Why has a tiny old mining town straight out of
Gunsmoke or
Deadwood — Crestone, Colorado — become home to twenty-five spiritual centers representing nearly all the brand-name faiths of the world? With the keen eye of a storyteller, the insights of a scholar, and the heart of a seeker, Jeffery Paine narrates a truly unique adventure. He explores Crestone’s wintry, oxygen-thin mountain geography and introduces a cast of spiritual mavericks and unlikely visionaries. Paine finds in Crestone a remarkable dedication to coexistence. Paradoxically, the town’s amazing spiritual diversity highlights fundamental commonalities in a way that will strike and even inspire believers, agnostics, and searchers of every stripe.
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Table of Contents
PART I: TOWN
1. A Dream Awakens
2. Where the Hell Am I? A Tour
PART II: RELIGION
3. “Gimme that Ol’-Time Religion!” Or Is the New-Time Better?
4. More Religions Than One
5. Less Than One
PART III: POST-RELIGIOUS VARIETIES OF EXPERIENCE IN CRESTONE
6. An Ordinary Thursday in Crestone
7. A Spiritual Relationship to the Natural World?
8. Religion’s Finest Benefit (Minus the Religion)
9. Singing the Mind Electric
10. When There Is Here and Bitter Is Sweet
FINALE: NEAR-ENLIGHTENTMENT EXPERIENCES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
11. The Look of It, the Feel of It
12. Nine Rungs Up to the Ladder to Enlightenment
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Jeffery Paine’s writing has appeared in such publications as the
New York Times, the
Washington Post, the
Los Angeles Times, the
Nation, and the
New Republic. The author of
Re-enchantment and
Father India, he lives in Washington, DC.