This Sacred Life, Transforming Our World Through Birth...


Book Description

A text guide covering conception, pregnancy and childbirth, for Parents, Birth workers and those interested in Transforming Our World through Birth....




Hello Sacred Life


Book Description

A delightful, inspiring, and empowering board book about connecting with nature and celebrating life from New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Kim Krans. Hello Sacred Life introduces little ones to the sun, moon, the five elements, and big-picture concepts that children will hold dear to their hearts forever. Equally likely to be spotted on a nursery bookshelf as styled on a grown-up coffee table, Hello Sacred Life is a book for all of us, visual poem in honor of life’s great mysteries.




Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering


Book Description

An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children. Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women's experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls "undisturbed birth" is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.




Unassisted Childbirth


Book Description

This book reveals how giving birth is an inherently safe, relatively painless process that is best performed without the assistance of doctors or midwives, and how confidence and a positive attitude reduces fear—and therefore the pain—of labor. According to Laura Kaplan Shanley, a renowned leader in the natural-birth movement, human birth is inherently safe and relatively painless—provided we refrain from physical or psychological interference. The problems often associated with birth can be traced to three main factors: poverty, unnecessary medical intervention, and fear. When these causes are eliminated, most women can give birth either alone or with the help of a partner, friends, or family. This second edition of Unassisted Childbirth leads with a history of childbirth and then describes how most deliveries occur today, detailing why these processes don't serve mothers or babies. The information in this unique book gives women yet another legitimate choice in childbirth that doesn't rely on doctors and technology, and allows parents, birth professionals, and general readers to reexamine their most basic ideas about birth and learn to think in new ways.




Embodying the Sacred


Book Description

Embodying the Sacred presents an innovative approach to both birth and Christian spirituality. Drawing from the actual physical processes of pregnancy and birth, Peg Conway relates them to Catholic-inspired practices in a wise and empowering way. Reflections, prayer, activities, ritual, and creative expression organized around the three trimesters of pregnancy invite readers to assemble a “spiritual birth bag,” and in so doing, to inhabit and celebrate their bodies during this miraculous time. With its focus on the inner journey, this approach provides an ideal complement to other forms of birth preparation. The book also suggests a postpartum ritual format for telling birth stories and concludes with a reflection on birth history in America.







Recipes for a Sacred Life


Book Description

Winner of 5 national awards, Recipes for a Sacred Life is now available in a new, expanded edition. "Recipes for a Sacred Life left us moved—and changed. Wise, poignant, funny, and inspiring."—Redbook ON A DARK WINTER NIGHT with little to do, Rivvy Neshama took a "Find Your Highest Purpose" quiz. And the funny thing was, she found it: to live a sacred life. Problem was, she didn't know how. But she set out to learn. And in the weeks and months that followed, she began to remember and encounter all the people and experiences featured in this book-from her father's jokes to her mother's prayers, from Billie in Harlem to a stranger in Salzburg, and from warm tortillas to the humble oatmeal. Each became a story, like a recipe passed down, beginning with her mother and her simple toast to life. NESHAMA'S TRUE TALES, a memoir of sorts, are filled with love, warmth, and timeless wisdom. They ground us, and they lift us up. They make us laugh, and they make us cry. And most of all, they connect us more deeply with the grace and meaning of our lives. "Exquisite storytelling. Written in the spirit of Elizabeth Gilbert or Anne Lamott, Neshama's stories (and a few miracles) are uplifting, witty, and wise." —Publishers Weekly "Rivvy's bite-sized stories will make you nod with deepest knowing. It's a magical companion."—HuffPost "Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a guide to happiness? Recipes for a Sacred Life is the closest thing I've found. Powerful. Inspiring. About adding love and joy to the everyday."—First for Women magazine




Birthing the Holy


Book Description

Do you long to feel more alive, to see the vibrancy in your daily life? Do you feel the seeds of a new calling tugging at you? Look to the Blessed Mother for help. In Birthing the Holy, Christine Valters Paintner--abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts--invites you to better know Mary and her heart through thirty-one of her titles, and, along the way, you'll nurture the new growth in your life. The Blessed Mother is known by many beautiful titles, some of which are familiar--Virgin, Queen of Peace, and Star of the Sea--and some we may not be aware of--Vessel of Grace, Greenest Branch, and Our Lady of Silence. Paintner offers a flexible format to reflect on Mary's titles through a thirty-one-day personal retreat, a series of novenas, or with visio divina exercises using striking images by printmaker Kreg Yingst. As you reflect on Mary in her role as Mother of Good Counsel, Woman Clothed with the Sun, Mystical Rose, Mother of Sorrows, Queen of the Angels, and other titles, Paintner invites you to hear what God calls you to develop in your life, help that dream or vision grow, and then nourish it in the world. Whether you're meeting Mary for the first time in these magnificent titles or revisiting her as a beloved companion, Birthing the Holy invites you to see the exploration of Mary and your life as a spiritual and creative act, one that can help deepen your faith even as it sparks new growth within you.




This Sacred Earth


Book Description

Updated with nearly forty new selections to reflect the tremendous growth and transformation of scholarly, theological, and activist religious environmentalism, the second edition of This Sacred Earth is an unparalleled resource for the study of religion's complex relationship to the environment.




Transforming Our World


Book Description

This book addresses the survival of humankind. Our world is the best it has ever been, but it is not sustainable. It is self-destructive; it is marked by war, which can destroy the world in a single day, the destruction of natural and human capital within 10 years, and technologies which could be both beneficial and destructive. We have no future if we continue living as we do currently, and even if we do nothing. This book highlights the kinds of changes which are required. Wars are not biologically necessary and are useless; the culture that established wars can eliminate them. Poverty, hunger and inequality destroy human capital. These destructions can be overcome by changing economic and political paradigms and our mindset. Empathy, freedom, curiosity and wisdom are required.