If you think that Jesus might have had something significant to say related to the well-being of the human race, this book is for you. If you think that Jesus' purpose was to get people into heaven after they died, this book is not for you. Actually, maybe it is, but you may not like it. Through individual and group encounters and thought-provoking questions, through poetry, prayers, icons, and meditation exercises, this companion for the warrior...

High in the Himalayas, the old mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. Built for the General's harem, laughter and music once floated out over the gorge. But now it sits abandoned; windswept and haunting. The General's son bestows the palace to the Sisters of Mary, and 'the House of Women', as it was once known, becomes the Convent of St Faith. Close to the Heavens, the nuns feel inspired, working fervently to establish their school and hospital....

What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule? It is to these questions that Agamben's new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstructs in detail the life of the monks with their obsessive...

Roman Catholic sisters first traveled to the American West as providers of social services, education, and medical assistance. In Across God's Frontiers, Anne M. Butler traces the ways in which sisters challenged and reconfigured contemporary ideas about women, work, religion, and the West; moreover, she demonstrates how religious life became a vehicle for increasing women's agency and power. Moving to the West introduced significant changes for these...

Sisters is the first major history of the pivotal role played by nuns in the building of American society. Nuns were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges. In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in...

Sybella locates her fellow assassin and novitiate of the convent of Saint Mortain, only to discover that Genevieve has made a lethal mistake, and there are far-reaching consequences for loved ones entanged in French court intrigues. Hoping to find an ally from the convent of Saint Mortain and Death's Vengeance on Earth, Sybella instead discovers Genevieve has also been misled and misused by the former abbess. They form an uneasy trust born of desperation...

Religious Bodies Politic examines the complex relationship between transnational religion and politics through the lens of one cosmopolitan community in Siberia: Buryats, who live in a semiautonomous republic within Russia with a large Buddhist population. Looking at religious transformation among Buryats across changing political economies, Anya Bernstein argues that under conditions of rapid social change-such as those that accompanied the Russian...

In the winter of 1282, as snow and ice ravage East Anglia, seven abbots are riding to meet a papal legate in Norfolk, each hoping to make a case for being raised to a bishopric at the next vacancy. One abbot grows so ill the party has detoured to Tyndal Priory. Despite the limited care Sister Anne can offer, he dies a horrible death. After another abbot becomes ill and dies, followed by another, Sister Anne struggles to determine what killed these...