Download or read book The Noonday Devil written by Jean-Charles Nault and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2015-11-11 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The noonday devil is the demon of acedia, the vice also known as sloth. The word “sloth”, however, can be misleading, for acedia is not laziness; in fact it can manifest as busyness or activism. Rather, acedia is a gloomy combination of weariness, sadness, and a lack of purposefulness. It robs a person of his capacity for joy and leaves him feeling empty, or void of meaning Abbot Nault says that acedia is the most oppressive of demons. Although its name harkens back to antiquity and the Middle Ages, and seems to have been largely forgotten, acedia is experienced by countless modern people who describe their condition as depression, melancholy, burn-out, or even mid-life crisis. He begins his study of acedia by tracing the wisdom of the Church on the subject from the Desert Fathers to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He shows how acedia afflicts persons in all states of life— priests, religious, and married or single laymen. He details not only the symptoms and effects of acedia, but also remedies for it.
Download or read book The Noonday Demon written by Andrew Solomon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author offers a look at depression in which he draws on his own battle with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, researchers, doctors, and others to assess the complexities of the disease, its causes and symptoms, and available therapies. This book examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has on various demographic populations, around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness. He takes readers on a journey into the most pervasive of family secrets and contributes to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition.
Download or read book Fighting the Noonday Devil and Other Essays Personal and Theological written by R. R. Reno and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stirring volume R. R. Reno a thoughtful, literate writer with a zest for physical and theological adventure looks back on his time working in the oil fields of Wyoming, his quests to the heights of Yosemite and the ice cliffs of the French Alps, his daughter s bat mitzvah, and more, rendering seven diverse fragments of life in energetic prose. Fighting the Noonday Devil resounds with Reno s depth of feeling and regard for the tangible things of life. Through these narratives, vignettes, and reflections he shows that it is the real-life manifestations of love and loyalty far beyond intellectual abstractions or theories that train us for true piety. Whether defending Jack Kerouac, describing work on a drilling rig, or narrating his reception into the Roman Catholic Church, Rusty Reno brings a writer s eye and a theologian s heart to the essayist s labors. Many rewards await the reader of this book. Alan Jacobs author of Wayfaring and The Narnian R. R. Reno s essays are intellectually stimulating, and some even possess cinematic possibilities. I find their Augustinian ethos deeply appealing in their consistent combination of wisdom and eloquence. David K. Naugle author of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness In this smart and sparkling collection R. R. Reno applies his consummate literary skills to subjects as diverse as acedia, mountain climbing, religious conversion, Jack Kerouac, and interfaith marriage, uniting them under a single glorious banner, that of reclaiming the essential function of culture, the cultivation of the soul. A bravura performance. Philip Zaleski coauthor of Prayer: A History Fighting the Noonday Devil is the work of a pious intellect in all the best senses of the term. . . . Reno reads his life in parables in a way that provokes us to see our own lives anew. In him we find a voice and style in the best tradition of Newman incisive, affecting, wise, inviting. I was captivated by this book. James K. A. Smith author of The Devil Reads Derrida and Other Essays on the University, the Church, Politics, and the Arts
Download or read book Dan England and the Noonday Devil written by Myles Connolly and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A joyous gent who sings of the glory of the true realities of life, Dan England chose “talking” as his vocation in life. This he did, joyously and beautifully. He talked to the poets without dreams, actors who couldn’t act, and writers who couldn’t write who came to his house for an evening to listen and stayed on for months...years. Not a few found new hope as they heard him capture the poetry of living in his talk of saints, and in stories about his greatness of God’s gifts (among which was the wine that gave added sparkle to his words). There was Briggs, the religion editor without religion to become a fearless “defender of the faith” under Dan’s influence. And Tim, the janitor who “exposed” the corruption of the Match Industry when in an idle hour’s count of a box of matches he found “four” missing. For the glorious length of a Dan England discourse the retiring little janitor became a tiger for reform. This is the latest troubadour of life-beautiful to come from the pen of the author of the classic Mr. Blue.
Download or read book Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon written by Donald Grayston and published by Lutterworth Press. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon, Donald Grayson transforms a long-neglected cache of letters found in an ancient monastery into a book that offers new insight into the author of these letters, Thomas Merton, the renowned spiritual writer. At the time of their writing, the mid-1950s, he was living as a Trappist monk, at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Having reached an impasse in his monastic vocation he decided to leave Gethsamani for the Monastery of Camaldoli in Italy. Camaldoli at that time, bucolic and peaceful outwardly, was inwardly riven by a pre-Vatican II culture war; whereas Gethsemani, which he tried so hard to leave, became, when he was given his hermitage there in 1965, his place to recover Eden. In walking with Merton on this journey, and reading the letters he wrote and received at the time, we find ourselves asking, as he did, with so much energy and honesty, the deep questions that we may well need to answer in our own lives.
Download or read book The Noonday Demon written by John Blackwell and published by Crossroad. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are all tempted by sloth, the sin of being superficial, of ignoring what is good and important in life. This spiritual journey through the Bible, history, and culture exposes sloth and offers tips on how to combat it.
Download or read book Acedia Me written by Kathleen Norris and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kathleen Norris's masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its relevancy to the modern individual and culture.
Download or read book Devil in the Dollhouse written by Richard Kadrey and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Stark, a.k.a. Sandman Slim, has a new job, but being the new Lucifer in town gives fresh meaning to the word "Hell." Especially when he hears of hideous massacres near a haunted fortress out on Hell's frontier. As far as Stark's concerned, the more dead Hellions, the better, but he still has to prove that no one screws with Sandman Slim. And facing creatures so terrible even Hell does not want them is no cakewalk, even for Lucifer.
Download or read book A Stone Boat written by Andrew Solomon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut novel, first published nearly twenty years ago, from the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity--a luminous and moving evocation of the love between a son and his mother. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction prize, A Stone Boat is an achingly beautiful, deeply perceptive story of family, sexuality, and the startling changes wrought by grief, loss, and self-discovery. Harry, an internationally celebrated young concert pianist, travels to Paris to confront his glamorous and formidable mother about her dismay at his homosexuality. Before he can give voice to his hurt and anger, he discovers that she is terminally ill. In an attempt to escape his feelings of guilt and despair over the prospect of her death, he embarks on several intense affairs--one with a longtime female friend--that force him to question his capacity for love, and finally to rediscover it. Part eulogy, part confession, and part soliloquy on forgiveness, A Stone Boat is a luminous evocation of the destructive and regenerative, all-encompassing love between a son and his mother, by America's foremost chronicler of personal and familial resilience.
Download or read book The Devil and Daniel Webster written by Stephen Vincent Benet and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 1943-10 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: Jabez Stone, young farmer, has just been married, and the guests are dancing at his wedding. But Jabez carries a burden, for he knows that, having sold his soul to the Devil, he must, on the stroke of midnight, deliver it up to him. Shortly before twelve Mr. Scratch, lawyer, enters and the company is thunderstruck. Jabez bids his guests begone; he has made his bargain and will pay the price. His bride, however, stands by him, and so will Daniel Webster, who has come for the festivities. Webster takes the case. But Scratch is a lawyer himself and out-argues the statesman. Webster demands a jury of real Americans, living or dead. Very well, agrees the Devil, he shall have them, and ghosts appear. Webster thunders, but to no avail, and at last realizing Scratch can better him on technical grounds, he changes his tactics and appeals to the ghostly jury, men who have retained some love of country. Rising to the height of his powers, Webster performs the miracle of winning a verdict of Not Guilty.
Download or read book The Conferences of John Cassian written by John Cassian and published by Aeterna Press. This book was released on with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE obligation, which was promised to the blessed Pope Castor in the preface to those volumes which with God's help I composed in twelve books on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the remedies for the eight principal faults, has now been, as far as my feeble ability permitted, satisfied. I should certainly like to see what was the opinion fairly arrived at on this work both by his judgment and yours, whether, on a matter so profound and so lofty, and one which has never yet been made the subject of a treatise, we have produced anything worthy of your notice, and of the eager desire of all the holy brethren. But now as the aforesaid Bishop has left us and departed to Christ, meanwhile these ten Conferences of the grandest of the Fathers, viz., the Anchorites who dwelt in the desert of Scete, which he, fired with an incomparable desire for saintliness, had bidden me write for him in the same style (not considering in the greatness of his affection, what a burden he placed on shoulders too weak to bear it)--these Conferences I have thought good to dedicate to you in particular, O blessed Pope, Leontius, and holy brother Helladius. Aeterna Press
Download or read book Dealing with the Devil written by Cummings Samuel Lovett and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first twenty years of my Christian life, no one told me about Satan. I didn't dream that there was a personal devil, any more than I had previously believed Jesus was a personal Savior. How could I know there were spiritual mechanics for defeating him just as there are mechanics for receiving Christ? I didn't know there was anything I had to do about Satan to defeat him any more than I knew I had to do to something about Jesus to be saved. No pastor, no professor at seminary, no friend in Christ ventured to explain our greatest enemy-Satan. I have learned a wonderful, practical way to deal with him. You can't imagine what it is like when Satan flees! It is glorious! Yes, he comes back and there is no bottom to his bag of tricks, but what a fantastic moment when he flees from you as you send him on his way in the power of the Holy Spirit! If you haven't tasted this awesome privilege in Christ, you must! You need to learn this skill to be a conquering, successful Christian in this evil world! I don't want any Christian, God allows me to reach, to go through this life without knowing the thrill of that moment. I have found it to be the key to victory in the Christian life. My motive for writing this book is for you to know how to have victory over Satan. It is not a devotional manual. It is not Godward, but Satanward. If you find a point or two which appear to be upsetting, please believe I want only for you to regard Satan as your personal enemy and to equip you with a means for resisting and defeating him. After reading this book, you'll never be able to say, "no one ever told me about Satan!"
Download or read book The Devil You Know written by Trish Doller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A road trip fling turns frightful in this powerful new psychological thriller from Trish Doller.
Download or read book Devil in the Details written by Jennifer Traig and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2007-09-03 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer Traig's memoir Devil in the Details paints a portrait of a well-meaning Jewish girl and her good-natured parents, and takes a very funny, very sharp look back at growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Recalling the agony of growing up an obsessive-compulsive religious fanatic, Traig fearlessly confesses the most peculiar behavior like tirelessly scrubbing her hands for a full half hour before dinner, feeding her stuffed animals before herself, and washing everything she owned because she thought it was contaminated by pork fumes. Jennifer's childhood mania was the result of her then undiagnosed OCD joining forces with her Hebrew studies-what psychiatrists call scrupulosity While preparing for her bat mitzvah, she was introduced to an entire set of arcane laws and quickly made it her mission to follow them perfectly. Her parents nipped her religious obsession in the bud early on, but as her teen years went by, her natural tendency toward the extreme led her down different paths of adolescent agony and mortification. Years later, Jennifer remembers these scenes with candor and humor. In the bestselling tradition of Running with Scissors and A Girl Named Zippy, Jennifer Traig tells an unforgettable story of youthful obsession.
Download or read book Acedia and Its Discontents written by R. J. Snell and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the term acedia may be unfamiliar, the vice, usually translated as sloth, is all too common. Sloth is not mere laziness, however, but a disgust with reality, a loathing of our call to be friends with God, and a spiteful hatred of place and life itself. As described by Josef Pieper, the slothful person does not "want to be as God wants him to be, and that ultimately means he does not wish to be what he really, fundamentally is." Sloth is a hellish despair. Our own culture is deeply infected, choosing a destructive freedom rather than the good work for which God created us. Acedia and Its Discontents resists despair, calling us to reconfigure our imaginations and practices in deep love of the life and work given by God. By feasting, keeping sabbath, and working well, we learn to see the world as enchanting, beautiful, and good--just as God sees it. "In the arid wasteland that is academic writing, amid the wider desert that is modern secular thought, R. J. Snell's book on acedia is an oasis of flowers and fruit and fresh water. Professor Snell reminds us that man must never be made subordinate to work, nor even to the empty 'vacations' that are but interruptions in work. Like his great predecessors Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritain, Max Picard, Romano Guardini, and Pope John Paul II, he diagnoses the besetting disease of our time--spiritual torpor--and prescribes as a remedy the joyful celebration of the Sabbath. A stupendous book, filled with the happiness of wonder."--ANTHONY ESOLEN, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child "A whole book about just one vice, 'sloth'? Ah, but this book is different-and devastating. It exposes a deeply hidden and deeply destructive fundamental attitude that pervades our culture, an attitude that comes not just from the flesh (laziness) or from the world (world-weariness, cynicism), but from the Devil: disgust and rebellion toward Being itself, natural as well as supernatural. This is the 'noonday devil' that great saints have labelled 'sloth.' Know your enemy. Read this book!"--PETER KREEFT, author of Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas "Acedia--the sin of sloth, so often confused with laziness--is the most overlooked but widespread illness of the modern age; the emptiness under the mask of the world's frantic activity. R.J. Snell helps us see why this is so and what Christians can do about it with elegant, penetrating insight. This is a terrific book about a badly misunderstood 'deadly sin' and its antidotes."--CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia "Our modern Empire of Desire manufactures endless appetite while simultaneously denying that anything is objectively good, beautiful, or desirable. The result is not great yearning or passion, but acedia or sloth, a pervasive 'noonday demon' which prowls about our culture like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. In this learned study, R.J. Snell draws on the vast spiritual and intellectual resources of the Christian tradition to diagnose the deep structure of our contemporary nihilism, exposing this demon and its far-reaching effects with elegance and profundity and thereby providing the weapons necessary to slay it. This is a timely and important book."--MICHAEL HANBY, author of No God, No Science: Theology, Cosmology, Biology R. J. SNELL is professor of philosophy at Eastern University in St. Davids, PA, and executive director of the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. His recent books include Authentic Cosmopolitanism (with Steve Cone) and The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode. He and his wife have four young children.
Download or read book The Noonday Devil written by Ursula Curtiss and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1951 edition.
Download or read book Talk of the Devil written by Riccardo Orizio and published by Walker. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by newspaper clippings he had kept about two former African dictators accused of cannibalism, journalist Riccardo Orizio set out to track down tyrants around the world who had fallen from power—to see if they had gained any perspective on their actions, or if their lives and thoughts could shed any light on our own. The seven encounters chronicled in Talk of the Devil reveal Orizio’s gift as an observer and his skill at getting people to reveal themselves. They are also, each of them, memorable stories in their own right. Thanks to his conversion to Islam, the unrepentant Idi Amin lives in exile in Saudi Arabia and laughs off his murderous past while still attempting to meddle in Uganda. Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the bloody former emperor of Central Africa, boasts astonishingly that Pope Paul VI had nominated him as the thirteenth apostle of the Catholic Church. Nexhmije Hoxha defends her husband’s brutal Stalinist regime from her Albanian prison cell and proudly explains how it worked. Paris-based Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier—in his first interview since fleeing Haiti in 1986—speaks about voodoo and the women of his life, and laments the loss of his fortune. Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam of Ethiopia, Mira Markovic (Slobodan Milosevic’s wife), and General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Polish head of state, all claim, in one way or another, that history will do them justice. By turns chilling and comical, rational and absurd, Talk of the Devil brings back into focus forgotten history and people we have viewed as evil incarnate. Stripped of their power and titles, they are oddly human, and in Orizio’s hands, their stories, and his own, are compulsively readable.
