Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern


Book Description

Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (1913–1958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman—such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological sites—have saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.




Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern


Book Description

Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (1913–1958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman—such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological sites—have saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.




Cultivating Your Creative Life


Book Description

Cultivating Your Creative Life: Exercises, Activities, and Inspiration for Finding Balance, Beauty, and Success as an Artist is a multi-faceted book where creativity and wonder intermingle to show how to live a creative and balanced life while moving toward your goals. You’ll find ideas for keeping your creative well full, an illustrated guide to healing herbs and plants, basic yoga poses and breathing exercises, and tips for moving your artistic career forward. Alena Hennessy's illustration style combines nature, whimsey, delicacy, and a modern sensibility; vibrant pen and ink illustrations accompany relevant quotes ofinspiration, tips, and creative journal exercises. Cultivating Your Creative Life is not only an interactive creativity guide; it is a work of art, in itself—a beautiful, collectible volume—to save and to savor, or to give as a gift to the special creative person in your life.




Cultivating Spirituality


Book Description

Cultivating Spirituality is a seminal anthology of Shin Buddhist thought, one that reflects this tradition's encounter with modernity. Shin (or Jodō Shinshū) is a popular form of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan, but is only now becoming well known in the West. The lives of the four thinkers included in the book spanned the years 1863–1982, from the Meiji opening to the West to Japan's establishment as an industrialized democracy and world economic power. Kiyozawa Manshi, Soga Ryōjin, Kaneko Daiei, and Yasuda Rijin, all associated with Kyoto's Ōtani University, dealt with the spiritual concerns of a society undergoing great change. Their philosophical orientation known as "Seishinshugi" ("cultivating spirituality") provides a set of principles that prioritized personal, subjective experience as the basis for religious understanding. In addition to providing access to work generally unavailable in English, this volume also includes both a contextualizing introduction and introductions to each figure included.




Cultivating Sent Communities


Book Description

"Cultivating sent communities reimagines spiritual formation through the lens of mission, covering such topics as the role of Scripture, congregational discernment, and short-term missions and drawing on case studies from diverse contexts including Ethiopia, England, Leipzig, and San Francisco."--Back cover.




Cultivating Democracy


Book Description

An ethnographic study of Indian democracy that shows how agrarian life creates values of citizenship and active engagement that are essential for the cultivation of democracy. Cultivating Democracy provides a compelling ethnographic analysis of the relationship between formal political institutions and everyday citizenship in rural India. Banerjee draws on deep engagement with the people and social life in two West Bengal villages from 1998-2013, during election campaigns and in the times between, to show how the micro-politics of their day-to-day life builds active engagement with the macro-politics of state and nation. Her sensitive analysis focuses on several "events" in the life of the villages shows how India's agrarian rural society helps create practices and conceptual space for these citizens to be effective participants in India's great democratic exercises. Specifically, she shows how the villagers' creative practices around their kinship, farming and religion, while navigating encounters with local communist cadres, constitute a vital and continuing cultivation of those republican virtues of cooperation, civility, solidarity and vigilance which the visionary Ambedkar considered essential for the success of Indian democracy. At a time when so much of that constitutional vision is under threat, this book provides a crucial scholarly rebuttal to all, on Right or Left, who dismiss rural citizens' political capacities and democratic values. This book will appeal to anyone interested in India's political culture and future, its rural society, or the continuing relevance of political anthropology.




Living a Life of Harmony


Book Description

7 simple yet powerful guidelines provide a compass for navigating life harmoniously, cultivating a peaceful mind, and spreading kindness • Offers 7 guidelines for living a life of harmony and peace based on existing guidance from Buddhism, Yoga, and other great teachings, integrated and updated for the modern world • Explains how to implement the guidelines in daily life on a practical basis, supported by real-life examples and practices • Illustrates in-depth how and why each of these guidelines hold value and how they provide a set of tools to help us deal with life’s ups and downs more skillfully, mindfully, and compassionately In our very busy world it’s easy to get lost in the details and demands of everyday living. Fatigued and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, the myriad of choices our technologically advanced communication era offers, we lose sight of what life is all about. How do we find balance and harmony in this overloaded world? And how do we navigate life in tune with our soul as well as with modern society? As author Darren Cockburn explains, we are all part of one big universal process that encompasses and connects everything--every thought, emotion, action, nature, all there is. Over the centuries, religions and philosophies have provided direction on how to act ethically and in accordance with this process, yet in our modern world, these “rules” may seem outdated or too rigid. Integrating and updating existing guidance from Buddhism, Yoga, and other great teachings, the author offers 7 guidelines for living a life of harmony and balance: honor the body, bring awareness and acceptance into every moment, act with kindness, understand the truth and communicate it skillfully, do only what needs to be done, harmoniously obtain and retain only what you need, and apply the guidelines to your digital device usage. He illustrates how and why each of these guidelines hold value, revealing their interconnections, and explains how to implement them practically in daily life, sharing real-life examples as well as practices to support each guideline and deepen your existing spiritual practice. The author explores how the 7 easy-to-practice guidelines help us gain a deeper understanding of the universal process of life, as well as provide a set of tools to help us deal with life’s ups and downs more skillfully. They enable us to face life empowered and confident, peacefully observe and accept what life presents us with, cultivate compassion and kindness, as well as spread mindfulness to those around us. Practiced together, these guidelines provide a simple yet powerful compass to guide you to a peaceful mind and harmonious living, much needed in today’s world.




Cultivating Mindfulness to Raise Children Who Thrive


Book Description

Cultivating Mindfulness to Raise Children Who Thrive introduces an expanded view of human development and health, which begins before conception and moves through pregnancy, early childhood and adulthood. This book is a call for all prenatal and perinatal professionals and policy makers to appreciate indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing and integrate them with scientific evidence in the care of expectant parents and their babies. It explains how this could also tackle pressing social issues facing the modern world and favour social innovations through a revaluation of preconception, pregnancy, birth and childcare practices. Sansone presents the reader with scientific discoveries of epigenetics, interpersonal neuroscience, quantum physics, attachment, anthropology, prenatal and perinatal psychology and mindfulness, which interestingly resonate with the intuitions of primal wisdom. The book will be of interest to clinicians, policy makers, researchers, parents, and those interested in the prenatal and perinatal roots of human development and well-being.




Book Girl


Book Description

When you hear a riveting story, does it thrill your heart and stir your soul? Do you hunger for truth and goodness? Do you secretly relate to Belle’s delight in the library in Beauty and the Beast? If so, you may be on your way to being a book girl. Books were always Sarah Clarkson’s delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage. She’s convinced that books can do the same for you. Join Sarah in exploring the reading life as a gift and an adventure, one meant to enrich, broaden, and delight you in each season of your life as a woman. In Book Girl, you’ll discover: how reading can strengthen your spiritual life and deepen your faith, why a journey through classic literature might be just what you need (and where to begin), how stories form your sense of identity, how Sarah’s parents raised her to be a reader—and what you can do to cultivate a love of reading in the growing readers around you, and 20+ annotated book lists, including some old favorites and many new discoveries. Whether you’ve long considered yourself a reader or have dreams of becoming one, Book Girl will draw you into the life-giving journey of becoming a woman who reads and lives well.




Cultivating System Change


Book Description

Where should you start if you are faced with massive systemic challenges or want to cultivate a shift towards sustainability in global systems? Where are the leverage points for systemic change? This book provides examples of what organizations and companies like the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, WWF and Nike are doing, along with practical strategies and an overview of system change theory. Section one outlines systems thinking, especially how we can use a "living systems" perspective as a tool to understanding sustainability and change.Section two pulls out practical strategies for action from theoretical models and "must-read" literature. Section three illustrates how organisations are implementing these strategies – including examples from the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, Nike, Sustainable Food Lab, Finance Innovation Lab, Shell Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.Section four provides tips for you as a practitioner navigating this territory. Many of the ideas behind cultivating system change can be difficult to understand until they are put into practice. This "practitioner's companion" ends with questions that will prompt reflections and spur you to action. Keep it to hand as you change the system!