Hard Travel To Sacred Places

Hard Travel to Sacred Places is the record of a personal odyssey through Southeast Asia, an external and internal journey through grief and the painful realities of a decadent age. Wurlitzer—novelist, screenwriter, and Buddhist practitioner—travels with his wife, photographer Lynn Davis, on a photo assignment to the sacred sites of Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. Heavy Westernization, sex clubs, aging hippies and expatriates, and political dissidents provide a vivid contrast to the peace that Wurlitzer and Davis seek, still reeling from the death of their son in a car accident. As Davis with her camera searches for a thread of meaning among the artifacts and relics of a more enlightened age, Wurlitzer grasps at the wisdom of the Buddhist teachings in an effort to assuage his grief. His journal chronicles the survival of age-old truths in a world gone mad.

Why do they still come? Fourteen hundred years after a handful of Celtic monks withdrew to tiny islands in the sea, and almost a thousand years after the last of them disappeared, a steady streams of modern men and women make the difficult trek to these isolated places. Why? What did the ancient monks know that we have forgotten, or remember only dimly? What are we looking for when we journey to such sacred places? We are looking, among other things, for wisdom-for clues about how to live in a frantic, materialistic, care-worn world that is, in many ways, hostile to life. And we sense that those who lived here so long ago, though they have left very little behind, have something to teach us. In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands is the story of a reluctant pilgrimage, taken by a man with no great faith in sacred places. He is a man filled with modern questions and suspicions, who nonetheless returns home from these thin places with a better understanding of how to live. This book interweaves spiritual quest, travel, memoir, history, theological reflection, cultural analysis, and personal introspection-all conveyed in an engaging, probing, and honest voice. It is a book for those on the hunt for meaning who share the hope that God has sown it throughout this world-perhaps more thickly in certain sacred places.

A travel guide to the world's most sacred locales offers travel tips and detailed maps to the Great Pyramid, Easter Island, the Himalayas, Ayers Rock, Chaco Canyon, Jericho, Delphi, Stonehenge, and Mayan ruins, among other sites of spiritual importance. Original.

World travelers and armchair tourists who want to explore the mythology and archaeology of the ruins, sanctuaries, mountains, lost cities, and temples of ancient civilizations will find this guide ideal. Detailed here are the monuments and sites where ancient peoples once gathered to perform sacred rituals and ceremonies to worship various gods and to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Important archaeological, historical, and geological destinations worldwide are profiled, from the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the Forbidden City in China to the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia and Mount Shasta in California. Sites are described in historical and cultural context, and practical contemporary travel information is provided, including detailed maps, drawings, photographs, and travel directions. This replaces 1888729023.

Now thoroughly revised and updated, this encyclopedia documents the diversity of shrines, temples, holy places, and pilgrimage sites sacred to the world's major religious traditions, and illustrates their elemental place in human culture. As interest increases in the role of world religions in history and international affairs, the new edition of Encyclopedia of Sacred Places—which arrives 15 years after the publication of the original edition—provides new and updated information on site-specific religious practice and spiritually significant locations around the globe. While many of the entries describe specific places, like the Erawan Shrine and the Rock of Cashel, others examine types of sacred sites, pilgrimages, and practices. With articles that describe both the places and their associated traditions and history, this reference book reveals the enormous diversity and cultural significance of religious practice worldwide. For students and teachers of classes ranging from high school geography to university-level courses in religious studies, geography, anthropology, and sociology, this book provides essential reference on places of great significance to the world's various faith traditions.

A listing of five hundred sites new and old, famous and unknown, that have been used to connect humanity with its gods.

Combining current trends, academic theories, and historical insights, this travel guide brings both lesser-known and famous European spiritual locales into perspective by explaining the significance of each sacred site. The cultural relevance, history, and spirituality of each site—including Stonehenge, the Acropolis, Mont Saint Michel, Pompeii, and Saint Peter’s Basilica—are explained, creating a moving and artistic travel experience. Each destination—with selections spanning more than 15 countries throughout Europe—is accompanied by easy-to-follow maps and directions.