Making Love With Light

This book of exquisite photographs arises from the premise that unless we love nature, we will not work to save it from exploitation and eventual destruction. The rich mixture of photographs, Zen poems and essays presented on these pages is intended to open our hearts to the wild and the wilderness, and to direct us to the ways in which we can heal the earth. The author is an award-winning photographer and videographer and his art and wildlife photography from the core of a unique teaching programme that integrates art and wilderness training and cultivates an experiential appreciation of the relationship of Zen spirituality to our natural environment.

Religion is not any ideology. Religion does not believe in any ideals. Religion is to become aware of the impossibility of idealism – of all idealism. Religion is to live here and now, and idealism goes on conditioning your mind to live somewhere else. And only the now exists. There is no other way to live. The only way is to be here. You cannot be there. The tomorrow is non-existent, it never comes, and idealism believes in the tomorrow. It sacrifices the today at the altar of the tomorrow. It goes on saying to you, ’Do something – improve yourself. Do something – change yourself. Do something – become perfect.’ It appeals to the ego. Idealism belongs to the world of the ego. It appeals to the ego that you can be more perfect than you are; in fact you should be more perfect than you are. But each moment is perfect, and it cannot be more perfect than it is.

By returning to primary source material, including the Torah and ancient and medieval rabbinic literature, Rabbi Gershon Winkler illustrates the often uninhibited and celebrative attitudes towards sexuality and sensual pleasure found in Jewish teachings. Unfortunately, Judaism's healthy outlook on human desires and physical enjoyment has been nearly lost after centuries of subjection to host religions and cultures that have all but squelched the notion of sensuality. In this fascinating and often surprising volume, the myth of a 'Judeo-Christian' approach to sex is shattered.

Drawing from her years of professional experience as a sexual surrogate and therapist, Keesling delves into the profound and complex powers of sexuality, offering readers the idea that sexual exchange between loving partners contains all the elements necessary for healing and happiness: touch, intimacy, communication, physical activity, and playfulness.

“The familiar Gospel song may reassure us that, ‘His eye is on the sparrow,’ but for those at the battered edges of our society, too often it doesn’t seem that way. Here, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri catches sight of ‘a sparrow by its own forgotten self,’ and that sparrow stands in for other ‘forgotten’ ones: the homeless, the wrecked, the ill, a family of forebears ‘visited’ by comprehensive Job-like ‘Misery.’ Even as she shows us ‘light’s battered edges,’ however, Sahms-Guarnieri makes us sharply aware of ‘life playing/ disharmoniously and harmoniously’: love so close it’s ‘like being safely snug inside/ the lining of another’s skin’; earth itself surrendering ‘to each/ sunset’ ‘in a thankful swaying sort of way’; a soul snatched up animistically, ‘lifting, lifting, lifting into light.’ These compelling poems leave us disquieted, as much by beauty as by sorrow.” —Nathalie F. Anderson, Author of Quiver; Professor, Swarthmore College “Think of the spirit of place as the frame of memory shaping language, of the perpetual soliloquy of being who you are in counterpoint with echoing phrases others have uttered at or to you, and you will have some idea of the chant and enchantment of the poems gathered in Light’s Battered Edge. There are some hard truths in these poems—about abusive spouses, about the wear and tear of caring for others. But underlying it all is the sense of what love really means.” —Frank Wilson, Books, Inq.; The Epilogue

Provides insight into five of Hart Crane's most influential works along with a short biography of the poet.