BOOK OF THE MONTH - JuneLas Comadres and Friends National Latino Book Club Beginning with her family’s origins as tenant farmers in the mountains of Puerto Rico at the turn of the nineteenth century, Victoria Rivera Mckinley leads readers through dramatic and painful events, which in spite of psychological explanations, add up to experiences that are much larger. Against a historical backdrop of Puerto Rico’s changing culture, she shows how a family of ten children survive and learn to look out for one another. This is a success story, but not simply because the author leaves Puerto Rico and becomes a psychotherapist in America. Rivera McKinley offers an extraordinary perspective that finds truth in how each person lives experience in his or her own way. Her own journey ends in the Rocky Mountains, where Buddhist teachings offer her a spiritual and philosophical framework with which to understand her life. In Search of the Luminous Heart is a deep and unusual look at adversity and belies terms like “dysfunctional” for family. Here, generosity of spirit is the key to survival. The family endures by using intelligence, compassion, and accepting lives that have the real taste of tears, blood, songs, and prayers.

Part-murder mystery and part-family saga, this dramatic and often hilarious novel explores the history of Los Angeles's Iranian-Jewish community.

“An intriguing murder-mystery journey anchored within the Iranian-Jewish community of Los Angeles.” —Washington Independent Review of Books Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award Finalist for the Jewish Book Council’s JJ Greenberg Memorial Award The Soleymans, an Iranian Jewish family, have been tormented for decades, from Tehran all the way to Los Angeles, by a crafty and unscrupulous financier who has futilely claimed to be an heir to their fortune. Now, their nemesis has nearly achieved his goal—until he suddenly turns up dead behind the wheel of his Aston Martin. The possible suspects are legion: his long-suffering wife, numerous members of the Soleyman clan, the scores of investors he bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme, or perhaps even his disgruntled bookkeeper and longtime confidant. This “fascinating” blend of murder mystery and generation-spanning family saga (BookPage) pulls back the curtain on a close-knit community, yet at the same time “feels more universal than anything . . . an engrossing, expansive epic that charts not only thousands [of] years of Iranian Jewish life, but the brutality of one family’s survival amidst revolution and cultural upheaval” (Kirkus Reviews). “A brilliant, funny, poignant, and thrilling novel about an Iranian Jewish family’s struggle to find its identity in exile in America. Part murder mystery, part comic novel . . . a book you will not be able to put down.” —New York Times–bestselling author Reza Aslan “With touches of magic realism, extraordinary characters, and a spiraling, multigenerational plot involving fraud, a murder mystery, epic suffering, heroic generosity, women’s struggle for freedom, and the clash between East and West, Nahai’s mythic, tragic, often beautiful immigrant family saga illuminates timeless questions of prejudice, trauma, inheritance, loyalty, and love.” —Booklist, starred review “A riveting tale. . . . Readers will be well rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Togal is an ancient spiritual path, a dynamic visionary process arising from your heart and the very basis of all manifestation. The rainbow-colored visions of Togal are primordial; they are the first and most radiant aspect of manifestation closest to essence. They are a doorway to direct perception of the luminous union of essence and radiance, but they are not separate from the natural world. They arise from the same source and for the same reason, to provide an avenue for return to essence; there is a sacred intent, a great compassion, woven throughout the very fabric of being.The visions of Togal mature in a way that is both specific and beautiful. Robert and Rachel Olds kept sketchbooks of the Togal visions during their nine-year retreat together, and they share their drawings and the perspective that the ripening of Togal brings to show the correlation between the visions of inner radiance and the vision that is this life. The images in the visions are not esoteric or secret; they are all around us in the natural world, from concentric rings on the surface of a pond to the patterns of the background radiation of the universe itself. The visions of Togal and the natural world are equally sacred. Now more than ever, when our Earth is in peril due to non-recognition of this inherent holiness, it is important to acknowledge and reaffirm the sacredness of this entire arising vision we call life.145 color illustrations

In Search of the Lost Heart brings together twenty-six essays by William C. Chittick, renowned scholar of Sufism and Islamic philosophy. Written between 1975 and 2011, most of these essays are not readily available in Chittick's own books. Although this is a collection, its editors have crafted it to be a book "sufficient unto itself, which, when taken as a whole, can be said to explore the underlying worldview of Islam." Chittick draws upon the writings of towering figures such as Ibn al-'Arabī, Rūmī, and Mullā Ṣadrā, as well as other important, but lesser-known thinkers, as he engages with a wide variety of topics, such as the nature of being and knowledge, the relationship between love and scriptural hermeneutics, the practical and theoretical dimensions of Islamic mysticism, the phenomenon of religious diversity, and the ecological crisis.

A history of intellectual and religious developments in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1582-1860), this volume deals with social, cultural, and religious interplay, primarily focusing on the Neo-Confucian search for the Way, a pattern of existence that could provide order for society at large, as well as self-fulfilment for the individual.