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"The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-up in History" by Michael Baigent Length: 6 hours and 20 min. ISBN: 0-0608-7636-0 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

What if everything you think you know about Jesus is wrong? In The Jesus Papers, Michael Baigent reveals the truth about Jesus’s life and crucifixion. Despite, or rather because of, all the celebration and veneration that have surrounded the figure of Jesus for centuries, Baigent asserts that Jesus and the circumstances leading to his death have been heavily mythologized.

As a religious historian and a leading expert in the field of arcane knowledge, Baigent has unequaled access to hidden archives, secret societies, Masonic records, and the private collections of antiquities traders and their moneyed clients. Using that access to full advantage, Baigent explores the religious and political climate in which Jesus was born and raised, examining not only the conflicts between the Romans and the Jews, but the strife within the different factions of the Jewish Zealot movement. He chronicles the migrations of Jesus’ family, his subsequent exposure to other cultures, and the events, teachings, and influences that were most likely to have shaped his early years. Baigent also uncovers the inconsistencies and biases in the accounts of the major historians of Jesus’ time, including Josephus, Pliny, and Tacitus. The enduring influence of these accounts in forming our most common conceptions of Jesus reveals that spin is not a new phenomenon.

Taking us back to sites that over the last 20 years he has meticulously explored, studied, and in some instances excavated for the first time, Baigent provides a detailed account of his groundbreaking discoveries. The evidence he has uncovered has lead him to make shocking new assertions that threaten the conventional account of Jesus’ life and death and shake the very foundation of Western thought, based as it is upon the assumption of Jesus’s divinity. Ultimately, his investigation raises the hope that we may gain a new understanding of Jesus.

Tags: the jesus papers: exposing the greatest cover-up in history, michael baigent, religion & spirituality, exposing the greatest cover-up in history, crucifixion

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"Grace" by Anne Lamott Length: 5 hours and 24 min. ISBN: 0-1431-4208-9 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

The sharp, funny, and heartfelt follow-up to her best-selling Plan B, Anne Lamott’s newest collection is a personal exploration of the faith and grace all around us.

In Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Lamott examines the ways we’re caught in life’s most daunting predicaments: love, mothering, work, politics, and maybe toughest of all, evolving from who we are to who we were meant to be. This is a complicated process for most of us, and Lamott turns her wit and honesty inward to describe her own intimate, bumpy, and unconventional road to grace and faith.

“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things,” she writes in one of her essays, “that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.”

Whether she’s writing about her unsuccessful efforts to get her money back from an obstinate carpet salesman, grappling with the tectonic shifts in her relationship with her son as he matures, trying to maintain her faith and humor during politically challenging times, or helping a close friend die with dignity, Lamott seeks out both the divinity and the humanity in herself and everything around her. Throughout these essays, she writes of her struggle to find the essence of her faith, which she uncovers in the unlikeliest places. By turns insightful and hilarious, pointed and poignant, Grace (Eventually) is Anne Lamott at her perceptive and irreverent best.

Tags: grace, anne lamott, bios & memoirs, religion & spirituality, love, motherhood, work, politics, healing, spirituality

• Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

In Reposition Yourself, best-selling author T.D. Jakes shares insights that will help you adjust to the many changes that life brings. This is a shrill wake-up call to take charge of your life now, confronting areas where subtle passivity, or even poor choices, may have stifled your creativity. It’s also a how-to for managing change and maximizing life now. Covering financial, relational, and spiritual creativity, Jakes shows how adapting to transitional moments is the path to an enriched existence filled with contentment at every stage.

Jakes accepts the inevitability of change, teaching how to embrace and expect it rather than fear it. Mixing both sacred and secular insights, he shares a unique mix of practical and pragmatic steps, coupled with the sage wisdom of scripture for which he is noted. A makeover for the soul, Reposition Yourself gives you permission to succeed and the how-to’s necessary to position yourself for the limitless potential that comes from making minor adjustments in your thinking and plans.

Tags: reposition yourself: living life without limits, t.d. jakes, great speakers, religion & spirituality, wake-up call, creativity, the potter’s house

• Mama Made the Difference: Life Lessons My Mother Taught Me

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"The Universe in a Single Atom" by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Length: 6 hours ISBN: 0-7393-2265-6 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Gallileo, Copernicus, Newton, Niels Bohr, Einstein. Their insights shook our perception of who we are and where we stand in the world and in their wake have left an uneasy co-existence: science vs. religion, faith vs. empirical enquiry. Which is the keeper of truth? Which is the true path to understanding reality?

After 40 years of study with some of the greatest scientific minds as well as a lifetime of meditative, spiritual, and philosophical study, the Dalai Lama presents a brilliant analysis of why both disciplines must be pursued in order to arrive at a complete picture of the truth. Science shows us ways of interpreting the physical world, while spirituality helps us cope with reality. But the extreme of either is impoverishing. The belief that all is reducible to matter and energy leaves out a huge range of human experience: emotions, yearnings, compassion, culture. At the same time, holding unexamined spiritual beliefs, beliefs that are contradicted by evidence, logic, and experience, can lock us into fundamentalist cages.

Through an examination of Darwinism and karma, quantum mechanics and philosophical insight into the nature of reality, neurobiology and the study of consciousness, the Dalai Lama draws significant parallels between contemplative and scientific examination of reality. “I believe that spirituality and science are complementary but different investigative approaches with the same goal of seeking the truth,” His Holiness writes. “In this, there is much each may learn from the other, and together they may contribute to expanding the horizon of human knowledge and wisdom.”

This breathtakingly personal examination is a tribute to the Dalai Lama’s teachers, both of science and spirituality. The legacy of this book is a vision of the world in which our different approaches to understanding ourselves, our universe, and one another can be brought together in the service of humanity.

This audio includes an interview with Richard Gere.

Tags: the universe in a single atom, his holiness the dalai lama, arts & leisure, nonfiction, science, spirituality, science, religion, evolution, creationism, intelligent design, evolution, darwinism

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"Life After Death: The Burden of Proof" by Deepak Chopra Length: 9 hours and 30 min. ISBN: 1-4159-3292-1 New York Times Best Seller Listen to an excerpt with:     Windows Media Player     Real Player

Deepak Chopra has touched millions of readers and listeners by demystifying our deepest spiritual concerns while retaining their poetry and wonder. Now he turns to the most profound mystery: What happens after we die? Is this one question we were not meant to answer, a riddle whose solution the universe keeps to itself? Chopra tells us there is abundant evidence that “the world beyond” is not separated from this world by an impassable wall; in fact, a single reality embraces all worlds, all times and places. At the end of our lives we “cross over” into a new phase of the same soul journey we are on right this minute.

In Life After Death, Chopra draws on cutting-edge scientific discoveries and the great wisdom traditions to provide a map of the afterlife. It’s a fascinating journey into many levels of consciousness. But far more important is his urgent message: Who you meet in the afterlife and what you experience there reflect your present beliefs, expectations, and level of awareness. In the here and now you can shape what happens after you die.

By bringing the afterlife into the present moment, Life After Death opens up an immense new area of creativity. Ultimately, there is no division between life and death; there is only one continuous creative project. Chopra invites us to become co-creators in this subtle realm, and as we come to understand the one reality, to shed our irrational fears and step into a numinous sense of wonder and personal power.

Tags: life after death: the burden of proof, deepak chopra, religion & spirituality, life, death, afterlife, spirit, mystery, answer, question, riddle, solution, wisdom, map, beliefs, expectations, awareness, creativity, project, death, reality, soul journey, scientific discoveries, traditions, after you die, personal power