Our busy exterior may be a cover-up for an undernourished interior soul. Modern life is so packed with things to do that we have not learned to be truly human. It is difficult to nurture the spiritual life in a media-saturated world filled with relentless information, ongoing activities, material wants, worrisome uncertainties, and seductive addictions. Being Truly Human challenges readers to give space in their busy life for God to do the work of transformation in the inner self. It takes inspiration from the Desert Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries whose directness, simplicity, and concreteness to life's struggles provide a fresh perspective for modern saints. Like the desert saints, modern Christians are challenged to begin a spiritual odyssey, in the wilderness of their soul, to become their true selves. To be truly human means the freedom to love in concrete acts of humility and hospitality, acts which are truly lacking in our world today. The practice of solitude and silence will lead us to be indifferent to the crying needs of our false selves and to give God our undivided attention, which is necessary for the spiritual formation of our true selves.
The stories of Jesus, placed in the context of the familiar and factual, are filled with metaphors that audiences can understand and appreciate. Metaphors not only inform and persuade, but also fire up readers' imaginations and get them involved as participants. Humans are primed to think and feel metaphorically, and so Garden of the Soul aims to metaphorically explore five landscapes that feature prominently in the Bible. Each metaphorical landscape throws light on an aspect of spiritual life. The bountiful garden speaks of growth, the flowing river calls for unceasing prayer, the raging sea mirrors the turbulence of a journey of faith, the barren desert transforms by emptying life's clutter, and the high mountain challenges readers to scale its peak to glimpse a transcendent vision of God. This book will inform, enrich, and challenge readers' spiritual lives throughout their journey from garden to mountain.
To thrive spiritually we need to learn from the trees. Each part of the tree, its roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and seeds, gives valuable insights into the Christian life. The roots, which are critical to the tree's health and invisible to the naked eye, refer to the need to develop the inner life of the Christian. The root system shared among neighboring trees highlights the importance of communal living among Christians. The trunk, which is mainly used for wood and has rings in it, points to the need for Christians to live sacrificially and to review their lives periodically. The branches instruct Christians to draw strength from Christ by abiding in him. The leaves call on Christians to be thankful and to seek rejuvenation of their souls when they enter a dry patch in their spiritual lives. The seed that falls to the ground and dies challenges Christians to stay put and wait on God in order to gain a foothold in their spiritual lives. This book will convince us to look at trees in a different light. We begin to appreciate trees, which we have taken for granted, for their silent wisdom.
This book uses the metaphor of walking to gain insight into the spiritual life. Walking is the most basic movement of the human body. For many people, walking carries no value on its own except to transit between two points. From the spiritual perspective, we can derive many benefits through the act of walking. As a spiritual discipline, walking not only has health benefits but generates different states of well-being that are good for the human soul and spirit. Walking gives us pleasure, joy, happiness, and serenity. Metaphorically speaking, walking gives us a sense that we are on a journey with God. It also helps us to know the importance of engaging our physical bodies in our spirituality. It keeps us attuned to the present moment, cultivates in us a sense of wonder in the natural world, creates an inner space in our cluttered lives, highlights the need for solitude and silence, and gives us the freedom of simplicity that the soul enjoys.
At the time of Christ, world politics was an ebb and flow of colliding empires and forces. The world knew only dynastic succession and rule by force. Israel was swept up in this world. Her expectations of deliverance, while diverse, had in common the anticipation of violent liberation by an alliance of God, the expected one (Theo), and Israel's forces. Her vision included the subjugation of the world to Yahweh. Any messianic claimant would be expected to fulfill this hope. Mark's story of Jesus must be read against such expectations of military power. Mark knows that Jesus' plan of salvation differed radically from this. Rather than liberation through revolution, it involved deliverance through humble, loving service and cross-bearing. However, the disciples follow Jesus but do not understand Jesus' purpose. They constantly expect war. So, the Gospel is then read from Mark's full understanding and the disciples' flawed perspective. In this first volume of Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Keown backgrounds Mark and the political situations of the world at the time. He then unpacks Mark 1:1--8:29 as Jesus seeks to show the disciples he is Messiah while drawing out the deep irony of their incomprehension.
Sumerian was the first language to be put into writing (ca. 3200–3100 BCE), and it is the language for which the cuneiform script was originally developed. Even after it was supplanted by Akkadian as the primary spoken language in ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian continued to be used as a scholarly written language until the end of the first millennium BCE. This volume presents the first comprehensive English-language scholarly lexicon of Sumerian. This dictionary covers all the nuances of meaning for Sumerian terms found in historical inscriptions and literary, administrative, and lexical texts dating from about 2500 BCE to the first century BCE. The entries are organized by transcription and are accompanied by the transliteration and translation of passages in which the term occurs and, where relevant, a discussion of the word’s treatment in other publications. Main entries bring together all the parts of speech and compound forms for the Sumerian term and present each part of speech individually. All possible Akkadian equivalents and variant syllabic renderings are listed for lexical attestations of a word, and a meaningful sample of occurrences is given for literary and economic passages. Entries of homonyms with different orthographies and unrelated words with the same orthography are grouped together, each being assigned a unique identifier, and the dictionary treats the phoneme /dr/ as a separate consonant. Written by one of the foremost scholars in the field, An Annotated Sumerian Dictionary is an essential reference for Sumerologists and Assyriologists and a practical help to students of ancient cultures.
They escaped planetary annihilation, helped end a centuries old civil war, and joined a defeated militia to their cause. Terik Donato and Melina Beetary’s chances of bringing down the oppressive Fokot army were prospering until a cunning betrayal and a lone shot ripped apart their coalition. But as relics of the past begin to appear, transforming despair into determination, Terik and Melina now have a plan to engage the Fokot in all-out war. To stand a fighting chance they will need to rely on the only thing they have left: their resolve. The hardest task Terik and Melina must face is letting go – of each other, of their past, and any chance of saving Garett Soness. Because all fates lead to the planet Opus, and its caretakers, the last Azonka Mah, who may be the key to the Sacramento crew getting home. It may also be the key to many of Terik’s questions, as well as the key to Warlord Favan’s endgame, ultimately positioning Opus to be either the crux of their triumph or the catalyst of their defeat. All questions will be answered in this final volume of The Dawn Cluster.
What is What? Could it be that noted author Mark Kurlansky has written a very short, terrifically witty, deeply thought-provoking book entirely in the form of questions? A book that draws on philosophy, religion, literature, policy-indeed, all of civilization-to ask what may well be the twenty most important questions in human history? Or has he given us a really smart, impossibly amusing game of twenty questions? Kurlansky considers the work of Confucius, Plato, Shakespeare, Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, the Talmud, Charles de Gaulle, Virginia Woolf, and others, distilling the deep questions of life to their sparkling essence. What? supplies endless fodder for thoughtful conversation but also endless opportunity to ponder and be challenged by-and entertained by-these questions in refreshingly original ways. As Kurlansky says, In a world that seems devoid of absolute certainties, how can we make declarative statements? Without asking the questions, how will we ever get to the answers? With his striking black-and-white woodcut illustrations throughout, this handsome volume is a tour de force that packs a tremendous wallop in a deliciously compact package.
Sharon, an Upper West Side shrink, longtime recovering alcoholic, and world-class hemophobe, finds herself in the South Plains of Texas—off her psychotropic drugs—after her nephew’s sudden death. SQUEAMISH is a grotesque tale of phobia and compulsion, a minimalist work of psychological horror about craving what terrifies us most.
Malaya, 1948. In the heart of the jungle a band of Chinese communists are grouping together, mounting a series of raids and murders on isolated villages and rubber plantations. In Kuala Lumpur Edward Fairfax, a para seconded to Intelligence, is preparing to outwit the elusive enemy. The hostile territory is rife with dangers and seductions from Edward's arch-enemy Ho Peng, to enigmatic Liya, the beautiful girl whom he recruits as a source of information. As the threat of insurgency mounts and a State of Emergency is declared, Edward is plunged into a brutal jungle war which will test his courage, cunning and endurance - as well as the hearts and minds of the people - to their limits. The risks have never been greater...
They escaped planetary annihilation, helped end a centuries old civil war, and joined a defeated militia to their cause. Terik Donato and Melina Beetary’s chances of bringing down the oppressive Fokot army were prospering until a cunning betrayal and a lone shot ripped apart their coalition. But as relics of the past begin to appear, transforming despair into determination, Terik and Melina now have a plan to engage the Fokot in all-out war. To stand a fighting chance they will need to rely on the only thing they have left: their resolve. The hardest task Terik and Melina must face is letting go – of each other, of their past, and any chance of saving Garett Soness. Because all fates lead to the planet Opus, and its caretakers, the last Azonka Mah, who may be the key to the Sacramento crew getting home. It may also be the key to many of Terik’s questions, as well as the key to Warlord Favan’s endgame, ultimately positioning Opus to be either the crux of their triumph or the catalyst of their defeat. All questions will be answered in this final volume of The Dawn Cluster.
A Collection of Plays by Mark Frank: Volume III introduces ten new plays by playwright Mark Frank. In the hilarious comedy, I Swear By The Eyes of Oedipus! we get find Oedipus great, great, great, great...(well you get the point) grandson try to come to terms with the prophecy that he will sleep with his mother and kill his father. In Hurricane Iphigenia, Category 5, Tragedy in Darfur we are taken to the Sudan region in Africa by the Greek princess. Can she save the two million displaced Christian Africans hunted by the Islamic Janjaweed? In the drama, The Rainy Trails we go on a spiritual Native American journey with Rainy trying to tackle racism. In the Greek play Iphigenia Rising, Electra, Iphigenia and Orestes are faced with the blame game with the deaths of their parents from alcohol which will change their lives forever. In The Rock of Troy, the Iliad is revisited with all twenty-four books translated with no dialogue, only action and classical rock music from the seventies and eighties. Five new oneacts are also introduced in the book with the dramatic plays, The Mahmudiyah Incident, The Land of Never, and A Christmas Musical, and the comedies Trouble’s Revenge, a sequel to A Purrfect Life, and Humpty Dumpty: the musical?
The ersemma is one of two (possibly three) genres of literature written in the Sumerian Emesal dialect. Texts exist in copies from the Old Babylonian period, although they were authored much earlier. They were preserved likely because they were part of a fixed liturgy recited on select days of the month. Mark E. Cohen discusses the characteristics of this genre and its evolution, the circumstances of its composition, and the cultic setting in which it was typically used. He also provides a catalog of examples as well as transliterations and translations of selected texts with commentary. Examples come from the British Museum, the Yale Babylonian Collection, the University Museum Collection, the Oriental Institute, the Staatliche Museen Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum.
Cal Arts 1979-82. Having just survived his girlfriends suicide, a young painter leaves the provincial post-hippie world of Albuquerque for California Contemporary Arts in Valencia. Here he crosses paths with a fellow suicide survivor who is enrolled in the film program. Her Nico-esque personae and his small town background make for an exceptionally dark and erotically invested romance that drains them both to the point of no return. Interspersed with their adventures and coupling is a strongly satirical vision of contemporary art and art schools. Known for its poetic presentation, this is a must read for any potential art student or person on the verge of entering an ill-advised sexual relationship.
A comprehensive analysis and background of our Shawnee forefathers contained in one volume so insightfully done. A complete and thoughtful history of tribal ancestery and what it has meant for the history of many Americans as they exist today.
Author's note : revolutionary auras and phantasms -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction : from uprisings to plagues -- Morocco : finding harmonies in a land of dissidence -- Yalla, let's play! : Egypt from the pharaoh to the general -- Palestine/Israel : hard music in an orphaned land -- Lebanon : remixed but never remastered -- Iran : living in the upside down and inside out -- Pakistan : shredding the funk from the valleys to the sea -- By way of an epilogue : the joys of resistance.
The fascinating account of a pioneering ethnobotanist’s travels in the Amazon—at once a gripping adventure story, a passionate argument for conservationism, and an investigation into the healing power of plants, by the author of The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest. For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest.
Kamanya believes in the shaman's wisdom about the healing properties of plants found in the Amazon rain forest and hopes one day to be a healer for his people.
As multicultural education is becoming integral to the core curriculum, teachers often implement this aspect into their courses through literature. However, standards and criteria to teach and promote active discussion about this literature are sparse. Cultural Journeys introduces pre-service and experienced teachers to the use of literature to promote active discussions that lead students to think about racial diversity. More than just an annotated list of books for children, Pamela S. Gates and Dianne L. Hall Mark provide systematic guidelines that teachers can use throughout their careers to evaluate multicultural literature for students in grades K-8. At the same time, the text leads the reader to a deeper understanding of how to use multicultural literature throughout the entire curriculum and not just during specially designated months or time periods. With the example unit plans and extensive annotated bibliography, this book is a valuable resource that pre-service teachers will utilize when they begin teaching and in-service teachers will reference repeatedly during their planning periods.
Fox takes as his starting point the issues that Quoheleth's interpreters have faced in their efforts to render the book faithfully, and in so doing, provides a new analysis of Quoheleth's reasoning, logic, and means of expression. Fox reaches three key conclusions about the work: Quoheleth is primarily concerned with the rationality of existence; Quoheleth is not against wisdom or the wise, and finally: Quoheleth supports the grasping of inner experience as the one domain of human freedom. These conclusions are supported by a thorough look at other analyses of Quoheleth.
From trained chickens to frustrated postal workers and runaway bears, this collection of short stories dabbles in it all. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense and mayhem are blended together for a cross section of ideas intended to make you think about the possibilities that exist. Within the framework of a few thousand words, you find yourself immersed in a place in the world (or possibly just outside_ that is different from that place where you are familiar and comfortable. Characters grab your attention and situations make your pulse rate rise as these stories unfold. The familiar can somehow become unfamiliar. Governments plot, aliens and humans explore, forces of nature and the supernatural conspire, in the attempt to twist your imagination from the mundane to something else.
Fox takes as his starting point the issues that Quoheleth's interpreters have faced in their efforts to render the book faithfully, and in so doing, provides a new analysis of Quoheleth's reasoning, logic, and means of expression. Fox reaches three key conclusions about the work: Quoheleth is primarily concerned with the rationality of existence; Quoheleth is not against wisdom or the wise, and finally: Quoheleth supports the grasping of inner experience as the one domain of human freedom. These conclusions are supported by a thorough look at other analyses of Quoheleth.
What do English-speaking Canadians sound like and why? Can you tell the difference between a Canadian and an American? A Canadian and an Englishman? If so, how? Linguistically speaking is Canada a colony of Britain or a satellite of the United States? Is there a Canadian language? Speaking Canadian English, first published in 1971, in a non-technical way, describes English as it is spoken in Canada – its vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, grammar, spelling, slang. This title comments on the history of Canadian English – how it came to sound the way it does – and attempts to predict what will happen to it in the future. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics.
Integrates Native American perspectives into American history Native Voices is a source reader that covers the entire span of Native American history. It offers documents for readers to evaluate the Native Voice across the American continent and in parts of Latin America. Each document sheds light on Native North America and provides readers with the Native American perspective of their history. The organization of Native Voices and its readings are designed to correlate with First Americans: A History of Native Peoples, MySearchLab is a part of the Nicholas program. Research and writing tools, including access to academic journals, help students understand Native American history in even greater depth.
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