Minefields And Miracles

"Minefields and Miracles: Why God and Allah Need to Talk"--A captivating memoir and colorful overview of the interfaith movement. Seeking a way to promote mutual respect among people of widely divergent beliefs, Ruth Broyde Sharone takes on grass-roots interfaith engagement as her personal and global mission. Strong in her Jewish faith, yet close to Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others, Ruth has a passionate need to see the "other " and "the stranger" as friend and fellow traveler. Highly regarded and respected for her interfaith activities, the book garnered endorsements from more than 30 global leaders of many faiths, including H.H. the Dalai Lama. "The world needs more narratives of how faith can be a bridge of cooperation, rather than a barrier of division. I deeply thank Ruth Broyde Sharone for sharing her inspiring stories of bridge-building around the world," writes Eboo Patel, Founder & President, Interfaith Youth Core. Ruth's "wake-up call" occurs during her college years. After detailing her first painful encounter with religious discrimination, Ruth goes on to describe her courageous sojourn alone as a 21-year-old traversing the length and breadth of Latin America. Few young women were allowed that freedom. She emerges from that trip strongly identifying with the Latin American people and culture, and with a keen desire to explore the rest of the world. First a journalist, then a documentary filmmaker, Ruth travels in Europe and later spends 10 years making films in Israel, where she encounters the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a conflict that continues to haunt her even when she returns to the States. Ruth explains how, after marriage and motherhood, she is transformed into a passionate interfaith advocate--often at her own expense. She joins forces with a Black female minister to organize interfaith pilgrimages to the Middle East. Following 9/11 she is invited to screen her award-winning film, God and Allah Need to Talk, at the 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions gathering in Barcelona, Spain. In Barcelona she experiences her first taste of "interfaith paradise," which inspires her to intensify her interfaith activities around the globe. Brimming with photographs of her journeys--from California to Argentina, from Africa to India, from Italy to Green Bay, the book also includes historical photos of the remarkable individuals from around the world who participated in the first Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893. Says Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles, "Readers will instantly connect with this open-hearted, often touching, occasionally hilarious, and always disarmingly personal account of inter-religious adventures and misadventures." Through Ruth we begin to understand the inner life of the peacemakers and boundary-crossers who walk among us--many recruited by Ruth as she travels and speaks extensively in churches, mosques, synagogues and universities. Yes, there are minefields along the way--and Broyde Sharone describes them clearly, seeking to learn the causes. She describes the miracles, too, as when 250 people representing 13 religious communities gather in 2011 in Los Angeles to celebrate a Festival of Freedom Seder, honoring the promise of the Arab Spring. "We are now at the tipping point," Broyde Sharone declares at the end of her compelling book. She offers vivid and concrete examples of the expansion of the global interfaith web. "Ruth is a master storyteller, traversing the world, making films, weaving webs of connection, and inspiring us to do the same. She epitomizes what people mean when they ask us to become the change we want to see in the world. Read her book."--Rev. Paul Chaffee, Editor, "The Interfaith Observer" A set of questions for discussion is included at the end of the book

A captivating memoir by an unstoppable interfaith activist. Filmmaker/journalist Ruth Broyde Sharone embraces grass roots interfaith engagement as her personal and global mission. Recounting her "minefields and miracles" along the way, she also provides a fascinating overview of the interfaith movement and its growth around the world. Considered a "primer" in this subject.

Policy analysts and policy planners should start from the premise that obstacles, uncertainties and surprises are important features of policy-making. All public policies should be treated as complex problems, from the outset. Complexity theorists start from the premise that complex policies are ill-defined and ambiguous. There is often little consensus about what the problem is, let alone how to resolve it. Into the complexity of the wicked problem fray, Marketing Public Policy introduces the role of communication scholars and practitioners whose models and practices focus on people, processes, opinions and behaviour as causes of organisational complexity. Communication practice’s role is to provide ideas on how to navigate, diagnose and interpret issues with a view to persuading the public to change its behaviour or opinions. From the case studies presented in this book, we see that despite rationally excellent macro- and micro-planning of policies to win the hearts and minds of citizens, public policies still deteriorate into hurts and minefields. The case studies are drawn from China, Indonesia, India, the USA, the UK and Europe to show that policy-making is always a complex issue in any country, whatever the political structure, whether democracy or communism.

In this poignant and transformative novel, bestselling author Kris Radish weaves a tale of five women yearning for change—and the potential for happiness that lies within every heart. Free-spirited psychologist Dr. Olivia Bayer suspects she’ll need a miracle to help the four wildly different women in her anger management class. Grace, a single working mother, can barely find a moment’s rest. Jane, a high-profile real estate agent, is struggling in the recession. Kit, in her fifties, has had it with her taunting older brothers. And Leah, a young mother of two, is starting over after ending a troubled relationship. All have reached a crossroads, and Dr. Bayer has an unconventional plan to steer them on the right track. As the class gets taken everywhere from a bowling alley to a shooting range, the women’s Tuesday meetings transform from tense, reluctant gatherings into richly rewarding experiments in female bonding. As Grace, Jane, Kit, and Leah open up—revealing secrets, swapping stories, and recovering long-lost dreams—old wounds begin to heal, new friendships are forged, and miracles manifest in the most surprising ways.

A memoir of a quest to eradicate landmines from the face of the Earth—and replace dangerous ground with productive farmland: “Kuhn is an inspiration.” —Gillian Sorensen, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General After surviving a bout with cancer, Heidi Kühn decided to devote herself to ridding the world of another kind of life-threatening scourge: landmines in regions as far-flung as Croatia, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Inspired by the work of the late Princess Diana, Heidi began the humanitarian organization Roots of Peace from the basement of her Northern California home. She gained the support of famed Napa Valley vintners Robert Mondavi and Mike Grgich, and soon her “mines-to-vines” mission began to take hold. In this powerful memoir, Heidi tells the Roots of Peace story, from the early days in which she built her vision to her current presence on the global stage, where she has worked with presidents, prime ministers, landmine survivors, and religious leaders from around the world to spread a message of peace and recovery. In the years since the founding of Roots of Peace, its agricultural projects have made tremendous progress to fight against landmines, revitalizing devastated land and uplifting the lives of countless people in the process. This is a story of healing, faith, and how an ordinary person can inspire remarkable change—and plant the seeds of a brighter future.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

"A journalist explores claims of modern-day miracles to better understand how God is working in the world today"--Provided by publishers.

God is real. Everything we say about God is made up. Holy Rascals is a rousing call to anyone ready to go beyond “isms” and ideologies, and live in the world as a liberating force of justice, compassion, and joy. “Holy rascals are spiritual culture jammers who use humor, play, creativity, and critical thinking to reveal the human origins of religions—and how religions mask their true origins behind the conceit of divine origins,” writes Rabbi Rami. Here, he illuminates: • The making of a holy rascal and the great task of “freeing religion from the parochial and for the perennial” • The art of “hacking the holy,” or pulling back the curtain on religion’s fear-based mechanisms of control • The provocative tools and one-of-a-kind practices of the holy rascal, with guidance for creating your very own “rascally” ways “Holy rascality is about rekindling spiritual creativity and critical thinking,” explains Rabbi Rami. “It is about freeing the human capacity for religiosity—the capacity for making meaning—from the confines of brand-name religion. Holy rascals are playful and lighthearted. While our task is serious—the liberation of humanity from the madness of unhealthy and harmful religions and religious beliefs—our attitude is not.” Holy Rascals brings you Rabbi Rami’s one-of-a-kind inspiration, humor, and practical insight to help you on your mission.