Deeper Prayer Through Sacred Image And Icon Gazing

Quiet your heart and listen for the loving whispers of God through this daily Advent retreat experience. Offers compelling reflections on the season's traditional scripture readings and creative ways to let God's word sink deep into your heart and soul, including journaling with mandalas, audio divina and meditative movement.

A congregation communicates its heart and soul through words, photos, actions, programs, architecture, decor, the arts, and countless other aspects of congregational life. In Reaching Out in a Networked World, communications expert and pastor Lynne Baab examines technologies such as websites, blogs, online communities, and desktop publishing. She demonstrates how a congregation can evaluate these tools and appropriately use them to communicate its heart and soul, to convey its identity and values both within and outside the congregation. Baab urges congregation leaders to reflect on the way they communicate. The recent explosion in communication technologies offers many new ways to present values and identity, but no one has much experience thinking about how best to use these tools. Baab seeks to help leaders use these new technologies with more precision, flair, and consistency. When congregations are intentional about communicating who they are and what they value, people in the wider community can get a clear and coherent picture of the congregation and its mission. Newcomers and visitors are more likely to see why faith commitments matter and why and how they might become involved in this congregation, while current members and leaders will greatly benefit from having a unified vision of the congregation's heart and soul.

Full-color fold-outs of four superb Russian icons combine with reflections to offer the reader a unique way to pray with sacred images as mush as with words--and hopefully see something of the beauty of God.

Sacred Stories brings together the work of leading scholars writing on the history of religion and religiosity in late imperial Russia during the critical decades preceding the 1917 revolutions. Embodying new research and new methodologies, this book reshapes our understanding of the place of religion in modern Russian history. Topics examined include miraculous icons and healing, pilgrim narratives, confessions, women and Orthodox domesticity, marriage and divorce, conversion and tolerance, Jewish folk beliefs, mysticism in Russian art, and philosophical aspects of Orthodox religious thought. Sacred Stories demonstrates that belief, spirituality, and the sacred were powerful and complex cultural expressions central to Russian political, social, economic, and cultural life. Contributors are Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Heather J. Coleman, Gregory L. Freeze, Nadieszda Kizenko, Alexei A. Kurbanovsky, Roy R. Robson, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Gabriella Safran, Vera Shevzov, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Mark Steinberg, Paul Valliere, William G. Wagner, Paul W. Werth, and Christine D. Worobec.

Explains the role of images in Christain prayer

A practical, inspiring guide to Catholic observances and celebrations for the home. For centuries, the Catholic Church has offered an abundance of splendid traditions that extend religious and spiritual practice into daily life. Now, Meredith Gould reintroduces these customs and rituals to modern Roman Catholics. Using the liturgical calendar, The Catholic Home provides familiar and new ways to celebrate each season and its special days. Gould reviews major holy days, select saints’ days, familiar prayers, and suggests meaningful ways to prepare as a family for such sacraments as Baptism, Confirmation, First Eucharist, and Matrimony. This book includes a concise history of each ritual and clarifies the meaning behind it by highlighting celebrations of Catholic holidays from different parts of the globe. Your family will learn to make Advent wreaths, Jesse trees, St. Lucy’s crowns, King’s cakes, All Souls altars, traditional foods, and participate in family devotions. Throughout The Catholic Home, Gould’s down-to-earth practicality and sense of humor give the activities she describes modern relevance no matter how ancient their origins. Excerpts from the official Catechism of the Catholic Church are included to illuminate Church doctrine on matters of faith and ritual. This indispensable guide will appeal to Catholics young and old and inspire beloved family traditions to be handed down from one generation to the next.

"Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object—an image, a person, a time, a place—with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa, The Sacred Gaze discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpret them. Morgan questions how fear and disgust of images relate to one another and explains how scholars study the long and evolving histories of images as they pass from culture to culture. An intriguing strand of the narrative details how images have helped to shape popular conceptions of gender and masculinity. The opening chapter considers definitions of "visual culture" and how these relate to the traditional practice of art history. Amply illustrated with more than seventy images from diverse religious traditions, this masterful interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive and accessible resource for everyone interested in how religious images and visual practice order space and time, communicate with the transcendent, and embody forms of communion with the divine. The Sacred Gaze is a vital introduction to the study of the visual culture of religions.