Remembering To Live

In his final work, the great and beloved Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. takes us into the realm of the spiritual and reveals through eyewitness accounts the immense power of medicine men. The World We Used To Live In, a fascinating collection of anecdotes from tribes across the country, explores everything from healing miracles and scared rituals to Navajos who could move the sun. In this compelling work, which draws upon a lifetime of scholarship, Deloria shows us how ancient powers fit into our modern understanding of science and the cosmos, and how future generations may draw strength from the old ways.

Sasaks, a people of the Indonesian archipelago, cope with one of the country's worst health records by employing various medical traditions, including their own secret ethnomedical knowledge. But anxiety, in the presence and absence of illness, profoundly shapes the ways Sasaks use healing and knowledge. Hay addresses complex questions regarding cultural models, agency, and other relationships to conclude that the ethnomedical knowledge they use to cope with their illnesses ironically inhibits improvements in their health care. M. Cameron Hay is a NSF Advance Fellow and an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Center for Culture and Health.

From Back Cover: Live and Remember is one of the most important works of Russian literature of the post-Stalin, pre-glasnost era. First published in Russian in 1974, it was immediately hailed by Soviet critics as a superb-if atypical-example of war literature and a moving depiction of the degradation and ultimate damnation of a frontline deserter-although it did provoke controversy for its sympathetic portrayal of the deserter's wife. But the novel has also attracted the attention of both Western and Soviet critics for it masterly psychological portrait of two characters caught in a hopeless situation. The novel tells the story of a Siberian peasant who makes a tragic miscalculation by deserting in the last year of the war, and the loyal wife who embraces his fate as her own. Rasputin examines the doomed relationship of these characters, sharply evoking the ties that bind individuals to their land, their community, their family. More than commentary on the nature of Soviet power or on the conduct of the war, Live and Remember is simultaneously a timeless tale with universal appeal and a very Russian story.

A priceless "in memory" gift. When you know you are going to miss someone, take the time to tell their loved ones. Bring this to the celebration of life event. Better than a sympathy card, or flowers that will wither away. A keepsake book with inspirational quotes and room for friends and family to write their favorite times and thoughts.

Awareness and acceptance of our mortality as experienced in aging, illness, and the death of others can bring a clarity and richness to the limited, precious moments of life, and helps us foster a special care for relationships and priorities in the time we are given.

Khalil Rafati went to Los Angeles in the 1990s and had it all. He was working with Hollywood movie stars and legendary rock musicians, but it wasn t long before he found his way into the dark underbelly of the City of Angels. When he hit rock bottom addicted to heroin and cocaine, overtaken by paranoia and psychosis, written off by his friends and family he grabbed a shovel and kept digging. At 33, Khalil was 109 pounds, a convicted felon, high school dropout, and homeless junkie living on the infamous Skid Row in downtown L.A.

Inspirational This is a book about the importance of living your life now, about "remembering to live" by keeping your priorities clearly before you and using your time, talent, energy, and material resources accordingly. When we face the fact that this precious gift of life on planet earth is not given in limitless supply, it clarifies our vision and intention. We stop putting things off for "some day." None of us can escape the sobering reminders of our finitude like aging, illness, loss, death. The question is, how do we deal with those reminders? With fear and trepidation? Or with a desire to learn the lessons they have to teach and to continue growing through our encounter with them? Engaging with the themes in this book, whether with reference to ourselves or loved ones, is an invitation to more conscious, fuller, and deeper living. Remember to Live! is grounded in the reality of people's lives and has been enriched by the reflections, testimony, and experience of family, friends, and participants in retreats that the author has led over the past fifteen years. It is a resource that people will go back to time and again as one or the other of these realities associated with the second half of life touches them personally. At the end of each chapter are reflection questions, exercises, poems, and prayers to help readers do their inner work. Book jacket.

A wise little gift book filled with delightful quotations reminding us that happiness is not a place to be but more a way of traveling.