From activist, spiritual leader, New York Times- bestselling author, and 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson comes a prayer for healing America Prayer is practical, Williamson tells us. “To look to God is to look to the realm of consciousness that can deliver us from the pain of living.” Illuminata delivers prayer into our daily lives with prayers on topics from releasing anger to finding forgiveness, from finding great love to achieving intimacy. There are prayers for couples, for parents, and for children, prayers to mend broken relationships and prayers to overcome obsessive and compulsive love. There are prayers to heal the soul, prayers to heal the body, and prayers for work and creativity. Williamson also gives us prayers for the healing of America, including a prayer of amends on behalf of European Americans to African Americans and one to Native Americans. How, Williamson asks, can we expect anyone to forgive when we have made no formal apology? “Read my prayers or someone else’s,” Williamson says. “By all means, create your own.” Illuminata brings prayer into practical use, creating a sweeter, more abundant life. “No conventional therapy,” she says, “can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace that is not of this world.”

The Book of Blessings is an extraordinary and deeply poetic re-creation of Jewish prayer that offers new blessings, poems, and meditations for Sabbath, holiday, and everyday observance. Steeped in dialogue with rabbinic tradition, it is for those who seek a more contemporary, egalitarian approach to traditional liturgy. " Falk] manages to create extraordinarily beautiful prayers--in Hebrew and English--that are both radically new and deeply resonant with Jewish tradition." --Judith Plaskow, The Women's Review of Books "Marcia Falk's work in Hebrew blessings is as beautiful as it is innovative; and it is innovative in the sweetest, most nourishing sense, sat urated in love for the language itself (its overtones and melodies as well as its deep structure), its history, its people. Even those who do not hear the traditional liturgies as exclusionary will respond to the meticulously flowering poet's passion of Marcia Falk's wholly original contribution." --Cynthia Ozick "A truly magisterial and exciting collection of brakhot . . . that invites us to re-encounter not only the blessing, but the Source of blessing. . . . Falk rekindles the flame of Jewish ardor and devotion." --Hadassah " Falk's] prayers are re-creations of traditional prayers, her versions striking in the beauty and power of their language, in English and Hebrew: this is a poet's siddur, full of profound meaning." --Sandee Brawarsky, Jewish Week

Prayers are among the most personal and imaginative among Hittite texts. Rich in metaphors and similes, they provide the best insight into Hittite contemplative thinking and philosophy of life. In the face of grave illness, the death of a loved one, or an impending military catastrophe, those in crisis disregard the conventional rules of prudent phrasing and cry out from the bottom of their hearts for deliverance and for a better comprehension of their world. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).