Spiritual And Visionary Communities

Exploring religious and spiritual intentional communities active in the world today, Spiritual and Visionary Communities provides a balanced introduction to a diverse range of communities worldwide. Breaking new ground with its focus on communities which have had little previous academic or public attention, the authors explore a part of contemporary society which is rarely understood. Communities studied include: Israeli kibbutzim, Mandarom, the Twelve Tribes, ’The Farm’ and the Camphill movement. Written from a range of perspectives, this collection includes contributions from members of the groups themselves, former members, and academic observers, and as such will offer a unique and invaluable discussion of religious and spiritual communities in the U.S., Europe, and beyond.

Exploring religious and spiritual intentional communities active in the world today, Spiritual and Visionary Communities provides a balanced introduction to a diverse range of communities worldwide. Breaking new ground with its focus on communities which have had little previous academic or public attention, the authors explore a part of contemporary society which is rarely understood. Communities studied include: Israeli kibbutzim, Mandarom, the Twelve Tribes, ’The Farm’ and the Camphill movement. Written from a range of perspectives, this collection includes contributions from members of the groups themselves, former members, and academic observers, and as such will offer a unique and invaluable discussion of religious and spiritual communities in the U.S., Europe, and beyond.

Exploring religious and spiritual intentional communities active in the world today, Spiritual and Visionary Communities provides a balanced introduction to a diverse range of communities worldwide. Breaking new ground with its focus on communities which have had little previous academic or public attention, the authors explore a part of contemporary society which is rarely understood. Communities studied include: Israeli kibbutzim, Mandarom, the Twelve Tribes, ‘The Farm’ and the Camphill movement. Written from a range of perspectives, this collection includes contributions from members of the groups themselves, former members, and academic observers, and as such will offer a unique and invaluable discussion of religious and spiritual communities in the U.S., Europe, and beyond.

Creating The Beloved Community is about the qualities, attitudes, and practices that are needed to manifest the kind of world envisioned by Howard Thurman and Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., a world of peace and harmony. The focus is on how to support the larger concept of the Universal Beloved Community by creating The Beloved Community locally - as authentic local spiritual communities. This book is for those in spiritual leadership in any faith tradition who have a desire to create the kind of world that the great spiritual visionaries have described for us. Those interested in transcending the limited reality of focusing only on organizational survival so that a greater vision can unfold will find this book to be of great value. Creating The Beloved Community speaks of the leadership qualities needed to create such a community, including cultural evolutionary awareness, presencing, and psychological awareness of our own and others' development. The role of the mystical realms and the evolutionary nature of spiritual community are presented as necessary to fully engage taking The Beloved Community into the world. It is time for us to walk our talk and to bring the promise of harmony and peace to a world that cries out for them. Jim Lockard has been in ministry for over 20 years. He brings a wealth of experience and the viewpoint of a visionary to his work.

When a powerful mystic steps on the hand of a radical young hippie doctor from Detroit, it changes lives and the world. Sometimes Brilliant is the adventures of a philosopher, mystic, hippie, doctor, groundbreaking tech innovator, and key player in the eradication of one of the worst pandemics in human history. His story, of what happens when love, compassion and determination meet the right circumstances to effect positive change, is the kind that keeps hope and the sense of possibility alive. After sitting at the feet of Martin Luther King at the University of Michigan in 1963, Larry Brilliant was swept up into the civil rights movement, marching and protesting across America and Europe. As a radical young doctor he followed the hippie trail from London over the Khyber Pass with his wife Girija, Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm commune to India. There, he found himself in a Himalayan ashram wondering whether he had stumbled into a cult. Instead, one of India’s greatest spiritual teachers, Neem Karoli Baba, opened Larry’s heart and told him his destiny was to work for the World Health Organization to help eradicate killer smallpox. He would never have believed he would become a key player in eliminating a 10,000-year-old disease that killed more than half a billion people in the 20th century alone. Brilliant’s unlikely trajectory, chronicled in Sometimes Brilliant, has brought him into close proximity with political leaders, spiritual masters, cultural heroes, and titans of technology around the world—from the Grateful Dead to Mikhail Gorbachev, from Ram Dass, the Dalai Lama, Lama Govinda, and Karmapa to Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, Salesforce, Facebook, Microsoft and eBay and Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama. Anchored by the engrossing account of the heroic efforts of the extraordinary people involved in smallpox eradication in India, this is a riveting and fascinating epidemiological adventure, an honest reckoning of an entire generation, and a deeply moving spiritual memoir. It is a testament to faith, love, service, and what it means to engage with life’s most important questions in pursuit of a better, more brilliant existence.

This comprehensive guide to American intentional communities is a major reference source for over 3,000 communities, covering the time of the first European settlements in America to the present. It includes obscure and well-known communities; small and large; short-lived and long-lived. It includes a short sketch of each community, giving basic information about its founding and operational policies. It provides up to three references for additional research and the community's web site.

In the Greater Community of Worlds the idea of God is presented differently than it is in this world. In the Greater Community, the idea of God must be translatable from one society to another where the customs and the rituals, the ideas and the areas of specific application will be unique to each world’s spiritual awareness and devotional practices. All that can be translated is the pure experience of Knowledge—the experience of Universal Mind, profound awareness and total relationship. This is the experience which will be presented in this book—an experience of translatable spirituality that is shared between intelligent life everywhere. Its application is universal. Its experience is universal. Its communication is universal. The direction that it establishes for sentient beings everywhere is universal. Greater Community Spirituality encompasses a larger panorama of life and includes all that has been created here and beyond, in all dimensions, in all frameworks. So complete is it that you cannot fathom its Mystery, exhaust its Wisdom or penetrate its Knowledge. But you can be the recipient of these things, and you can translate them into your own experience and apply them here at great benefit to yourself and to others. The world is now emerging into a Greater Community of Worlds. Therefore, it is necessary for Greater Community Spirituality to be presented here to enable humanity to prepare mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the great change that is coming and the great opportunities that this change represents. To learn about the Greater Community, you must learn of its reality. This, then, is a blessing: that you may receive a Greater reality, a Greater religion and a Greater God.

Segments of society are drawing upon their faith and spirituality to develop strategies to mend social relationships and fragmented communities. The Contemporary Perspectives on Spirituality in Education book series will feature volumes geared towards understanding and exploring the role of spirituality in addressing challenge, conflict, and marginalization within education in the U.S. and internationally.