Download or read book Contemplative Provocations written by Donald Haggerty and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2013-01-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great many religious people undertake, at least for a time, a serious dedication to prayer. They are moved by a longing for a deeper encounter with God, and the possibility of this beckons them as a distant light at night on the sea. Yet far fewer in number become true contemplative souls, for it is difficult to continue the quest for God in the face of many obstacles. For those who are spiritually courageous and full of desire for God, this book cannot but provoke them to begin or to persevere in this ultimate adventure in life-the more complete discovery of the living God. Thematically unified by the notion of God's ultimate transcendence to our limited human knowledge, Contemplative Provocations offers a rich profusion of insights on the life of prayer and the pursuit of God. A key to spiritual growth is the understanding that the hiddenness of God becomes a paradox in the experience of a soul seeking him wholeheartedly. Rather than enjoying a more intimate familiarity with God, the soul advancing in prayer is likely to experience more intensely, more provocatively, the concealment of God. This surprising truth undergirds true contemplative prayer. It is a reason why every contemplative soul, and every saint, is inflamed with a never satisfied thirst for God.
Download or read book The Contemplative Hunger written by Fr. Donald Haggerty and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A soul desiring to give itself in love to God faces great challenges that require understanding and some encouraging advice. Written in a style of short and effective meditations on prayer and contemplative spirituality, the concise reflections in this book address the heart of a soul's interior response to God. God's desire to draw souls to a deeper gift of themselves is inseparable from his desire to draw them into a deeper encounter with the sacred mystery of his presence. Offering an abundance of insights into the value of silence, deep faith, trust and interior surrender to God, Father Haggerty also illumines the link between contemplation and love for poverty and the poor, and makes a strong appeal to the importance of prayer as the primary answer to the crisis of faith that afflicts so many people today. The longing of souls for a deeper contemplative encounter with God is indeed a sign of the times. When it is nurtured properly and begins to burn as a passion of the soul, the love for prayer becomes a lifelong quest.
Download or read book Contemplative Enigmas written by Donald Haggerty and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite signs in recent decades of a crisis in the Church, a countercurrent of intense interest in prayer and a close relationship with God is clearly at work today. A deeper esteem for contemplation has accompanied this turning to prayer, and many people desire spiritual direction and guidance. Written by a recognized expert on contemplative prayer, this book concentrates on the interior hardships experienced by souls who give themselves to God wholeheartedly. More than a summary of the symptoms of interior trial, these poignant observations are the fruit of the author's many years in retreat work. Personal experience, not simply knowledge of the spiritual tradition, inform his concise, carefully crafted comments. Throughout the book, the writing invites the reader to ponder the subject of spiritual darkness, perplexity, and other struggles in the spiritual life always in the light of the loving God, who draws souls into greater surrender to himself.
Download or read book A Beginner s Guide to Japan written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Arguably the greatest living travel writer” (Outside magazine), Pico Iyer has called Japan home for more than three decades. But, as he is the first to admit, the country remains an enigma even to its long-term residents. In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed to pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations.
Download or read book Against Love written by Laura Kipnis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A polemic against love that is “engagingly acerbic ... extremely funny.... A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose” (The New Yorker). Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions. But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love. Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won’t injure you (well not severely); it’s just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.
Download or read book Fine Fine Fine Fine Fine written by Diane Williams and published by McSweeney's. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Elle's "Must-Read Titles for Your Book Club." Chosen by The Millions and Flavorwire as one of the most-anticipated books of 2016. The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called “folk tales that hammer like a nail gun,” and these 40 new ones are sharper than ever. They are unsettling, yes, frequently revelatory, and more often than not downright funny. Not a single moment here is what you might expect. While there is immense pleasure to be found in Williams’s spot-on observations about how we behave in our highest and lowest moments, the heart of the drama beats in the language of American short fiction’s grand master, whose originality, precision, and power bring the familiar into startling and enchanted relief.
Download or read book Autumn Light written by Pico Iyer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.
Download or read book Made for Goodness written by Desmond Tutu and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-02-20 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness."—Desmond Tutu In this personal and inspirational book, the late beloved Nobel Prize-winner and humanitarian shares the secret of joy and hope in the face of life’s difficulties. Archbishop Desmond Tutu witnessed some of the world’s darkest moments, for decades fighting the racist government policy of apartheid and since then being an ambassador of peace amidst political, diplomatic, and natural disasters. Yet people find him and his work joyful and hopeful. In Made for Goodness, Tutu shares his source of strength and optimism. Written with his daughter, Mpho, who is also an ordained Anglican minister, Tutu argues that God has made us for goodness, and when we simply start walking in the direction of this calling, God is there to meet us, encourage us, embrace us. God has made the world as a grand theater for us to work out this call to goodness; it is up to us to live up to this calling, but God is there to help us every step of the way. So, tackling our worst problems takes on new meaning and is bostered with hope and the expectation that that is exactly where God will show up. Father and daughter offer an inspiring message of hope that will transform readers into activists for change and blessing.
Download or read book Disturbance written by Philippe Lançon and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Prix Femina–winning memoir, a writer at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo recounts surviving the deadly terror attack on their office. On January 7, 2015, two terrorists claiming allegiance to ISIS attack the Paris office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The event causes untold pain to the victims and their families, prompts a global solidarity movement, and ignites a fierce debate over press freedoms and the role of satire today. Philippe Lançon, a journalist, author, and a weekly contributor to Charlie Hebdo is gravely wounded in the attack—an experience that upends his relationship to the world. As Lançon attempts to reconstruct his life on the page, he rereads Proust, Thomas Mann, Kafka, and others in search of guidance. It is a year before he can return to writing, a year in which he learns to work through his experiences and their aftermath. Disturbance is not an essay on terrorism nor is it a witness’s account of Charlie Hebdo. It is an honest, intimate account of a man seeking to put his life back together after it has been torn apart. “A powerful and deeply civilized memoir.” —The New York Times
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-03 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Download or read book Dating Detox written by Kevin and Lisa Cotter and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If we want love, why do we often settle for less?" — from the Foreword by Jason and Crystalina Evert Tired of toxic relationships, many young adults want to clean up their love lives. They desire to give their lives to Christ and turn away from sin—but without a concrete plan, they quickly fall back into old habits. Featuring daily reflections and resolutions, this forty-day detox provides a practical "cleanse" for those who want to purify themselves from the poisoned dating culture and live a life of authentic freedom, respect, and love. Inside you'll find: Compelling and clear explanations of "God's plans for love, dating, and sex" Hopeful true-life stories of people who have successfully moved from desiring chastity to actually living it Practical tools, habits, and strategies to live more virtuously with joy and freedom
Download or read book Divine Enticement Theological Seductions written by Karmen Mackendrick and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divine Enticement argues for a reconception of theology and it subject matter as modes of seduction, of both body and mind. Theological language as evocation opens onto rereadings of faith, sacrament, ethics, prayer and scripture. The conclusion argues for a sense of theology as calling upon infinite possibility.
Download or read book Desmond Tutu written by Michael Battle and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of its kind about Desmond Tutu, this book introduces readers to Tutu's spiritual life and examines how it shaped his commitment to restorative justice and reconciliation. Desmond Tutu was a pivotal leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and remains a beloved and important emblem of peace and justice around the world. Even those who do not know the major events of Tutu’s life—receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, serving as the first black archbishop of Cape Town and primate of Southern Africa from 1986–1996, and chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995–1998—recognize him as a charismatic political and religious leader who helped facilitate the liberation of oppressed peoples from the ravages of colonialism. But the inner landscape of Tutu’s spirituality, the mystical grounding that spurred his outward accomplishments, often goes unseen. Rather than recount his entire life story, this book explores Tutu’s spiritual life and contemplative practices—particularly Tutu’s understanding of Ubuntu theology, which emphasizes finding one’s identity in community—and traces the powerful role they played in subverting the theological and spiritual underpinnings of apartheid. Michael Battle’s personal relationship with Tutu grants readers an inside view of how Tutu’s spiritual agency cast a vision that both upheld the demands of justice and created space to synthesize the stark differences of a diverse society. Battle also suggests that North Americans have much to learn from Tutu’s leadership model as they confront religious and political polarization in their own context.
Download or read book The Wretched of the Earth written by Frantz Fanon and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixtieth anniversary edition of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, now with a new introduction by Cornel West First published in 1961, and reissued in this sixtieth anniversary edition with a powerful new introduction by Cornel West, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterfuland timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle, and a continuing influence on movements from Black Lives Matter to decolonization. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Alongside Cornel West’s introduction, the book features critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha. This sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Download or read book The Dangers of Christian Practice written by Lauren F. Winner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the central place that "practices" have recently held in Christian theology, Lauren Winner explores the damages these practices have inflicted over the centuries Sometimes, beloved and treasured Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. In this bracing book, Lauren Winner provocatively challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue and that can't be answerable to their histories. Is there, for instance, an account of prayer that has anything useful to say about a slave-owning woman's praying for her slaves' obedience? Is there a robustly theological account of the Eucharist that connects the Eucharist's goods to the sacrament's central role in medieval Christian murder of Jews? Arguing that practices are deformed in ways that are characteristic of and intrinsic to the practices themselves, Winner proposes that the register in which Christians might best think about the Eucharist, prayer, and baptism is that of "damaged gift." Christians go on with these practices because, though blighted by sin, they remain gifts from God.
Download or read book Worship across the Racial Divide written by Gerardo Marti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many scholars and church leaders believe that music and worship style are essential in stimulating diversity in congregations. Gerardo Marti draws on interviews with more than 170 congregational leaders and parishioners, as well as his experiences participating in worship services in a wide variety of Protestant, multiracial Southern Californian churches, to present this insightful study of the role of music in creating congregational diversity. Worship across the Racial Divide offers a surprising conclusion: that there is no single style of worship or music that determines the likelihood of achieving a multiracial church. Far more important are the complex of practices of the worshipping community in the production and absorption of music. Multiracial churches successfully diversify by stimulating unobtrusive means of interracial and interethnic relations; in fact, preparation for music apart from worship gatherings proves to be just as important as its performance during services. Marti shows that aside from and even in spite of the varying beliefs of attendees and church leaders, diversity happens because music and worship create practical spaces where cross-racial bonds are formed. This groundbreaking book sheds light on how race affects worship in multiracial churches. It will allow a new understanding of the dynamics of such churches, and provide crucial aid to church leaders for avoiding the pitfalls that inadvertently widen the racial divide.
Download or read book Interior States written by Meghan O'Gieblyn and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of The Believer Book Award for Nonfiction "Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection." --Lorrie Moore A fresh, acute, and even profound collection that centers around two core (and related) issues of American identity: faith, in general and the specific forms Christianity takes in particular; and the challenges of living in the Midwest when culture is felt to be elsewhere. What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts? The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country." She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still," and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the fifteen superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture ("Hell"), a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design ("Species of Origin"), the paradoxes of Christian Rock ("Sniffing Glue"), Henry Ford's reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages ("Midwest World"), and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity ("Ghosts in the Cloud"). Meghan O'Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California - which is to say a whole-hearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.
