Spiritual Serendipity

Provides a guide to developing serendipity of the spirit in an effort to balance structure and spontaneity, harness time rather than manage it, and provide a bridge to God

New York Times–Bestselling Author: “The message resonates in today’s workaholic culture that rewards hard work and stress with . . . more hard work and stress.” —Deseret News In this book, the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Teaching Your Children Values and The Entitlement Trap, Richard Eyre, contends that the three things today’s society desires most—control, ownership, and independence—are, paradoxically, what bring the most discouragement and unhappiness in our lives. Providing a mind-changing exploration of the inherent problems with our fixation on material possessions, control over our lives, and independence from others, Eyre responds with a unique and engaging counterpoint on how to switch to the joy-giving alternatives of serendipity, stewardship, and interdependence and thus live a more verdant and abundant life. The first half, The Happiness Paradox, explores today’s challenges to happiness. The second half explores The Happiness Paradigm: How A New View Can Turn Your Life Right-Side Up—and walks us through a mental paradigm shift that can change our lives and our search for lasting joy.

In current global politics, which positions China as a competitor to American leadership, in-depth understandings of transnational mutual engagement are much needed for cultivating nonviolent relations. Exploring American and Chinese professors’ experiences at the intersection of the individual, society, and history, and weaving the autobiographical and the global, this book furthers understanding of their cross-cultural personal awareness and educational work at universities in both countries. While focusing on life histories, it also draws on both American and Chinese intellectual traditions such as American nonviolence activism, Taoism, and Buddhism to formulate a vision of nonviolence in curriculum studies. Centering cross-cultural education and pedagogy about, for, and through nonviolence, this volume contributes to internationalizing curriculum studies and introduces curriculum theorizing at the level of higher education. Hongyu Wang brings together stories, dialogues, and juxtapositions of cross-cultural pathways and pedagogies in a powerful case for theorizing and performing nonviolence education as visionary work in the internationalization of curriculum studies.

Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act. Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth--and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them--to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations--including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain--she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women. What does home birth--a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control--mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, Blessed Events challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is ''lived'' in contemporary America.

Mark Twain once said, “The two greatest days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why.” But what happens when you know the why but can't figure out how to make it happen? It is this journey between the realization of your purpose and its actualization that Randall Worley calls process. Purpose, which answers why, can be realized in moment. However, process, which must answer how, is not actualized as quickly. In other words, “becoming an overnight success takes years.” Purpose has been a hot topic for several years, capturing the attention of those adrift in a culture of apathy and aimlessness. It is certainly a far more palatable subject in today’s culture of self-improvement than is process, because it seems to offer a free carpet ride from here to there. Your destiny, however, is not downloadable. The dream of your future is free, but the journey will demand a price. Yet it is in the sacrifice and effort of process that God will turn your purpose into a world-changing reality.

DIV In his Autobiography, Gandhi wrote, “What I want to achieve—what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years—is self-realization, to see God face to face. . . . All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end.” While hundreds of biographies and histories have been written about Gandhi (1869–1948), nearly all of them have focused on the political, social, or familial dimensions of his life. Very few, in recounting how Gandhi led his country to political freedom, have viewed his struggle primarily as a search for spiritual liberation. Shifting the focus to the understudied subject of Gandhi’s spiritual life, Arvind Sharma retells the story of Gandhi’s life through this lens. Illuminating unsuspected dimensions of Gandhi’s inner world and uncovering their surprising connections with his outward actions, Sharma explores the eclectic religious atmosphere in which Gandhi was raised, his belief in reincarnation, his conviction that morality and religion are synonymous, his attitudes toward tyranny and freedom, and, perhaps most important, the mysterious source of his power to establish new norms of human conduct. This book enlarges our understanding of one of history’s most profoundly influential figures, a man whose trust in the power of the soul helped liberate millions. /div

The common admission that "everything I know about religion I learned from the movies" is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the silent era of film and ending with movies today, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema.

Acclaim for Mind Like Water "From What's the Rush? to Whale Done! Jim Ballard is mentor to millions. Now, in Mind Like Water, Ballard, as always, doesn't just show where his powerful and perceptive intellect has been, he takes you along and gives you the tools to revisit and explore on your own. Mind Like Water is a journey to places and spaces you realize you are visiting again for the first time. It's an easy, charming read that shows you how to be exactly where you need to be: calmly in control, regardless of the situation." -Sheldon Bowles, coauthor of Raving Fans "Reading Mind Like Water feels like handing the keys to my car to a very wise man and letting him drive for a while while I just enjoy the ride-and his words. Not only does this book make me think deeply about my work and life, it offers wonderful exercises for assessing and adjusting aspects that have not been working effectively. A must read for anyone struggling with work-home balance and how to find and bring your true self to your daily life." -Jayne Pearl, author of Kids and Money "Jim Ballard puts his finger on the true cause of the anxiety that grips us all in this age of information overload-change. And then he gives us the antidote, a Mind Like Water. Many books inspire and motivate; this one provides a blueprint for actions that can be truly transforming. It is brilliant in its simplicity. Not since Alan Watts has an American author made Eastern knowledge so accessible, relevant, and practical-even for a Type A, stressed-out, left-brain thinking, typical American such as myself." -Ken Miller, President of Teacher Education Institute "Mind Like Water invites the reader to participate in a variety of practical, accessible methods that support us in staying present in the moment, help us see things as they are, and live with equanimity amidst the unpredictability of our lives. Capturing the wisdom of great spiritual teachers, authors, and poets, Mind Like Water offers a respite from the hectic pace of our lives." -Tara Healey, Senior Organizational Consultant, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care "Jim Ballard is one of the most compassionate people I know, and in his new book Mind Like Water he shares some of his warmth and love with readers. If you want a feeling like snuggling into a warm coat on a blustery, wintery day, try opening this book to any page and reading. If you don't absorb some of the wisdom in Mind Like Water then you're just not paying attention." -Noel Burch, coauthor of Teacher Effectiveness Training