“Calling in the Soul” (Hu Plig) is the chant the Hmong use to guide the soul of a newborn baby into its body on the third day after birth. Based on extensive original research conducted in the late 1980s in a village in northern Thailand, this ethnographic study examines Hmong cosmological beliefs about the cycle of life as expressed in practices surrounding birth, marriage, and death and considers the gender relationships evident in these practices. The Hmong (or Miao, as they are called in China, and Meo, in Thailand) have lived on the fringes of powerful Southeast Asian states for centuries. Their social framework is distinctly patrilineal, granting little direct power to women. Yet within the limits of that structure, Hmong women wield considerable influence in the spiritually critical realms of birth and death. Calling in the Soul will be of interest to sociocultural anthropologists, medical anthropologists, Southeast Asianists, and gender specialists. Replaces ISBN 9780295800424

There are hot-spots, sink-holes, and hell-holes all over the earth. They move around a bit. Baghdad in Iraq has been often a hot-spot, Kabul in Afghanistan is another. Then there's the sink-hole of Tehran in Iran, together with the recently war-torn Damascus in Syria. Don't blame the places, nor even the folks. New York in the USA, London in the UK, and Brussels in the EU are no different for being sometimes politically-sinking hot-spots or terrorist-targeted hell-holes. In terms of prophetic history, a welter of the world's biggest cities are everyday battlegrounds from which governmental academics compartmentalise their own specialist solutions. Most of these solutions, whether military or civic, fall so far short of the cosmic solution as to escalate the existing state of world disorder. Sure enough, without a barebones history of hell there's no point to fixing up hell-holes. Without the briefest history of heaven, it's also pointless to shore-up sink-holes. And as for the world's hot-spots, you have to look as deep into the souls of the good-guys as you do into the souls of the bad-guys. But you can't just walk off from compartmentalising a problem and expect it to sort itself out. For a workable solution you've got to bring back all the component parts together again that you first took apart and make them work together. That's exactly why this Soul-Catcher's Calling stops at nothing short of dealing with all things both under the sun and beyond the sun. Soul-catching is a military operation, at first under command, and then undertaken entirely by personal commitment. All such tours of duty overseas will be carefully monitored and guided by the most experienced of guardian angels. However perilous the front-line travel, none who seriously commit themselves to this soul-catching operation shall get left behind.

"The Faint Call of the Soul" is a collection of poems taking our attention to the inner calling. The poems celebrate the language of the Soul, expressing gratitude to the Universe for showering infinite love on us. We are usually focused on the outer world and search for happiness there. Once our focus shifts from the outer world to the Self within, life changes. The Soul blossoms new possibilities. The changed equations with oneself creates paradigm shifts making life peaceful and joyous.

The Call of the Soul presents a new perspective on the quest to find your authentic self. When that quest is successful, you know who you truly are and what your life’s purpose is. This book provides a new way to approach the journey, with a map and effective tools to ease the struggle and assure success. The Call of the Soul shows you how renegotiate the relationship between the ego and the soul so you can step fully into your purpose. Step by step, you will discover inner passion, purpose, peace, prosperity, and love—all by learning how to hear the call of your soul. With a down-to-earth writing style combined with true-life examples, this book offers accessible wisdom to achieve the self-knowledge you are seeking. The Call of the Soul will guide you to: Compassion and appreciation for all of you, including the part that resists change A quick way to release emotions and beliefs that stop you from expressing your true self and purpose A new feeling of ease and confidence in yourself and your purpose Your authentic self

Don't miss WITH ALL MY SOUL FEARLESS NIEDERWALD and a brand-new novella, LAST REQUEST.

This book tells the story of an American traveler who embarked on a motorcycle journey from New Delhi to Nepal in 2001 with little prior knowledge or experience of Indian highways. Despite encountering numerous challenges and two accidents on the GT road in the first day of his journey, he miraculously escaped without injuries. He adapted his travel methods, utilizing both trains and his motorcycle, but his journey to Kathmandu was thwarted by a strike organized by Maoist insurgents. Throughout his journey, the traveler often questioned the wisdom of his decision, yet he held unwavering faith in the Universe, believing that it had led him to India for a purpose. He found solace and spiritual fulfillment during his visit to the Kumbh Mela, where he not only experienced the vibrant festival but also took a holy bath, deepening his connection to the rich cultural and spiritual tapestry of India.

Spirituality has consistently been present in the political and cultural counternarratives of Chicanx literature. Calling the Soul Back focuses on the embodied aspects of a spirituality integrating body, mind, and soul. Centering the relationship between embodiment and literary narrative, Christina Garcia Lopez shows narrative as healing work through which writers and readers ritually call back the soul—one’s unique immaterial essence—into union with the body, counteracting the wounding fragmentation that emerged out of colonization and imperialism. These readings feature both underanalyzed and more popular works by pivotal writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Rudolfo Anaya, in addition to works by less commonly acknowledged authors. Calling the Soul Back explores the spiritual and ancestral knowledge offered in narratives of bodies in trauma, bodies engaged in ritual, grieving bodies, bodies immersed in and becoming part of nature, and dreaming bodies. Reading across narrative nonfiction, performative monologue, short fiction, fables, illustrated children’s books, and a novel, Garcia Lopez asks how these narratives draw on the embodied intersections of ways of knowing and being to shift readers’ consciousness regarding relationships to space, time, and natural environments. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Calling the Soul Back draws on literary and Chicanx studies scholars as well as those in religious studies, feminist studies, sociology, environmental studies, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, to reveal narrative’s healing potential to bring the soul into balance with the body and mind.

There are thousands of great women of God who were pioneers of the faith and the gospel. Though many of their names are lost to us forever, the record of their exploits for the sake of the Kingdom are engraved in the eternal and living chronicles of heaven. They represent the hues and colors of God ́s rainbow and are present in the history of every denomination, faith and religion. Women have dug out churches, cleaned them, closed them and built them. They were visionaries, ground-breakers, pathfinders, the bridges that brought us over, trend-setters, armor-bearers, leaders, agents for change and disciples. They cooked, cried, sang, marched, testified, organized, did the holy dance, counseled, and prayed while everybody else slept. They carried the "work" on their bare knuckles, tear drops, hips, lips and hearts. In the pages of this delightful book filled with powerful scriptural revelation, candor, insight and instruction,Elaine Rose Penn delivers a challenge to women called to the gospel ministry to be true to their femininity, and adhere to a high standard of excellence and accountability in the conduct of their service to Christ.