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee—and simple practices we all can do. Rooted in the mystical foundation of the world's great spiritual traditions, with a particular connection to Sufism, these timeless practices remind readers of our deep connections to life, each other, and the Earth, and invite a return of meaning to our desecrated world. As Rumi says, "there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground," and it is this sacred ground that is calling to us, that needs our living presence, our attentiveness. This small book offers simple ways to reconnect so that we can once again feel the music, the song of our living connection with the Earth. "This small book, exquisite in its luminous simplicity, brings me home to my life. Even in a dark time, its practices center me in a sense of the sacred, our birthright." —JOANNA MACY, teacher, activist, and author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects “Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee's book on practices for Spiritual Ecology in everyday life awakens us to the potential to take small steps towards big transformation. It overcomes the artificial divide between nature and humans, and spirituality and action. No matter who we are, where we live, these are steps each of us can take.” —VANDANA SHIVA, activist and author “A beautiful book. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart do a brilliant job sharing simple and powerful practices that help readers connect to the sacredness within nature, the earth, and our own daily lives.” —SANDRA INGERMAN, author, Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life

We live in a world where there never seems to be enough time for all we want and need to do. In Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life, Christine Valters Paintner guides us as we move beyond our own lives and embrace a world that urges us toward rest, reflection, and growth. In Sacred Time, Paintner, abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts, shows us how by becoming in tune with the rhythms of the natural world, we can live more intentionally and experience a conversion toward a more expansive way of being. Paintner introduces us to the eight cycles of sacred time that exist in our everyday lives. These cycles that can ground us through our busy lives are breath, rhythms of the day, weekly rhythms and Sabbath rest, waxing and waning lunar cycles, seasons of the year, seasons of a lifetime, ancestral time, and cosmic time. Each cycle encourages us to mindfully consider the time that passes as quickly as each breath and as slowly as the passing of generations. Within each cycle, we find wisdom from sacred tradition and the saints, including St. Benedict, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Hildegard of Bingen; room for growth; and the presence of the Divine. Along the way, we are also given scriptural guidance, and we are invited to spiritual practices and creative explorations that will help deepen our understanding of each cycle, allow that understanding to take root in our lives, and expand our lives beyond the pressures of each da

This book explores ways to bring ancient values to our contemporary lifestyles. It offers simple tools for community building with family, friends, intimate relationships, in the workplace, and with the self.

Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something author Tish Harrison Warren does in a day—making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys—and relates it to spiritual practice as well as to our Sunday worship.

This Sacred Life redescribes the meaning of this world and the value and purpose of human life within it.