A warm breeze blew through Alexandra's hair as she stood on the front porch of the ramshackle beach house. It was nestled between palm trees near the Georgia shore and weathered from Mother Nature. A family heirloom passed down for several generations. She and Austin had hopes and dreams deferred by tragedy, which left her to face days of uncertainty and the heavy hand of time. She would be forced to make decisions that would now change her life forever. Mike a lonely man in search of finding true love again. Brady a businessman who drowned his sorrows at the local pub to forget the past. Jane the young seamstress with secrets she told to no one. Austin the devoted husband and soldier who sacrificed his dreams to fight for his country. Alexandra an interior designer trying to find her way in an uncertain world. Would she see the dream that she carried in her heart become a reality? Each life was filled with uncertainty of what the next chapter would bring. Their lives cross paths in the midst of it all to produce an outcome that no one expected.
Social media has become vital in Generation Z users' daily lives, as they are the most connected group through social media; however, studies have shown the negative side of using social media heavily, particularly loneliness. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the significant growth of social media use with Generation Z users, which has shown to cause negative psychological effects. This book explores the behaviors of Generation Z consumers on various social media platforms (including interaction with brands as well as persons) and, using results from a Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) analysis, explores the potential risks and causes of social media addiction in this generation. In particular, it offers an integrative model to help marketers understand social media addition and ways in which companies and associations can promote a more conscious use of social media by acknowledging that pathological use of social media has negative effects. This book is useful for students, researchers, scholars interested in empirical research on consumer social media use and addiction.
Mother Teresa's heartfelt wisdom--collected here into an inspirational 365-day devotional--offers you comfort, peace, and love amid the noise, busyness, and confusion around you. Spread Love includes: 365 daily inspirational readings short and powerful meditations simple everyday prayers With so much happening in the world, are you looking for goodness and guidance? This year-long devotional contains a collection of encouraging quotes, stories, prayers, and teachings from the beloved Mother Teresa. Her daily guidance continues to reach the needs and circumstances of those who are thirsty for inspiration and spiritual nourishment in entries that are easy to understand and absorb. Let Mother Teresa's words of wisdom help you live a fuller and happier life, closer to the Lord and able to serve your community more effectively. Each of the 365 entries offers you the opportunity to begin any time of the year and find nourishment for a whole year.
A cornerstone book on mystical theology, Interior Castle describes the seven stages of union with God. Using everyday language to explain difficult theological concepts, Teresa of Avila compares the contemplative life to a castle with seven chambers. Tracing the passage of the soul through each successive chamber, she draws a powerful picture of the path toward spiritual perfection. It is the most sublime and mature of Teresa's works, offering profound and inspiring reflections on such subjects as self-knowledge, humility, detachment, and suffering. One of the most celebrated works on mystical theology in existence, as timely today as when St. Teresa of Avila wrote it centuries ago, this is a treasury of unforgettable maxims on self-knowledge and fulfillment.
Discover the timeless spiritual counsel of St. Teresa of Avila, first woman Doctor of the Church, in an easily accessible format. In Let Nothing Disturb You, selections from Teresa's writings have been carefully chosen and arranged for morning and evening meditation. Each book in theGreat Spiritual Teachers series provides a month of daily readings from one of Christianity's most beloved spiritual guides. For each day there is a brief and accessible morning meditation drawn from the mystic's writings, a simple mantra for use throughout the day, and a night prayer to focus one's thoughts as the day ends. These easy-to-use books are the perfect prayer companion for busy people who want to root their spiritual practice in the solid ground of these great spiritual teachers.
Experience the same Spirit-filled words that Mother Theresa shared with the poor, the dying, the hurting, and the skeptical. The quotes, stories, and prayers in this book are hers. Mother Teresa's work for -- and among -- the poor has become the yardstick by which millions measure compassion and generosity across religious and political divides. While Mother Theresa herself always stressed action over words, it is the latter that have provided solace and hope to those who never had the opportunity to meet her during her life. Though the world has lost one of its most admired women, Mother Theresa's words and her memory still serve to move men and women from every race and religious background to volunteer to help the poor. -- From publisher's description.
Sharing personal stories and revealing insights, the co-founder of Mother Teresa's priests' community reveals the secret source of her passion, spirit, and impact.
At the Home for the Dying in Calcutta, Mother Teresa often cared for the residents as they approached the end. As she was ministering to one illness-ravaged man, a visitor overheard her whisper a few words to him. These few words embody Mother Teresa's spiritual wisdom. This is what she said: You say a prayer in your religion, and I will say a prayer as I know it. Together we will say this prayer and it will be something beautiful for God. These gentle words of solace and care provide us with a glimpse of at a Mother Teresa we've often overlooked: Mother Teresa, the universal teacher of prayer. The world has admired the Mother Teresa who devoted her life to caring for the poorest of the poor everywhere. But her close associates knew that all of Mother Teresa's out activity of caring and action was the natural consequence of her devotion, the overflow of her deep inner life. They witnessed her reliance upon contemplative practice, and they recognized Mother Teresa not only as a devout Catholic, but also a great ecumenical teacher of prayer. With this deeply profound collection of her writings on prayer, meditation, and silence, the nun now recognized as Saint Teresa offers guidance and inspiration for people of all faiths, or none, seeking to walk a spiritual path. Everything Starts from Prayer simultaneously offers Saint Teresa's spiritual guidance and provides a step-by-step introduction to prayer. The book organizes her inspirational teachings into six distinct meditations on the spiritual life integrating prayer, love, faith, and service: 1. The Need to Pray 2. Starting with Silence 3. Like a Little Child 4. Opening Your Heart 5. Ending with Silence 6. The Fruit of Prayer
The saint wrote this luminous exposition of infused prayer in all its gradations and qualities, while she was suffering from a furious persecution. And yet it breathes that heavenly calmness peculiar to spirits dwelling in the loftier regions of heavenly peace. Like all of her writings she composed this one under a very stringent obedience from her confessor, at that time Canon Velasquez, afterwards Archbishop of Compostella. It is curiously allegorical in its framework; and yet the high topics are very plainly treated of, and they are made as intelligible to ordinary readers as is possible; all the more so, in fact, on account of the comparison she adopts between the stages of the soul's advancement in prayer, and the progress of a guest in a magnificent castle passing from its outer to its interior splendors. The style is familiar, yet the tone is stately, often even majestic. The author sheds a clear light, clear though dazzling, on the vague and distant and ravishingly beautiful states of contemplative prayer
The convent of St. Joseph at Avila having been inaugurated on August 24, 1562, and the storms occasioned by its foundation having sOlnewhat subsided, St. Teresa received perrnission, from the Provincial, Fray Angel de Salazar, to leave the Monastery of the Incarnation and join her new conununity; she crossed the threshold of that 'Paradise', as our Lord vouchsafed to call it, about Mid-Lent, 1563, never to leave the enclosure again-as she fervently hoped. She did not know then that God had destined her to more arduous work which would compel her to sally forth and establish convent after convent in distant parts of Spain. Her sojourn at St. Joseph's only lasted four and a half years, but, as she says, it was the happiest time of her life. The convent was small and poor, the observance as stria: as human nature, strengthened by grace, can bear, but she enjoyed to the full the peace which, after the many struggles graphically described in the Life, had at length been granted her. The visitor who has the privilege of penetrating into the hallowed enclosure will have to reconstruct in his mind the convent as it was in St. Teresa's time. The handsome church was not yet begun, and what is now called the primitive chapel was in reality built at a later period, though undoubtedly on the original lines. For even now it is only about twelve paces long and eight paces wide, and the sanctuary, the sacristy, and the nuns' choir are of diminutive proportions. The main building of the convent, in the shape of a quadrangle, is likewise a later addition: in the Saint's tinle a few old and small houses served for a convent, and the kitchen, the refectory, and other dependencies being on a lower level than the surrounding land, were both dark and damp. There were then no lay sisters to do the house-work. The few choir nuns took it in turns to see to the washing, the scrubbing, the service in the kitchen and scullery, and Teresa, who had been nominated Prioress by the Bishop, and retained that office until her death (employing a Vicaress during her prolonged absences), took her share, and more than her share, in the common work. Never was the convent so scrupulously clean as when it was her turn to do the scrubbing. Never was the food so tasty as when she did the kitchen, though she might have been seen in an ecstasy, saucepan in hand. The Divine Office was performed with a devotion and a refinement which were at once a source of edification for the faithful and a revelation to the clerics who came to assist at it.
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