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As a novice in the field of "Oh my God, mom is coming to live with me", I was so heartened to find this book, which BTW I have not even finished yet, and know that the petty annoyances that plague me are not a reason to consume me with guilt. I am not alone. How reassuring it was for me to know that other women are still feeling the tug of their mom's advice, criticism, competition yada yada yada. I know I love my mom but was concerned about my inability to relate to where she is coming from at this point in her life,being 86 years old, as well as how I wanted our relationship to be at my own age of 50. Now I better understand and it has made me a more compassionate daughter. I have found myself sobbing at times reading this book as well as laughing at myself AND my mom. I am now not so afraid to proceed to the end.

A must read for every caring woman. Aging is a difficult topic, which Pat Beard manages to make palatable, helpful and interesting. By turns anecdotal, by turns analytical, she shows us the varieties of mother - daughter relationships. It's a wise and helpful book..

This book helps you to understand the aging process and how to behave around your aging mother so that the both of you are comfortable with your relationship. It addresses the questions of role reversals, death, and how both your lives can be more comfortable. This book humanizes an uncomfortable subject in easy to understand terms. It will make your and your mothers life a better place to live. If you have a mother this is a must read!!

Thoroughly enjoyed this boook. Quick read but with loaded with interesting information.

This is a fabulous book for the person desiring to learn about other religions and also the person interested in converting to another religion. It is written in a reader friendly format that is not overly analytical or bogged down with dry facts. He is amazingly respectful of each religion and shows the beauty in each faith. I borrowed it from the library and now want a copy for my own collection. It is great book for older children and adults alike.

This writer has a beautiful understanding of the underlying unity of religions. So many comparison books subtly say this is what this religion thinks, and here is why they're wrong. Many books seem to say that only one religion can have the true path to God. This writer sees the underlying similarity and message and examines the traditions of each faith in a loving way.

This time L. Robert Keck integrates his revealing life and health experiences with his very important research into the emerging deep value trends of Epoch III as it relates to health and healing. In "Healing As A Sacred Path", Bob Keck truly shows the possibilities that lie in walking our talk. The honesty in his personal journey combined with the possibilities of healing by walking a sacred path once again give hope to those budding Epoch III values with which I can identify.

The brilliance of defining wellness as "the balance of being and becoming" feels comforting while simultaneously challenges me to be me. In addition, "Healing As A Sacred Path" challenges us to consider who we put in charge of our health care. In the end, I recognize how Keck exemplifies the courage of taking back one's own innate power and wisdom to restore personal health.

Healing as a Sacred Path: A Story of Personal, Medical and Spiritual Transformation is the personal testimony of L. Robert Keck, a collegiate athlete confronted with the severe possibility of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Robert's miraculous recovery motivated him to achieve a Ph.D. in the philosophy of medicine. Healing as a Sacred Path reveals his dedicated search to blend the clinically scientific world of medicine with the holistic and spiritual path to healing. Written with inspiration, wisdom and insight, Healing as a Sacred Path is a profoundly moving account and very highly recommended reading for students of spirituality, metaphysics, and alternative medicine.

L. Robert Keck's newest book, Healing as a Sacred Path, is a practical, inspiring analysis of the power of healing available to us. He uses personal story-telling as a way to convey this, and has thus written a book that is hard to put down. He has developed a language to talk about the process of transformation for which so many people long, inviting us beyond the desire to cure our physical illnesses and maladies to embrace a greater understanding of what healing can be. In this book Keck takes the reader a step further than the excellent analyses offered in Caroline Myss' books on healing and disease, inviting us to step into the healing waters of transformation through the power of story and example. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the powerful connection of body and spirit.

This is an intimately written and insightful work. Anyone interested in women, film, or issues surrounding lesbianism will enjoy the work. Beautifully formatted.

In "Home Movies..." Citron uses an interplay of fact and fiction to guide the reader on a journey of secrets. We are never quite sure of who is speaking and yet always sure it is the author's voice we hear. Citron has crafted her written words with the same sense of artistry evident in her films. This book is powerful and artfully written. It is as much about understanding the well-buried and fragmented narratives we each conceal as it is about the story of Citron's individual exploration of her own stories. Communicated through simple language inflected with subtle nuances, the truths among these pages explore the juncture of life and art. Interacting with this text is quite an experience.

This is a really different kind of memoir. It's personal, yet gripping as a novel would be (part of it is memior, part is fiction). It's also thoughtful and analytical without falling into the trapof being dry or over-intellectualized. I learned as much about myself as I did about the author. The blurb on the back cover is right - once I started it, I couldn't put it down.

We love this book! The pictures are amazing. I just wish they were twice as big. I would love to see a reprint on large, glossy paper. The story is really humorous and touching.

What many people don't realize, is that the cheetah was once a domesticated animal. Bred by the ancient egyptians as pets and hunting animals, they still retain a lot of their domestic qualities to this day. The book shows this clearly by the behavior of Dooms towards his family and the fact that he remained with them for so many years. Cheetahs are the one of the most popular of the exotic cats for educational programs because they work so well around people and if more people in modern times had kept and bred them as pets, they wouldn't be so near extinction.

I heard about this book on National Public Radio some time ago and bought it for my 7-year-old nephew. I had a hard time giving it up. The story is told from the boy's perspective, which can get a little self-conscious. But the text and photos tell an incredible story of a family's relationship and affection for a marvelous animal few of us will ever be able to get this close to. It's now one of my nephew's favorite books .... and mine, too.

This book is a translation and explication of selected essays by Dogen, the 13th-century Zen master who founded the Soto school of Zen in Japan and is regarded as one the world's great religious teachers. Francis Dojun Cook is a retired professor of Buddhism and a serious Zen practitioner (he was a student of Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles), and his primary aim in this book is "to help the reader gain a better understanding of what it means to practice Zen, particularly in the Soto form established by Dogen Zenji."

The first half of the book is Cook's introduction to the Dogen texts, highlighting and clarifying some important themes. The second half is Cook's translations of the "Fukan zazengi" ("General Recommendations for Doing Zazen") and nine chapters from the "Shobogenzo"--texts chosen because they focus on various aspects of practice. At the end of the book is a lineage chart including many of the Zen masters mentioned in the Dogen essays.

Ch. 1 is mainly about how Dogen understands practice. Ch. 2 is about faith as the basis of Dogen's Zen. (Cook defines Buddhist faith as "a very deep certitude in the veracity of a certain doctrine, accepted and used as a touchstone for conduct in the faith that practice will verify its truth.") Ch. 3 is about arousing the thought of enlightenment (bodhichitta)--that is, arousing the determination to work ceaselessly to liberate all other beings from suffering and delusion, even while not being completely liberated oneself. Ch. 4 is about Zen as a means of dealing with karma and its consequences, not by "transcending" conditioned existence but by radically affirming and fully experiencing it. Ch. 5 is about the role of the scriptures in Dogen's Zen. (I liked Cook's observation that the verse attributed to Bodhidharma cautions only against "dependence" on words and letters, not against making use of them.) And Ch. 6 is about the continuous practice needed to live each moment fully, with wisdom and compassion.

My own practice can actually get derailed by questions like "Where do I get the motivation to practice, if not from the just the sort of self-centered attachments and aversions that I'm hoping to let go of through Zen practice?" and "How do I practice without making it an exercise in trying to get something I lack, thus denying the inherent buddha-nature I'm hoping to realize?" This book deals with such issues in a way that I found very helpful. (As usual, I found Dogen's interpreter more helpful than Dogen himself. Maybe someday I'll be able to get more inspiration from Dogen directly?) I also appreciated Cook's argument that Dogen's faith-based Zen is much more akin to a religion of "other-power" (tariki) like Pure Land Buddhism than to a religion of "self-power" (jiriki), which is how Zen sometimes gets characterized.

One tiny complaint: Cook slips into some of the caricatures of Christianity that I find tiresome in Zen literature. I wish Zennies would just stick with talking about Zen and not try to talk about how Zen compares with traditions they don't know nearly as much about.

Another Dogen commentary I highly recommend: "Flowers Fall: A Commentary on Zen Master Dogen's Genjokoan" by Hakuun Yasutani Roshi.

Professor Dojun Cook is one rare bird. Not only is he a translator of great learning, he is also a dyed-in-the-wool Zen practitioner.

His years of study and practice with Taizan Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles enable him to bring these texts to beautiful clarity.

Reading Dogen Zenji can be a challenging exercise. Translating him is infinitely more so. Dr. Cook has shown himself equal to the task. This book is a great boon to thoughtful Buddhists everywhere.

HOW TO RAISE AN OX : Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo - Including Ten Newly Translated Essays by Francis Dojun Cook. Foreword by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. 216 pp. Los Angeles, California : Center Publications, 1978 and Reprinted.

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Dogen (1200-1253). As one of the most powerful and brilliant minds Asia has produced - and it has produced many - his many-levelled and multi-faceted works should be viewed, not so much as a purely local and Japanese phenomenon, but as a supreme contribution to world literature. For all of us, he is, as Taizan Maezumi Roshi says, an inexhaustible spring of wisdom.

Dogen's works are profound. They express the point-of-view of an enlightened Master. Such works, especially when written in a sinograph-based language such as Japanese or Chinese, present almost insuperable problems of interpretation, and there are very few scholars who are equal to the task of translating them.

Dr Francis Cook comes to this task well-prepared. His work is highly respected in scholarly circles, he has held faculty posts at Dartmouth College and the University of California at Riverside, where he was an associate professor in the Religious Studies program, and he has a number of impressive publications to his credit.

In addition, he has a masterful command of the Japanese language, a command enhanced by two years spent as a Fulbright Fellow at Kyoto University. He has also devotedly practiced Zen meditation for many years. This last is extremely important as enabling Dr Cook to rise above the intellectualizing and speculation which limits so much contemporary Zen scholarship.

As he himself explains, the translator must be able to "approach the text in the light of his own Zen practice.... because unless the translator has some insight, however small, into what Dogen Zenji is saying, he will miss much in the text and the translation will suffer" (page 89). This is a simple point, but it is often overlooked, not only by translators, but also by a certain type of reader.

The present book falls fairly equally into two parts. The first 99 pages give us Dr Cook's introductory material in seven chapters: Introduction; The Importance of Faith; Arousing the Thought of Enlightenment; The Problem of Karma; The Scriptures; Giving Life to Our Lives; Concerning the Translation.

99 pages of 'introduction' may seem a lot, but Dr Cook has such a clear mind, and such an enviably clear and simple prose style, that anyone who is at all serious about trying to understand Dogen will find these pages extremely interesting. Here is an example, picked out at random, of Dr Cook's style:

"Dogen Zenji himself was not an ordinary man.... He addresses the reader from a level of spiritual insight that is greatly superior to ours, and the reader's challenge is to try to comprehend Dogen's vision of reality from the vantage point of his remarkable achievement. He is very difficult to follow because he sees a reality we do not even vaguely imagine" (page 88).

The remaining half of the book is taken up with Dr Cook's translations of ten chapters on practice from the Shobogenzo:

FUKANZAZENGI "General Recommendations for Doing Zazen;" KEISEI SANSHOKU "The Sounds of the Valley Streams, the Forms of the Mountains;" HOTSU MUJO SHIN "Arousing the Supreme Thought;" SHUKKE "Home Departure;" RAIHAI TOKUZUI "Paying Homage and Acquiring the Essence;" SHUNJU "Spring and Fall;" SHINJIN INGA "Deep Faith in Cause and Effect;" NYORAI ZENSHIN "The Tathagata's Whole Body;" GYOJI "Continuous Practice;" KAJO "Everyday Life."

Each of these chapters has been given brief but helpful Notes, and the book is rounded out with four Genealogy Charts of Chinese Zen Masters to enable the reader to locate in time the various individuals mentioned in the essays.

Here are a few lines from Cook's reading of the FUKANZAZENGI:

"... you must suspend your attempts to understand by means of scrutinizing words, reverse the activity of the mind which seeks externally, and illuminate your own true nature" (page 96).

What we are seeking, in other words, is not 'out there,' and one can only go astray by seeking it 'out there.' Here is the source of the West's fundamental error, an error which has generated the massive confusion around us, a confusion which is not going to go away until we start taking Dogen seriously.

Though it will probably be a long time before the West has humility enough to acknowledge that Zen Master Dogen belongs right up there along with such luminaries as Plato and Augustine, it's heartening to see that many Dogen translations have now begun to appear. These translations range all the way from the sincere and highly competent, through to the probably equally sincere but somewhat less competent.

Since very few, even among Japanese, understand Medieval Japanese, I'm not in a position to say whether Dr Cook's translation is 'excellent,' though it reads very well and I strongly suspect that it is. He's certainly put in the leg work to qualify as a highly competent translator, and anyone who may be looking for a good edition of Dogen could do worse than select his.

Set during the hard times of the Great Depression, Wonder As I Wander by Gwenyth Swain is the enchanting picture book story of Annie Morgan, a young girl pondering the mysteries of life. Annie wonders how her beloved mother could have died in the spring, when the land was full of life; how her wandering preacher father will pay for gas and food when he gives away so much to the poor; and why a sheriff won't let her father preach on the courthouse square. A haunting, evocative, and emotional story, superbly illustrated Ronald Himler with windswept colors, Wonder As I Wander is especially recommended for young readers ages 5 to 8.

'Ornery' was what Annie Morgan's father called her in "I Wonder as I Wander," the 2003 story (Eerdmans) of an Appalachian carol that has become a favorite at Christmas-time: "...the way Papa tells it Annie was too fine a name for the kind of baby I was -- full of fire and vinegar. So, all of a snap, he took to calling me Ornery." The author, Gwenyth Swain, dedicated the book to a friend of the family who used to call her 'Ornery'.

The story tells how John Jacob Niles, premier collector of mountain folk tunes, discovered the young girl singing in a village square to divert the local sheriff from insisting that her preacher-father move on. Niles persuaded Annie to sing the verses over and over until he had them written down to his satisfaction, and the words were preserved for generations to come.

The drawings by award-winning illustrator Ron Himler fit the story beautifully, and coincidentally show Annie's father strongly resembling the Swain grandfather of the author!

SAVOR THIS STORY WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

I know this song. I have sung it as a solo and directed choirs to sing it. The words and the music combine to make a beautiful sadness...a sense of being alone and yet peaceful. Gwenyth Swain has used her imagination and sensitivity to create a story of the song's beginning and Ronald Himler has added perfect illlustrations. The characterization of Annie Morgan and her Father is written and illustrated without a flaw. It is a lovely book, one to share with a friend no matter what age. It is sure to bring a tear to your eye.

Spectacular dreamy/nightmarish visions of aging, youth, beauty and timeless images.

I am not an expert in critiquing photography, but I know what I like, so know this: Joyce Tenneson's work is incredible! If only more of her books were still in print...

But if you don't believe me, see for yourself.

Black and white photos may be all the rage for people who want poetic images, but Illuminations contains some of the most surreal, breathtakingly beautiful images I've ever seen. From the haunted old woman to the progression of the pregnant girl to the androgynous figures, every image in this book carries a power that reminds me of the cinematic.

This book is awsome. Nothing can top it because mainly nothing can top time travel. THis is the best in the entire series and is totally awsome. As I said it's awsome

This book I'd recomend for kids who want to be authors or kids who are looking for a laugh. But if you realy want laughs read My Life as poluted pond scum the 11th book in the seiries its hilarious. Toasted time travler is a great great book. It has magic, fun, friendship, and alot of laughs. Go to youre local library or bookstore and get it soon. For more laughs look for the rest of the incredible worlds of Wally Mcdoogle books written by Bill Myers.

I've been a long time fan of Bill Myers ever since I was about 7. I got this when I was about 10 and I was laughing my butt off! It would make a nice gift for younger kids...or even teenagers. I mean, I'm 14 and still enjoy reading books of this series!

I loved this book as I did her first. I relate well with her lifestyle, for it is mine too. I worship the solitude living alone can give me. I can laugh along with Amy as she battles the Wasps and spiders. I can share her fun at being able to walk "nekked" in the house whenever needed and in the fact we are not bound by someone elses rules. Noone can tell us how or when the house should be clean. Ms Blackmarr is my hero :-)

The last time we saw Amy Blackmarr (in the fine "Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond"), she had been forced to give up her pondering on the pond and was headed to the North Georgia mountains. However, she somehow got derailed and wound up in a peculiar little house in Kansas. No problem, in her newest work, "House of Steps: Finding the Path Home," she still finds plenty of adventures to share with us, including some from her past life. And her reflections on life, love, family and nature are as sharp as ever. As she did on the pond, Amy still finds snakes and other interesting creatures to deal with, and some of the people are pretty wild too. She even wins the battle of the mailbox, sort of. Either of her books is just the right length for a trip to the beach, or a few hours in the backyard. One more thought: If you like these books, you should also try "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood" by Janisse Ray, another South Georgia woman with a heart for nature.

While Blackmarr's first book was about having the courage to follow your dream, this book seemed to be about your dream later taking you to a place where you didn't really expect or want to go--in her case, back to Kansas--and drawing what meaning you can out of it. But Blackmarr has such an incredible knack for finding meaning in just everyday experiences, what she calls "the remarkable and incorruptible process of living from ordinary day to ordinary day." This book worked on many levels for me. It's hilariously funny sometimes, has some great characters, like the stove man and the wasp lady, but it's also intensely spiritual. It has a zen-like acuteness to it. Yet it's a fast, easy reade. There's a great deal in a small space, here.