Laughter Tears Silence

Dove's accessible, innovative methods allow readers to reap the benefits of meditation in any situation. Drawing on traditions and teachers, this work synthesizes the needs of contemporary life with attention to the full range of the human experience.

Using the principles she teaches, Pragito Dove transformed her fear and grief into joy and inner peace. Her accessible, innovative methods allow you to reap the benefits of meditation in thirty seconds, four minutes, or twenty-four hours, wherever you are and whenever you need a moment of calm. Emphasizing expression, rather than repression, of emotion, these dynamic practices can begin with a variety of movements and sounds, or with silence. Meeting practitioners where they are — in sadness, fear, stress, anger, or joy — the techniques can be done in the midst of work, play, and home life, and either alone or with others. Drawing on such traditions as Sufism and Buddhism and such teachers as the twentieth-century mystics Osho and Gurdjieff, Dove’s synthesis meets the needs of contemporary life with attention to the full range of human experience and reverence for the peace and joy possible in every moment.

Explores the range and complexity of human emotions and their transmission across cultural traditionsWhat makes us laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time? How do these two primal, seemingly discrete and non-verbal modes of expression intersect in everyday life and ritual, and what range of emotions do they evoke? How may they be voiced, shaped and coloured in literature and liturgy, art and music?Bringing together scholars from diverse periods and disciplines of Hellenic and Byzantine studies, this volume explores the shifting shapes and functions of laughter and tears. With a focus on the tragic, the comic and the tragicomic dimensions of laughter and tears in art, literature and performance, as well as on their emotional, socio-cultural and religious significance, it breaks new ground in the study of ancient and Byzantine affectivity.Key featuresIncludes an international cast of 25 distinguished contributors Prominence is given to performative arts and to interactions with other cultures Transitions from Late Antiquity to Byzantium, and from Byzantium to the Renaissance, form focal points from which contributors look backwards, forwards and sidewaysHighlights the variety, audacity and quality of the finest Byzantine works and the extent to which they anticipated the renaissance

Product Dimensions: 21.5x14x0.75 cm.

Sarah’s Laughter provides a reflection on suffering that is deeply personal and both theologically and philosophically astute. Vinoth Ramachandra draws on his distinctive positioning as a Sri Lankan Christian theologian – one who has lived and ministered in contexts shaped by the destruction of natural disasters and the violence of human evil – to confront the intellectual, moral, and political challenges posed to faith in the increasingly broken world of the twenty-first century. Yet far from being an abstract discussion of theodicy, this book is intimate and vulnerable, embracing the biblical practice of lament and inviting an authentic response to grief – one that makes space for serious doubt and profound questioning. Sharing his own ongoing journey with suffering and a questing faith, Ramachandra reminds us that lament and joy, faith and protest, clarity and ambiguity, belong together in faithful Christian discipleship. It is not in bypassing the darkness of the world, but in embracing it – in imitation of the incarnate God – that we may glimpse the new creation.

Delivered in Young’s classic bluesy tone, this powerful collection of poems about the American family, smoky Southern food, and the losses that time inevitably brings “bristles with life, nerve and, best of all, wit” (San Francisco Chronicle).