Sacred Visitations recounts one woman's wondrous spiritual experiences in the midst of creative work, family obligations, and everyday chaos (indcluding a couple close brushes with death). Interspersed throughout these affectingly written stories are contemplative tips about how to Outsmart Your Mind using 5 Steps to Sacred Awareness - easy steps readers of any tradition can use to unravel inner experiences and sacred insights, and enter the heart of spiritual life.

The Politics of Sacred Places is a study of the socio-political dimensions of sacred sites in Israel–Palestine, drawing on over 20 years of in-depth ethnographic research which introduces cutting-edge theories on secularization, struggles for recognition, and diversity issues. This book focuses on contemporary sacred sites and their socio-political meanings for minorities within a hegemonic and a secularizing state-system. It argues that sacred places provide a space that is less scrutinized by the state and where alternative visions of the socio-political may be produced. A plethora of sites and case studies are examined, including the rural shrine of Maqam abu al-Hijja in the lower Galilee, the Mosque of Hassan Bek in the heart of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and the most disputed sacred place in the region, the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. These sites are explored through mostly a phenomenological lens and in various contexts, from the individual body to the global. This book offers a critical-analytical study of the socio-political aspects of sacred sites in contemporary societies within the broader understanding of scale and the spatial turn in the study of religion.

Increasingly, counselors are practicing spiritual or complementary interventions. In balance, how counselors use such interventions is under closer examination by law. This effort to protect clients is embedded in ethical and legal principles, but rarely addressed in the mental health literature. This book will fill that gap by offering a clear understanding of the context of the law. Detailed case studies are given in each chapter as a centerpiece to the understanding, interpretation, and application of the laws. The author, with his unique qualifications in legal and spiritual areas, pays critical attention to the issues of culture throughout this resource that includes handy appendices of a legal glossary, abbreviations, literature review, and an exercise on how to find the law.

The ordinary episcopal visitation of parishes, treated in canons 396-398 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, is studied here from its origins to the present. The dissertation’s first chapter traces the historical development of this ancient canonical institute, particularly with a view to showing its usefulness for Church reform. The second examines the canons of the 1917 and 1983 codes and provides a detailed commentary on the latter. A final chapter studies the visitation of parishes in Canada. Three methods are used, corresponding to the three chapters. In the first chapter, a primarily historical review draws on Scripture, the Fathers, papal legislation, the decrees of provincial and ecumenical councils (particularly the Council of Trent), and other sources. The second chapter takes an exegetical approach, interpreting the 1983 canons on the visitation in light of the former law, the Second Vatican Council, and contemporary papal and curial documents. The visitation is related to the diocesan bishop’s power of governance. The third chapter presents the results of the author’s survey of Canadian bishops, carried out according to the methods of social science research. Without arguing that the visitation is a panacea for all the Church’s ills, the author concludes that it is a highly effective way for bishops to address some present difficulties and avoid future ones.