MSI Press Blog

INTRODUCTION  You’re recently divorced, and you’re having a little trouble handling it all. It’s bad enough that you’re alone and feeling almost worthless, but you can’t stop wondering what you did wrong to make your world come crashing down. How did this happen? More to the point, how did this happen to you? You’re not alone. Since the mid-1970s, the divorce rate in this country has hovered around a surprising 50% for first-time marriages. For second marriages the figure is even higher; about 60% of these end up in divorce court. While television shows and magazine articles usually focus on the court battles during divorce, the real trauma often takes place after the papers are signed, when the newly divorced person faces life alone. These singles must carry on their daily lives despite battered egos, diminished bank accounts and sometimes even the loss of friends who have “taken sides” in the battle. As a twice-divorced woman, I know about these issues and the toll they t

"How to Live from Your Heart  brings a wonderfully warm exploration of energy-based spirituality into real-world decision-making." So says Jeremiah Rood, reviewer from Foreword Reviews . Read the rest of the article at Foreword Reviews . How to Live from Your Heart is a Book of the Year Finalist and Best Books Award Finalist and was selected as Pinnacle Achievement Award winner and recommended by US Review of Books. Nanette Hucknall is also the co-author of The Rose and The Sword .

Excerpt -- I Am Not Alone (photo by Kaleena Scargill) Some of the people who form a big part of my mission struggle with cancer. I do understand them—their fears, their pain, their sometimes-sadness. I feel those things, too, at least as much as a cat can feel. I know that God made humans to have even deeper feelings and a greater range of feelings, and I am glad that some of those feelings include loving animals because it is through that love that I can connect with them and bring them the message of God’s love. I have to tell you about one of my special friends, Loryn. She understands me because she had cancer, and I understand her because I had cancer—the same way Cody and I understand, support, and love each other. Maybe it is better if I am not the one to tell her story, though. Maybe she should tell her own story. I think you will find it more interesting that way. So, here is what she wrote for my book about her experience: Over seven years ago, I

Divorced! Survival Techniques for Singles over 40  shares the stories of men and women just like you who have gone through the trauma of divorce, and now feel comfortable talking about it. Turning to God, to friends, family and even therapy, these adults were able to pull their lives back together again. Whether your divorce was recent or years ago, the guidelines in this book will help you put heartache aside and begin a new and fulfilling life. Read more posts about Joanna Romer and her many books HERE .

The Subversive Utopia   examines the critical role of modern architects in shaping and transforming national Israeli memory with special regard to Jerusalem. Using as a background the attempts of various architects since the 19th century to construct a national Jewish style, the author focuses his analysis on Louis Kahn’s design of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. Th is study scrutinizes and pieces together discrepant archival documents, drawings, and accounts of intentions, interpretations, events, policies, and projects in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Th e book reveals an unrecognized crucial interplay of Kahn’s Hurvah design  with the competing traditional and national symbols of Jerusalem, such as the old Hurvah, the Western Wall, and most important, the mythical Jewish Temple and the Dome of the Rock. Th e drastic impact of Kahn’s idiosyncratic design on shaping Jerusalem and its national memory is traced through subsequent archaeologica

A sharing  S ., 20 years old, completely inexperienced in spiritual practices and in therapeutic processes, after her first experience expanding a positive emotion.  When I was asked, at the beginning of the process, to revive the most positive experience in my life, the first image that came into my mind was the day on which I had parachuted for the first time. I had been waiting to jump from the tiny plane; my entire body was already outside of it, and I had felt sure of myself—happy, free and limitless. I had felt that it would be much better to be up in the sky than down on the ground. When I took the leap, it was like floating, and my entire body felt fresh and alive. I was particularly excited while hovering over the sea and seeing the green areas all around. I identified the emotion as “Freedom” and located it in my heart. It felt like confidence and also, lightness, as if all my cells were opening up. The shape was a circle; the color, pink; the feeling, lighthearted

“Khristos voskres” (Christ is risen). One person after another greeted me with these words as I climbed the stairs of the little, wooden church in Akademgorodok, a tiny town at the end of the man-made Ob Sea, bejeweling the Siberian steppe 45 minutes south of the city of Novosibirsk . The intertwining snow-covered birch and kedr (Siberian pine) trees created an illusion of a land of fantasy, made more so in the late evenings by the moon reflecting off the naked silver-white birch bark onto the dark red-brown trunks and evergreen branches of the pines. This was not yet the taiga ; it was somewhat south for that, but nonetheless the birch and kedry stood closely side-by-side like brothers-in-arms against a hostile white and cold universe.             “V istinu voskres” (Truly, He is risen). If my words of response rang hollow, there was a reason. They came from the lips of a bona fide atheist, convinced that religious congregations were at least in part delusional. Certain