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"Now more than ever, we need a teacher and a book such as this."--Anne Lamott, from the foreword Stories tether us to what matters most: our families, our friends, our hearts, our planet, the wondrous mystery of life itself. Yet the stories we've been telling ourselves as a civilization are killing us: Fear is wisdom. Vanity is virtuous. Violence is peace. In the pages of Between the Listening and the Telling, storyteller, author, and activist Mark Yaconelli leads readers into an enchanting meditation on the power of storytelling in our individual and collective lives. We tell stories to remember who we are. We tell stories to savor the pleasure of living. Stories can be medicine, and they c...
Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion presents a wide-ranging compilation of essays, spanning more than 15 countries. Organized in four parts, the articles examine the regulation and exploitation of dancers and dance activity by government and authoritative groups, including abusive treatment of dancers within the dance profession; choreography involving human rights as a central theme; the engagement of dance as a means of healing victims of human rights abuses; and national and local social/political movements in which dance plays a powerful role in helping people fight oppression. These groundbreaking papers--both detailed scholarship and riveting personal accounts--encompass a broad spectrum of issues, from slavery and the Holocaust to the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; from First Amendment cases and the AIDS epidemic to discrimination resulting from age, gender, race, and disability. A range of academics, choreographers, dancers, and dance/movement therapists draw connections between refugee camp, courtroom, theater, rehearsal studio, and university classroom.
Sabbaticals are becoming increasingly common practice in congregations, and while there are many books on helping pastors prepare for their time away, there are no texts that approach the experience with the congregation in mind, from start to finish. This guide for congregations and their pastors draws on nearly two decades of wisdom from the Lily Endowment Clergy Renewal Program and helps draw the conversation away from a pastor-centric model and towards a holistic congregational framework for thinking about how the entire community can benefit from a pastor’s sabbatical.
Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise meets Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity in a Black woman’s coming-of-age story, chronicling a life-changing friendship, the interplay between music fandom and identity, and the slipperiness of sanity Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is an immersive journey into the life and mind of Khaki Oliver, who’s perennially trying to disappear into something: a codependent friendship, an ill-advised boyfriend, the punk scene, or simply, the ether. These days it’s a meaningless job and a comfortingly empty apartment. Then, after a decade of estrangement, she receives a letter from her former best friend. Fiona...
In difficult times, relationships provide tangible help, advice, resources, and emotional support. This is true not only for individuals but also for religious congregations. U.S. congregations are experiencing many opportunities and challenges because of dramatic shifts in the American religious landscape as well as the lingering effects of the pandemic. For ministers and leaders at congregations, these changes may have sparked feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and disorientation. Fortunately, relationships with other congregations and religious groups can have a positive impact on how congregations are responding to the opportunities and challenges they face in an uncertain future. In this...
Congregations are shrinking and in decline. Fewer people are part of communities of faith. Michael Plekon's previous book, Community as Church, Church as Community, traced the factors behind this as well as the resurrection of parishes that have reimagined themselves in diverse ways. Pastors have played essential roles in such transformation. But where are the ordained today? Ministry Matters is a sustained meditation on the vocation, lives, and work of pastors today. We listen to an ecumenical group of exceptional pastor-theologians on how pastors live and serve. These include George Keith, Nicholas Afanasiev, Barbara Brown Taylor, C. Andrew Doyle, Andrew Root, Sarah Coakley, Samuel Wells, Rowan Williams, Henri Nouwen, Pope Francis, David Barnhart, and Will Willimon, with commentary from Michael Plekon, who has served as priest in both western and eastern churches for over forty years. Many years of pastoral experience are shared here, providing a feast of reflection on the shepherds of God's flock.
"Presents the Quaker practice of silence and expectant listening"--Back cover.
Parishes of all denominations are in decline, shrinking, closing, dying. We know that there are increasing numbers, young and older, who are religious “nones” and “dones.” This book explores why the decline is taking place, why the distancing is going on. But it goes on to examine parishes from all over the country and from various church bodies that are resurrecting. The central theme of death and resurrection shapes the analysis of parishes covered. Parishes are resurrecting by reinventing their ministries, by repurposing their building to better serve their neighborhoods, thus replanting and reconnecting with them. All of this is the Spirit’s doing but through the community of s...
A Grammar of Holy Mystery is about Christian spirituality. It is about mysticism as a firsthand encounter with the presence of God—unfathomable, unnamable, mysterious, fulfilling. It is about classical Christianity, the way of transforming truth found in Christ, taught in Scripture, lived by saints, sages, and mystics, and passed on as a sacred trust through the centuries. Being neither liberal nor conservative, but simply Christian, it is ecumenical in spirit. For those traumatized by harsh or shallow churches, A Grammar of Holy Mystery points the way out and shows the way to a faith that renews the mind, restores the spirit, and gladdens the heart.
Murder mystery, in which a British poet, on an academic assignment in New York, is the protagonist.