The Lord's Prayer
An Esoteric Study

Four Lectures by Rudolf Steiner

Introduction by Judith von Halle

Softbound

$16.00

The Lord’s Prayer is at the very heart of Christianity. Over the past two millennia, it has been recited many millions of times by millions of people around the world. Here, Steiner affirms the power of the prayer given by Jesus Christ, encouraging us to understand its most profound meanings. Such understanding, he tells us, has become necessary for humanity’s continued development.

In these four lectures, Rudolf Steiner penetrates the esoteric significance of the Lord’s Prayer by relating the seven petitions in the prayer to the seven spiritual and physical human bodies. He also discusses the difference between prayer and meditation and shows how real prayer is truly selfless.

This volume features an introduction by Judith von Halle, whose work is valued for her experiential knowledge of the Lord’s Prayer and the events of Christ’s life.

The Healing Power of Prayer

Hans-Werner Schroeder

Softbound

$11.95

My experience of reading The Healing Power of Prayer is that it is, in itself, a taste of the grace of wholeness that awaits us if we but ask. Schroeder's little book is so awake with a warm wisdom that it becomes a portal into the world of Love, into the universe of Hope, and shows us how to walk there upon the foundation of Faith.

None of which is as easy to do as it is to percieve as possibility. Schroeder so gently but clearly makes plain the reason so few of us experience the healing that can come through prayer: we don't feel ourselves worthy to ask, we don't feel worthy to stand alongside Love. And yet, because he allows Love to answer, through his book, and with Schroeder as companion and guide, allowing blessing to be given us becomes a gift in the face of which we can bow our heads.

May this little book touch many hearts.

Sanctuaries of Childhood
Nurturing a Child's Spiritual Life

Shea Darian

Softbound

$16.95

St. Paul enjoined his communities to "pray unceasingly". I have come to conclude that he didn't mean to train ourselves to repeat prayers 24/7 -- rather, I believe he meant to turn everything we do into a prayer, into a way to make manifest Love on the earth, into a way to connect ourselves to that which is Divine while remaining connected to that which is of the Earth, into a gift from Heaven to Earth and Earth to Heaven.

Shea Darian's Sanctuaries of Childhood shows us how to do just that - create a life for our children and ourselves that honors the spirit as it heals the soul and nourishes the body. More, she has done it deeply and truly, but has done it in a way that will unite parents rather than divide them, and can be practiced by families of all faiths, including mixed-faith families.

This is the best, most open, most beautiful and most healing approach to this crying need of our society which I have seen. May it find its way into every heart and home who seeks what it offers.

We live in a society that makes it ever more difficult for children to find access to these sanctuaries on a daily basis. More consistently, entrance to such sacred spaces is being barred by the obstacles of busy schedules, our overuse of television and electronic media, and a lack of understanding for a child's genuine spiritual needs. Parents and caregivers can help to unbolt the doors of these sanctuaries, and make it possible for children to experience divine comfort and inspiration

As we make room in our lives for children to share with us the sacred qualities of childhood, no doubt young and old will find that within the sanctuaries of childhood, we serve one another as rabbis, ministers, and spiritual teachers. So let us open wide the doors. Let us remember what it is to be a child . . .

- the author, from the book.

Give Us This Day
The Story of Prayer

Rufus Goodwin

Introduced by Robert Sardello

$19.95

Gandhi called prayer "the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening." Somehow, we seem to know that this is true and yet, an uncertainty often lingers - what is prayer? Does it have to be done a certain way? And, more to the point, how can I pray? Give Us This Day explores these questions, looking at numerous traditions not in comparison, but as a means of getting at the essential core of prayer - the techniques, attitude, and inner workings. Godwin's exploration is deep, penetrating and highly practical, offering greater access to renewal, imagination, inspiration, and intuition - prayer's anchor to meaning in daily life. The seeds of this book are the sort that can become flowers throughout one's life. Highly recommended.

Prayers for Parents and Children

Rudolf Steiner

$14.95

Here is a lovely collection of verses and prayers by Rudolf Steiner for parents to say for their children and for children of different ages to say for themselves. There are verses for all occasions as well as prayers for morning and evening and graces to be spoken at the table. The context for the prayers is provided by Rudolf Steiner's lecture at the end of the book, which gives an insight into the larger cosmic relationships in which the individual is involved before birth, during life, and after death. A true classic.

Meditative Prayers for Today

Adam Bittleston

Hardbound
$8.95

This little book has found its way onto more night stands than any other of its kind. Whether you use them as a starting point for your meditations or as earnest petitions for guidance, these prayers have the remarkable quality of unveiling their deeper meaning in the very act of using them. The cycle of prayer throughout the year is particularly useful for coming to an understanding of the inner reality of seasonal change. This is a small treasure of inexhaustible value.

In the Light of a Child
A Journey Through the 52 Weeks of the Year in Both Hemispheres
For Children and the Child in Each Human Being

Michael Hedley Burton

$14.95

Michael Burton has created something very special for our children (and for us, as well). Taking Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul as his inspiration, he has crafted 52 verses to carry children throughout the year. Each verse touches on the feeling qualities of its particular place within the seasons of our Earth and in clear and loving language helps anyone forge a firmer connection to the natural world. At the same time, these verses also reflect the various qualities of Divine Love, as it manifests within each season. This uniting of heaven and earth within the seasonal round is poignantly beautiful - and very highly recommend for the child in all of us.

Contemplative Crochet
A Hands-On Guide for Interlocking Faith & Craft

Cindy Crandall-Frazier

Softbound, black & white photos

$16.99

One of the most important books ever written on evolving through handwork, the connection of the heart and our hands. Crocheting and the patterns are just the gravy on top.

- Pardis Amirshahi, editor, Living Crafts magazine

What can you learn about yourself though your crocheting? What deeper realizations lie behind the loops and patterns that you create? How can this simple activity help you make your way down a spiritual path?

Delve into these questions and more in this imaginative book that can become your spiritual friend, teacher and sanctuary. Follow the crochet journeys of the author and other crocheters to discover how they have used their crocheting to explore and strengthen their spiritual selves, and how you can do the same.

In this joyful and engaging look at a traditional craft, you will find ways to:

• find a sense of fullness and gratitude
• have more within a structure of less
• combine the spiritual practices of meditation and prayer
• create tools for intensifying spiritual practice
• find your spiritual path with crochet
• connect with community through crochet
• make crochet uniquely yours
• and much more

Kabbalah of Prayer
Sacred Sounds and the Soul's Journey

Shulamit Elson

Softbound

$20.00

In this remarkable, groundbreaking book, Shulamit Elson writes with eloquence and authority about our soul’s journey, our place in the universe, and our relationship to God through prayer. In beautiful and simple words, she shares the ancient teachings and the sacred sounds of the Kabbalah in ways capable of reconnecting us with the Eternal and changing our lives forever.

We learn of her journey from the closed world of an Orthodox Jewish family, on a voyage of discovery that took her into a secular life of poetry and travel throughout Europe. Then, faced with personal difficulties and waking visions, she began a path of meditation. Gifts of healing and prophecy followed. Eventually she met her Maggid, the traditional Kabbalistic “answering angel,” with whose help she developed a series of meditative “Sound Prayers” using sacred sounds made with the voice.

Elson explains the theological, cosmological, and esoteric foundations upon which “Sound Prayer” is based. We are introduced to the ancient wisdom of the Kabbalah, the “Tree of Life,” and the structure of the soul in its relationship with God. We learn the true nature of prayer, how it relates to Tikkun Olam (“Repair of the World”), and how “Sound Prayer” relates to different angelic levels of being and truth.

This is a practical book that gives individual exercises as well as offering help on meeting specific challenges, including spiritual struggles, feelings of meaninglessness, and harsh self-judgment, as well as illness, fear, and anxiety.

The Seeker's Guide to the Rosary

Liz Kelly

$11.95

I was not raised Catholic nor am I Catholic now. However, I have always been respectfully curious about the Rosary, in much the same way that I have sought to learn more about other prayer forms throughout the world. Like many others, I began my research (some 30 or so years ago . . .) by looking at religions that were very different from the Protestant Christianity I learned as a child. Primarily, I looked to the East and spent many years uniting within myself those Buddhist, Hindu and other ways of seeing and speaking and listening to God with the ways of my own culture. I learned so much that I have remained grateful for even as my path brought me back around to my own culture's religious foundations.

It's too long a story to relate how I happened to focus my attention, and then my heart, on the Rosary. What I will tell you is that after all these years of study, meditation, and prayer, what I have found in the Rosary is the most invitingly, beautifully complex and deep prayer/meditation of any that I have encountered in previous seeking. My original (many years ago) impression of the Rosary was that it was a beaded prayer that simply involved many repetitions of specific prayers in a rhythmic order. What I have discovered is that this aspect of the Rosary barely scratches the surface of the gifts it holds. As one repeats the prayers, there are 15 mysteries of the Life of Christ, seen from Mary's point of view, that are remembered, visualized, relived. Standing with Mary on a ground of repeated prayer, watching as her son - now your son, for ultimately you join with her - lives through the joys, sorrows and glories of his life - can open the heart to an experience that there is no separation between sacred and profane, that heaven and earth have always been one, and that faith, hope and love are part of the air we breath regardless of what name we call God.

The Seeker's Guide to the Rosary is the best book I've found that presents the Rosary in this way. It is not written for Catholics only, but speaks to the heart of anyone wishing to explore this beautiful prayer/meditation.

*An excellent overview of using the Rosary is the article "Telling the Rosary" by Christopher Bamford, published in the Garden issue of Parabola (March 2001).

Women in Chant - Recordare
Remembering the Mysteries in the Life of Jesus, Son of Mary

The Choir of Benedictine Nuns at the Abbey of Regina Laudis

Meditations: Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B.

CD - 65 minutes

Includes a 53 page illustrated booklet with an outstanding discussion of the Rosary and chant, the history of the abbey and its impulse, and full text and translation of the sung text and meditations

$18.98

Recordare - "to remember." Here the Choir of Benedictine Nuns joins Mary, Mother of Jesus, in "pondering all things in her heart." These crystalline chants merge two traditions - the Gregorian tradition of the chant itself and that of the meditated Rosary, the beaded prayer that calls the petitioner to stand with Mary as she experiences the mysteries of her Son's life: The Joyful Mysteries from annunciation to finding her twelve-year-old son in the temple; the Sorrowful Mysteries, beginning with the Agony in the Garden and ending with the Crucifixion; and the Glorious Mysteries proceeding from the Resurrection through to Mary's Enthronement in Heaven.

These chants are not performances, but are the prayers themselves, and this infuses the music and the meditations with a life and depth that moves the heart. The multi-layered, living depth of the Rosary prayer/meditation is given yet another dimension by this beautiful choir. This is music that has the power to heal and move us forward.

Hamdulillah (Hallelujah!)
Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, volume 2

Various Artists

2 CDs - 145 minutes

$21.98

The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music was established in 1994 by the Association Fes Saiss, a nongovernmental organization and "peace messenger" dedicated to artistic preservation, international cooperation, and other humanitarian causes. A symbol of these efforts, the Fes Festival represents a common ground for people of good faith from diverse cultures and traditions. The Festival was born in the spirit of respectful tribute with an underlying inspiration to release the ancient spiritual wisdom so painfully needed in today's world. By weaving a spell of many traditions and religions that communicate - beyond words - through sacred music and art, the festival strives to make this wisdom tangible, broadcasting to the world the message of universality that Fes itself personifies.

In this second wondrous volume, you will hear:

• Arab-Andalusian Music of the Gharnati Tradition
• Music from Morocco's Rif Mountains
• Spiritual Music of Hindustan
• Music and Songs from Medieval Andalusia
• Spiritual Union in Song (by the Children of Abraham - a choir of Jewish, Muslim and Christian Children)
• Sufi Chants and Music
• Jewish Sephardic Songs
• The Jewish Tradition of Moroccan Piyyout
• Malhoun Verses of Fes
• Sufi Songs of Central Asia
• Iraqi Mystical Texts and Poetry
• Medieval Muslim and Moorish Songs
• Javanese Gamelan Music
• Spiritual Songs from Iran
• The Whirling Dervishes from Konya

I feel certain that you will find, as I did, that gathering of musicians and Lovers of God goes straight to the heart of what it means to be human. If it is possible to break open the heart with joy, these singers, musicians and dancers do just that.

Under the Moroccan Sky
Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, volume 3

Various Artists

1 CD - 72 minutes

$16.98

Joel Davis of Sounds True offers a bit more insight into the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music and to the city which gives it a home:

This indescribably vibrant city, the spiritual heart of North Africa, has, through the centuries, served as the home to a diverse array of traditions and cultures, and has seamlessly integrated all of these influences into the rich fabric of daily life. That alone makes it a suitable site for a festival welcoming artists and attendees from around the world. In Fes, there is no separating the sacred from the profane. From the stirring prayer call issued five times daily to a waiter's whispered "B'ismillah" (in the name of God) when he serves your mint tea, one is never far removed from the touch of the divine.

In any other city, this would be just another festival. But in Fes, the event and the city illuminate each other, reflecting the Fassis' ingenuity and fascination for life, and the musicians' various expressions of the mystical secrets we share, all framed by a reverence and willing surrender to God's will.

On this third vibrant volume from the Fes Festival, you can rejoice in:

• West African Sufi Songs
• Sufi Music and Songs of Morocco
• Berber Sacred Song
• Sacred Music and Song of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• Gypsy-Catalan Songs of the Evangelical Church
• Devotional Songs form Southern India
• Sacred and Classical Music of Iran
• Traditional Maddah Music from Upper Egypt

As with the previous two volumes resulting from the Fes Festival, this one is sheer joy to listen to - it is as though we were seated at Babette's Feast, carried into the world of sound. The fastest way from our heads to our hearts may be through music such as this! Enjoy and be glad!