Souls in the Hands of a Tender God or Yin Yoga

Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets

Author: Craig Rennebohm

A minister's stories about his work with homeless people who are suffering from mental illness and a discussion of our need for healing communities

Since 1987, Craig Rennebohm has ministered to people on the streets of Seattle who are homeless and struggling with mental illness. In Souls in the Hands of a Tender God he tells the evocative stories of persons who desperately need psychiatric, psychological, and spiritual support, like Mary, who surrounds herself with huge trash bags, and Jerry, barred from every shelter and meal program in Seattle. As Rennebohm reaches out to each of them, their stories become parables that explore mental illness and the spiritual heart of care and recovery—helping us to understand what it means to be human, on a pilgrimage together toward wholeness.

Souls in the Hands of a Tender God follows the path of healing and the way of companionship to build communities of caring that welcome and include our most fragile and troubled neighbors. With gentleness and grace, solid knowledge and wisdom, Rennebohm lays down the foundations of healing communities in which "all may have a home, safely rest, and be well."

Publishers Weekly

For decades Rennebohm, a Protestant pastor, has walked the streets of Seattle, making contact with mentally ill homeless people and slowly drawing them into "circles of care" so they can find safe housing, receive medical and psychological help and rejoin the human community.In this collaboration with Paul, Rennebohm interweaves themes of the Spirit working in desperate lives, the unshakable dignity of human souls and the necessity of companionship for healing as he vividly portrays the lost people he encounters.Always recognizing that medical treatment of mental illness is an essential part of the movement toward spiritual wholeness, Rennebohm is also sensitive to the vulnerability of the mentally ill to disordered religious ideas.The book's title, a response to Jonathan Edwards's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," reflects Rennebohm's approach of gentle compassion toward people others reject.His call to find a better path leads him to Europe to study community-based approaches to treating mental illness and to initiate these in Seattle.As well as a guide to how others can help be healing presences to the mentally ill, this hopeful book is a meditation on faith in a broken world. (May)

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Book review: Blender Bible or Kitchen Con

Yin Yoga

Author: Grilley

How to balance Yoga practice. As Yoga matures in the U.S., this is a new approach to balance physical and mental health, for serious students and beginners. All yoga forms can be categorized as Yin or Yang, emphasizing either muscle or connective tissue

Publishers Weekly

Yoga as practiced in North America is almost exclusively "yang" in nature, meaning that it relies upon postures that aggressively stretch the muscles. Paul Grilley offers his book Yin Yoga: Outline of a Quiet Practice as a counterbalance to this trend. Yin yoga, he says, should only be done when muscles are already relaxed, and postures should be held for long periods at least several minutes. Yin yoga can be used to unwind, and is particularly appropriate for the end of the day. Anyone who thinks that yin yoga sounds wimpy should gaze hard at the 35 photographs in this book, which illustrate some pretty challenging poses. Grilley's technique offers a unique blend of yoga meditation and Taoist principles. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.