The Uncommon Touch

Long ago – before there were doctors, pharmacists, and hospitals – religion and medicine were one, and physical and spiritual ailments were treated alike. Most world religions practised healing, including the early Christian Church, which followed Jesus Christ’s examples of miraculous healings of the lame and the blind. But, to its cost, the modern Church has largely forgotten its healing role, says Tom Harpur in The Uncommon Touch, a powerful and persuasive investigation of spiritual healing. Today in the West, medical science and bogus faith-healings have made the idea of spiritual healing almost laughable. Yet the ancient practice of the laying-on of hands is not only still performed, it is now gaining credibility, even among physicians and other sceptics, most notably in Britain. In The Uncommon Touch, Harpur investigates the religious roots of spiritual healing and looks at the remarkable work and ideas of modern healers. He also describes the many scientific studies that demonstrate clearly the healing and nurturing power of this astonishing phenomenon and verify that something more than the power of suggestion is at work. These include experiments showing increased growth in yeasts that have received the laying-on of hands and documentation of the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch, a technique used by more than 30,000 nurses in North America. Using the spirit to help heal the body’s ills is an old idea – one whose time has come again.

The author of For Christ's Sake challenges traditional medicine and Western religion, presenting scientific evidence to support spiritual healing methods ranging from Therapeutic Touch to "laughter" therapy to Chinese Qigong.

"If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14 God invites His people to pray and promises healing and forgiveness in response to those prayers. But how many Christians pray as the Bible teaches? This practical guide delves into the discipline of praying, seeking to help you understand the privilege, power, and purpose that can be derived from prayer. In The Uncommon Book of Prayer, Reverend Larry W. Ellis explores Jesus's model of prayer and why it must become our primary focus. Based on his belief that the ministry of prayer is no longer common among God's people, Reverend Ellis clearly explains how prayer has great power to change circumstances. Believers can improve their personal lives, change the condition of their communities, improve the economies of their nations, and ultimately bring hope to the world-all through prayer. Each chapter includes questions for reflection and suggests ways to add discipline to prayer life. Making prayer a daily practice will ultimately bring you into a more intimate relationship with God.

This book The Uncommon Ways God Speaks is birthed out of the desire and experience of hearing God. There are many ways God speaks that people are not familiar with like songs, colors, thoughts, impression, feelings, etc. The more ways you know of how God speaks, the easier for the person to hear God's voice. This book brings practical explanations and exercises on ways God speaks that are not mainstream which will help quicken hearing God's voice. FOR ANY SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT, CONTACT [email protected]

This book puts a finger on the nerve of culture by delving into the social life of touch, our most elusive yet most vital sense. From the tortures of the Inquisition to the corporeal comforts of modernity, and from the tactile therapies of Asian medicine to the virtual tactility of cyberspace, The Book of Touch offers excursions into a sensory territory both foreign and familiar. How are masculine and feminine identities shaped by touch? What are the tactile experiences of the blind, or the autistic? How is touch developed differently across cultures? What are the boundaries of pain and pleasure? Is there a politics of touch? Bringing together classic writings and new work, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the body, the senses and the experiential world.

The series Tasks for Vegetation Science is devoted to a variety of research aspects in vegetation science, pure as wellas applied. Of the applied problems one of the most pressing is to achieve better knowledge and improvement of the pasture vegetation in tropical and subtropical regions. As series editor I was impressed by the sheer volume of useful scientific information concerning pasture plants from East Africa collected during many years by Dr. Boonman and compiled in one manuscript. Dr. Boonman first came to East Africa in 1963 on an overland journey along the river Nile which took him from Alexandria in Egypt to Lake Victoria in Uganda and Kenya and back again. After a brief spell as a cotton agronomist in the Sudan Gezira he joined the grassland research team at Kitale, Kenya in 1966. Improvement ofseed yield oftropical grasses was his principal interest which finally led him into the fieldof breeding grasses. Well-known varieties from his work include Boma & Elmba Rhodesgrass as wellas Clone 13Elephantgrass. In 1979he was recalled to The Netherlands to head a cooperative seedcompany involved in the breeding of grasses and cereals. The author has focused this study on one region, Eastern Africa.Global application of theories runs into conflicts too easily with local types of farming, if not with bare economics. Very few books can be found that describe existing practices and seek local answers by digging deep in the stacks of old, local reports.