Sacred Ground

Argues that the increased prejudice against Muslims in post-9/11 America damages the country's historically strong core of pluralism, and describes how interfaith work can help restore the pluralistic bond among all Americans.

Argues that the increased prejudice against Muslims in post-9/11 America damages the country's historically strong core of pluralism, and describes how interfaith work can help restore the pluralistic bond among all Americans.

Describes two journeys: a journey outward to specific pilgrimage places in Eastern Tibet and a journey inward, to the sacred world of tantra, accessible through contemplation and meditation.

On Sacred Ground explores the literature of the Northwest, the area that extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the Siskiyou Mountains. The Northwest exhibits astonishing geographical diversity and yet the entire bioregion shares a similarity of climate, flora, and fauna. For Nicholas O�Connell, the effects of nature on everyday Northwest life carry over to the region's literature. Although Northwest writers address a number of subjects, the relationship between people and place proves the dominant one, and that has been true since the first tribes settled the region and began telling stories about it, thousands of years ago. Indeed, it is the common thread linking Chief Seattle to Theodore Roethke, Narscissa Whitman to Ursula K. Le Guin, Joaquin Miller to Ivan Doig, Marilynne Robinson to Jack London, Betty MacDonald to Gary Snyder. Tracing the history of Pacific Northwest literary works--from Native American myths to the accounts of explorers and settlers, the effusions of the romantics, the sharply etched stories of the realists, the mystic visions of Northwest poets, and the contemporary explosion of Northwest poetry and prose--O�Connell shows how the most important contribution of Northwest writers to American literature is their articulation of a more spiritual human relationship with landscape. Pacific Northwest writers and storytellers see the Northwest not just as a source of material wealth but as a spiritual homeland, a place to lead a rich and fulfilling life within the whole context of creation. And just as the relationship between people and place serves as the unifying feature of Northwest literature, so also does literature itself possess a perhaps unique ability to transform a landscape into a sacred place.

In this fascinating collection, Sacred Ground moves outward from the intimate to the broad, both in defining the connections that root us and in describing the losses that have come with our increasing mobility and disconnection. The stories and essays here reveal both the pleasures and the difficulties that come with our freedom. But Bonner's anthology also demonstrates that choices remain for us to maintain our focus on those connections of the heart that make and sustain a home in all its manifestations.

In these two novellas, Kimura Yūsuke explores human and animal life in northern Japan after the natural and nuclear disasters of March 11, 2011. Kimura inscribes the “Triple Disaster” into a rich regional tradition of storytelling, incorporating far-flung voices and experiences to testify to life and the desire to represent it in the aftermath of calamity. ​ In Sacred Cesium Ground, a woman from Tokyo travels to volunteer at a cattle farm known as the “Fortress of Hope,” tending irradiated animals abandoned after the reactor meltdown. The farm closely resembles an actual ranch that has been widely covered in Japan, and the story’s portrayal of those who stubbornly care for animals in spite of the danger speaks to the sense of futility and meaningfulness in the wake of traumatic events. Isa’s Deluge depicts a family of fishermen whose crotchety patriarch draws on old tales of the floods that have plagued the region to fashion himself as the father of the tsunami. Together, the novellas present often-unheard voices of one of Japan’s peripheral regions and their anger toward the government and Tokyo for mishandling and forgetting their part of the country. Kimura’s command of dialect and conversational language is masterfully translated by Doug Slaymaker. Postapocalyptically surreal yet teeming with life, Kimura’s stories will be a revelation for readers looking for a new perspective on the disaster’s consequences for Japan and on the interrelated meanings of human and animal lives and deaths.

The longer the author worked at St. Joseph's Indian School, the more he felt that he could do something in partnership with the Lakota children and staff to remedy the way in which the church had deprived the Lakota in the past of their own culture. As he was walking along and thinking about the Last Supper at which Jesus was telling the apostles: "Do this in memory of me." He was telling them to remember what He was going to suffer on behalf of all people throughout history and to remember this in all times and places--all cultures. Just then something made him look up to the sky and above him circling around were twelve eagles. Standing in amazement, and knowing that he must not hesitate because of fear or criticism to welcome the Lakota culture into the religious instructions and worship services at the school. The "Sacred Ground" is a sensitive collation of Lakota culture and spirituality with that of the Holy Bible. Dignity and meaning is given to the so often misunderstood customs and practices of the Indian people. The book explains how the religious beliefs of the Sioux and Christian faith go hand in hand with one another.

Sacred Ground: Path to Recovery reveals the secrets of self-healing and managing chronic pain. Grand Master Yau explains that emotional and physical rejuvenation takes only minutes a day. The practices cultivate a calm mind and nervous system and develop internal strength, vitality, and grounded ease. William C. Gough, co-founder of The Foundation of Mind Being Research says it this way: "Grand Master Greg Yau has developed a methodology for promoting health and body strength based upon the ancient techniques that give foundation to Shaolin Gong Fu. It uses the physical body as the foundation for connecting to the Universal Energy of the Absolute. This process for strengthening the body can provide a pathway for a person to reach enlightenment and represents the spiritual aspects of these ancient practices. The process involves working with not only the anatomy of the physical body, but with one's mind and energy body - i.e. the subtle energy flows of the acupuncture and meridian systems."

Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground is an ethnographic account of the impacts of climate change in Shishmaref, Alaska. In this small Iupiaq community, flooding and erosion are forcing community members to consider relocation as the only possible solution for long-term safety. However, a tangled web of policy obstacles, lack of funding, and organizational challenges leaves the community without a clear way forward, creating serious questions of how to maintain cultural identity under the new climate regime. Elizabeth Marino analyzes this unique and grounded example of a warming world as a confluence of political injustice, histories of colonialism, global climate change, and contemporary development decisions. The book merges theoretical insights from disaster studies, political analysis, and passages from field notes into an eminently readable text for a wide audience. This is an ethnography of climate change; a glimpse into the lived experiences of a global phenomenon.

Offers a multidisciplinary examination of Star Trek, religion, and American culture.

Claiming Sacred Ground Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona Adrian J. Ivakhiv A study of people and politics at two New Age spiritual sites. In this richly textured account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places into an expanding global cultural economy. Ivakhiv sees these contested and "heterotopic" landscapes as the nexus of a complex web of interestes and longings: from millennial anxieties and nostalgic re-imaginings of history and prehistory; to real-estate power grabs; contending religious visions; and the free play of ideas from science, pseudo-science, and popular culture. Looming over all this is the nonhuman life of these landscapes, an"otherness" that alternately reveals and conceals itself behind a pagenant of beliefs, images, and place-myths. A significant contribution to scholarship on alternative spirituality, sacred space, and the politics of natural landscapes, Claiming Sacred Ground will interest scholars and students of environmental and cultural studies, and the sociology of religious movements and pilgrimage. Non-specialist readers will be stimulated by the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of extraordinary natural landscapes. Adrian Ivakhiv teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, and is President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada. April 2001 384 pages, 24 b&w photos, 2 figs., 9 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append. cloth 0-253-33899-9 $37.40 s / £28.50 Contents I DEPARTURES 1 Power and Desire in Earth's Tangled Web 2 Reimagining Earth 3 Orchestrating Sacred Space II Glastonbury 4 Stage, Props, and Players of Avalon 5 Many Glastonburys: Place-Myths and Contested Spaces III SEDONA 6 Red Rocks to Real Estate 7 New Agers, Vortexes, and the Sacred Landscape IV ARRIVALS 8 Practices of Place: Nature and Heterotopia Beyond the New Age

From the New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey comes contemporary fantasy Sacred Ground—now back in print! Jennifer Talldeer is Osage and Cherokee, granddaughter of a powerful Medicine Man. She walks a difficult path: contrary to tribal custom, she is learning a warrior's magics. A freelance private investigator, Jennifer tracks down stolen Native American artifacts. The construction of a new shopping mall uncovers fragments of human bone, revealing possible desecration of an ancient burial ground. Meanwhile, the sabotage of construction equipment at the site implicates many activists—particularly Jennifer's old flame, who is more attractive and dangerous than ever. Worst of all, the grave of Jennifer's legendary Medicine Man ancestor has been destroyed, his tools of power scattered, and a great evil freed to walk the land. Jennifer must make peace with the many factions and solve the mystery of her ancestor's grave before the world falls into oblivion. "Skillfully weaving a tale of fantasy, mystery, and Native American folklore, Lackey has written a unique novel sure to appeal to YAs."--School Library Journal At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The story of the Lakota Sioux's loss of their spiritual homelands and their remarkable legal battle to regain it The Lakota Indians counted among their number some of the most famous Native Americans, including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Their homeland was in the magnificent Black Hills in South Dakota, where they found plentiful game and held religious ceremonies at charged locations like Devil's Tower. Bullied by settlers and the U. S. Army, they refused to relinquish the land without a fight, most famously bringing down Custer at Little Bighorn. In 1873, though, on the brink of starvation, the Lakotas surrendered the Hills. But the story does not end there. Over the next hundred years, the Lakotas waged a remarkable campaign to recover the Black Hills, this time using the weapons of the law. In The Lakotas and the Black Hills, the latest addition to the Penguin Library of American Indian History, Jeffrey Ostler moves with ease from battlefields to reservations to the Supreme Court, capturing the enduring spiritual strength that bore the Lakotas through the worst times and kept alive the dream of reclaiming their cherished homeland.

As far as the party life goes, Alex has lived it. Basking in the day-to-day bachelor/playboy life at his father’s expense while in Athens, Alex Pompados awakens to the cold fact that he must return to California to run his inherited Rosa’s Vineyard after his father’s death. With the consultation of his father’s trusted partner, they devise an idea of becoming “one with the vine.” An ancient Indian burial ground reserved for warriors of the past, the notion that plots would be offered to the wealthy unclean clearly violated any previous treaty. As the vine progresses and demand for the nectar increases, the rage of the holy ones below translates into the very lives of those who indulge. With his ever-increasing nightmares, Alex realizes that it is only a matter of time until the warriors will have their revenge. But will those intense warnings be enough to wean Alex from his greed and put a stop to the horrors that await?

Timuel Black is an acclaimed historian, activist, and storyteller. Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black chronicles the life and times of this Chicago legend. Sacred Ground opens in 1919, during the summer of the Chicago race riot, when infant Black and his family arrive in Chicago from Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the first Great Migration. He recounts in vivid detail his childhood and education in the Black Metropolis of Bronzeville and South Side neighborhoods that make up his "sacred ground." Revealing a priceless trove of experiences, memories, ideas, and opinions, Black describes how it felt to belong to this place, even when stationed in Europe during World War II. He relates how African American soldiers experienced challenges and conflicts during the war, illuminating how these struggles foreshadowed the civil rights movement. A labor organizer, educator, and activist, Black captures fascinating anecdotes and vignettes of meeting with famous figures of the times, such as Duke Ellington and Martin Luther King Jr., but also with unheralded people whose lives convey lessons about striving, uplift, and personal integrity. Rounding out this memoir, Black reflects on the legacy of his friend and mentee, Barack Obama, as well as on his public works and enduring relationships with students, community workers, and some very influential figures in Chicago and the world.

Parallels and contrasts values from world religions and those proposed by the environmental perspective of deep ecology.

Examines how different groups of Americans have competed to control, define, and own cherished national stories relating to events at four battlefields

Makima Gray has prayed for guidance in building her town's new medical clinic, and she's sure that Gabriel Bell's property is the perfect location. Gabe insists he's not at liberty to sell, but Makima won't give up…nor can she deny that she's flattered by Gabe's attentions. But past hurts and present complications lead to an error in judgment that may drive Gabe away forever. Gabriel Bell was astonished to inherit his great-grandfather's land, along with clues to a mysterious treasure. But every second he spends with beautiful, determined Makima convinces him that winning her trust—and her heart—is the most important quest of all.

In this compelling look at second-generation Indian Americans, Khyati Y. Joshi draws on case studies and interviews with forty-one second-generation Indian Americans, analyzing their experiences involving religion, race, and ethnicity from elementary school to adulthood. As she maps the crossroads they encounter as they navigate between their homes and the wider American milieu, Joshi shows how their identities have developed differently from their parents' and their non-Indian peers' and how religion often exerted a dramatic effect. The experiences of Joshi's research participants reveal how race and religion interact, intersect, and affect each other in a society where Christianity and whiteness are the norm. Joshi shows how religion is racialized for Indian Americans and offers important insights in the wake of 9/11 and the backlash against Americans who look Middle Eastern and South Asian. Through her candid insights into the internal conflicts contemporary Indian Americans face and the religious and racial discrimination they encounter, Joshi provides a timely window into the ways that race, religion, and ethnicity interact in day-to-day life.