Download or read book Strange Rites written by Tara Isabella Burton and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.
Download or read book Discipleship in Community written by Mark E. Powell and published by ACU Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.” So, what exactly are we doing? Western churches face a difficult future marked by numerical decline and evident signs of shrinking cultural influence. But Discipleship in Community wisely asks the church to go back to basics. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does a life of discipleship look like? Trusted scholars Mark Powell, John Mark Hicks, and Greg McKinzie invite you to consider how good theology can lead to better, more intentional discipleship. In Discipleship in Community you will learn • how the language of Trinity matters to everyday disciples; • how God’s plan and mission is unfolding and how, as disciples, we can participate in that mission; • how the Bible is more than a book of facts and how it guides us into a relationship with God; • how baptism and the Lord’s Supper allow us to experience God’s saving power; and • how local churches can encourage intentional discipleship.
Download or read book Social Creature written by Tara Isabella Burton and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Best Books of the Year: Janet Maslin, The New York Times Vulture NPR "Social Creature is a wicked original with echoes of the greats (Patricia Highsmith, Gillian Flynn)." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times For readers of Gillian Flynn and Donna Tartt, a dark, propulsive and addictive debut thriller, splashed with all the glitz and glitter of New York City. They go through both bottles of champagne right there on the High Line, with nothing but the stars over them... They drink and Lavinia tells Louise about all the places they will go together, when they finish their stories, when they are both great writers-to Paris and to Rome and to Trieste... Lavinia will never go. She is going to die soon. Louise has nothing. Lavinia has everything. After a chance encounter, the two spiral into an intimate, intense, and possibly toxic friendship. A Talented Mr. Ripley for the digital age, this seductive story takes a classic tale of obsession and makes it irresistibly new.
Download or read book Adulthood Rites written by Octavia E. Butler and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower:After the near-extinction of the human race, one young man with extraordinary gifts will reveal whether the human race can learn from its past and rebuild their future . . . or is doomed to self-destruction. In the future, nuclear war has destroyed nearly all humankind. An alien race intervenes, saving the small group of survivors from certain death. But their salvation comes at a cost. The Oankali are able to read and mutate genetic code, and they use these skills for their own survival, interbreeding with new species to constantly adapt and evolve. They value the intelligence they see in humankind but also know that the species—rigidly bound to destructive social hierarchies—is destined for failure. They are determined that the only way forward is for the two races to produce a new hybrid species—and they will not tolerate rebellion. Akin looks like an ordinary human child. But as the first true human-alien hybrid, he is born understanding language, then starts to form sentences at two months old. He can see at a molecular level and kill with a touch. More powerful than any human or Oankali, he will be the architect of both races' future. But before he can carry this new species into the stars, Akin must reconcile with his own heritage in a world already torn in two.
Download or read book The World Cannot Give written by Tara Isabella Burton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Secret History meets The Price of Salt” (Vogue) in this “equal parts dangerous and delicious” (Entertainment Weekly) novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding school—and the ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them. When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the member of the choir. Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go. The World Cannot Give is a “hypnotic and intense” (Shondaland) meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.
Download or read book Killing Rites written by M.L.N. Hanover and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth book in M.L.N. Hanover’s acclaimed Black Sun’s Daughter series featuring “smooth prose and zippy action sequences” (Publishers Weekly). Jayné Heller has discovered the source of her uncanny powers: something else is living inside her body. She’s possessed. Of all her companions, she can only bring herself to confide in Ex, the former priest. They seek help from his old teacher, hoping to cleanse Jayné before the parasite in her becomes too powerful. Ex’s history and a new enemy combine to leave Jayné alone and on the run. Her friends try to hunt her down, unaware of the danger they’re putting her in. Jayné must defeat the past, and her only allies are a rogue vampire she once helped free—and the nameless thing hiding inside her skin.
Download or read book When Spiritual but Not Religious Is Not Enough written by Lillian Daniel and published by Jericho Books. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phrase "I'm spiritual but not religious" has become a cliché. It's easy to find God amid the convenience of self-styled spirituality -- but is it possible (and more worthwhile) to search for God through religion? Minister and celebrated author Lillian Daniel gives a new spin on church with stories of what a life of faith can really be: weird, wondrous, and well worth trying. From a rock-and-roller sexton to a BB gun-toting grandma, a church service attended by animals to a group of unlikely theologians at Sing Sing, Daniel shows us a portrait of church that is flawed, fallible -- and deeply faithful. With poignant reflections and sly wit, Daniel invites all of us to step out of ourselves, dare to become a community, and encounter a God greater than we could ever invent. Humorous and sincere, this is a book about people finding God in the most unexpected of places: prisons, airports, yoga classes, committee meetings, and, strangest of all, right there in church.
Download or read book Rites of Spring written by Modris Eksteins and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named "One of the 100 best books ever published in Canada" (The Literary Review of Canada), Rites of Spring is a brilliant and captivating work of cultural history from the internationally acclaimed scholar and writer Modris Eksteins. Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, Rites of Spring probes the origins, the impact and the aftermath of World War I--from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point...for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places." In this extraordinary book, Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, All Quiet on the Western Front. Rites of Spring is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and toward our future.
Download or read book Stranger Rituals written by Kali Rose Schmidt and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling author, Kali Rose Schmidt, comes a dark and bloody tale of religion, revenge, and an unholy resurrection. This wicked dark fantasy is riddled with blood magic, betrayal, and a frozen tundra on the verge of a holy war. No one is safe.
Download or read book Daily Rituals written by Mason Currey and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Marx to Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, 'Daily Rituals' examines the working routines of more than a 160 of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived. Filled with fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining stories of the personalities behind it, it is irresistibly addictive and utterly inspiring
Download or read book Forest Rites written by Peter Sahlins and published by Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1829, strange reports surfaced from the Ari ge department in the French Pyrenees, describing male peasants, bizarrely dressed in women's clothes, gathering in the forests at night to chase away state guards and charcoal-makers. This was the raucous War of the Demoiselles, a protest against the national French Forest Code of 1827, which restricted peasants' rights to use state and private forests. Peter Sahlins unravels the fascinating story of this celebrated popular uprising, and in his telling captures the cultural, historical, and political currents that swept the countryside during France's July 1830 Revolution. Sahlins explains how and why the Ari ge peasants drew on the practices and rituals of folk culture, as well as on a revolutionary tradition, to defend their inherited rights to the forest. To explore these rights and their expression, he delves into the history of forest management, of peasant conflicts with the state, and of popular culture--particularly the disputed history of Carnival and of local rituals of justice. Sahlins also sheds new light on the French revolutionary tradition and the "Three Glorious Days" of July 1830. The drama and symbolism of the War of the Demoiselles have inspired nearly a dozen plays, novels, films, and even a comic book. Using the concepts of anthropology and cultural studies as transport, Sahlins moves from this rich event to the wider worlds of peasant society in France. Focusing on the years from 1829 to 1832 but drawing on sources since the sixteenth century, his book should captivate social, cultural, and political historians of both early modern and modern Europe.
Download or read book Strange Hotel written by Eimear McBride and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Eimear McBride, author of the award-winning A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, comes the beguiling travelogue of a woman in exile: from her past, her ghosts, and herself. A nameless woman enters a hotel room. She’s been here once before. In the years since, the room hasn’t changed, but she has. Forever caught between check-in and check-out, she will go on to occupy other hotel rooms. From Avignon to Oslo, Auckland to Austin, each is as anonymous as the last but bound by rules of her choosing. There, amid the detritus of her travels, the matchbooks, cigarettes, keys and room-service wine, she negotiates with her memories, with the men she sometimes meets, with the clichés invented to aggravate middle-aged women, with those she has lost or left behind--and with what it might mean to return home. Urgent and immersive, filled with black humour and desire, McBride’s Strange Hotel is a novel of enduring emotional force.
Download or read book Incurable written by Lionel P Johnson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writings that shed new light on one of the most gifted, if reclusive, poets of the fin-de-siècle. A lost poet of the decadent era, Lionel Johnson is the shadow man of the 1890s, an enigma “pale as wasted golden hair.” History has all but forgotten Johnson, except as a footnote to the lives of more celebrated characters like W. B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. Johnson should have been one of the great poets of the age but was already drinking eau-de-cologne for kicks while a teenager at Winchester College. His attraction to absinthe damaged his fragile health and cast him forever into a waking dream of haunted rooms and spectral poetry. A habitual insomniac, he haunted medieval burial grounds after dark, jotting down the epitaphs of the gone-too-young, as if anticipating his own early demise at the age of 35—falling from a bar stool in a Fleet Street pub. It was rumored that Johnson performed “strange religious rites” in his rooms at Oxford and experimented with hashish in the company of fellow poet Ernest Dowson. Moving to London, he fell in with Simeon Solomon, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley, and would contribute to the leading decadent publications of the day, including The Chameleon, The Yellow Book, and The Savoy. Like a glimmering of a votive candle in one of Johnson's dream churches, Incurable sheds new light on one of the most gifted, if reclusive, poets of the fin-de-siècle. Containing a detailed biography, illustrations, rare and unusual material including previously unseen letters, poetry, and essays, Incurable pays tribute to this enchanting and eccentric poet while providing fresh insight into an era that continues to fascinate.
Download or read book Death Rites written by Alicia Giménez Bartlett and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petra Delicado, a Barcelona police inspector assigned to a desk job, returns to the homicide department to investigate the rapes of young girls by a serial rapist who only leaves a circular mark on his victims' forearms.
Download or read book First Love Last Rites written by Ian McEwan and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2011-02-11 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Somerset Maugham Award winner: Dark early fiction by the author of Nutshell—“A splendid magician of fear” (The Village Voice Literary Supplement). Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, the stories here show us how murder can arise out of boredom, perversity from adolescent curiosity—and how sheer evil can become the solution to unbearable loneliness. These short fiction pieces from the early career of the New York Times–bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach are claustrophobic tales of childhood, twisted psychology, and disjointed family life as terrifying as anything by Stephen King—and finely crafted with a lyricism and an intensity that compels us to confront our secret kinship with what repels us. “A powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful.” —The Boston Sunday Globe “Ian McEwan’s fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico’s city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb.” —The New York Times
Download or read book Memories Hopes and Conversations written by Mark Lau Branson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A second edition of Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is now available! With helpful updates throughout, the new edition features five new chapters on Appreciative Inquiry applied in real congregations. When First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, California, was asked to provide a mission study report for its pastor nominating committee, the congregation was afraid they would find themselves engaging in busy work and producing a report that would wind up in a file gathering dust. They then asked professor Mark Lau Branson to consult with them on writing this report. He invited them to join in a process of Appreciative Inquiry--a transformational organization change process--which resulted in a major shift in congregational conversations and a new sense of hope. Memories, Hopes, and Conversations recounts the experience of First Presbyterian and outlines a process that any congregation can utilize to harness the energies of the congregation at all levels of its common life. Branson first leads readers through the foundations of Appreciative Inquiry and bracingly explores biblical texts for understanding the practice in a faith context. He then outlines and illustrates a four-step process--Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Innovate--that creatively employs constructive conversations and questions to evoke storytelling and spur imaginations. Branson persuasively demonstrates how concentrating on needs and problems can mire a congregation in discouragement and distract it from noticing innate strengths. By focusing on memories of the congregation at its best, members are able to construct "provocative proposals" to help shape the church’s future. Grounded in solid theory and real-life practice, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is a groundbreaking work of narrative leadership and the first book to apply the principles of Appreciative Inquiry to the lives of congregations.
Download or read book Blood Rites written by Quinn Loftis and published by Quinn Loftis Books, LLC. This book was released on 2011-11-18 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the challenge complete and the corrupt Alpha of Coldspring defeated Fane is now free to complete the mate bond with Jacque and perform the Blood Rites. Although the challenge is done, the effects are far-reaching. Once it is known that Vasile one of the strongest Alphas in the world is in America, specifically Coldspring, TX, there is one Alpha who cannot overlook the significance of this. An Alpha who happens to share Jacque's DNA, but is this the one she needs to fear? With her mom driving and her two best friends, Jen and Sally in tow, Jacque set off for her happily ever after. She will soon realize a plan has been put in motion that will change her course and possibly tear her from Fane's grasp forever. It will take a wolf pack, her mother's love, her two best friend's unrelenting determination, her own will to survive and the undying love of her mate to bring her home. The question remains, if she fights, if she endures, who will she be, what will be left once she is back in her mate's arms?
