Author and poet Barbara Schmitz offers a heartful, funny, and deeply moving “spiritual autobiography” that brings the reader along on each stage of her fervent inner quest for mystical experience. Beginning with a Catholic girlhood in Nebraska, she graduates to an unlikely apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute; a dedicated transcendental meditation practice; and finally to thirty years of joys and struggles with a Sufi teacher (Shahabuddin Less) with whom she travels to Bali, Turkey, India, Kashmir, and the Holy Land. Incisive as lightning—the meaning of her Sufi name, Vajra—her questions and yearnings are our own, and she doesn't let God, her teacher, or herself off the hook.

One Flash of Lightning is a unique and timely interpretation of Bushido, the Samurai code of conduct. This book visits the spiritual path of self-knowledge practiced by the legendary warriors who shaped the course of Japanese history and cultural identity. The text explores Bushido's universal, timeless relevance to human nature, and humanity's ongoing quest for integrity, candor, and the relentless pursuit of truth. One Flash of Lightning transposes the Samurai code across centuries to the modern psyche, in the common language of compassion, decency, and abiding moral strength. Stephanie JT Russell links East and West with ageless questions of our place in life-our purpose, belonging, and sense of honor-and explores the potential of full awareness and vital presence in the world.

"Report of Pennsylvania Forestry Commission", published in 1896: 1895, pt. 2.