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Provides historical background from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim perspectives to show the relevance and prominence of Adam and Eve's story in life today, where we are inundated with references to the Garden of Eden in popular culture from an early age.
A resonant call to explore the darkness in life, in nature, and in consciousness—including difficult emotions like uncertainty, grief, fear, and xenophobia—through teachings, embodied meditations, and mindful inquiry that provide us with a powerful path to healing. Darkness is deeply misunderstood in today’s world; yet it offers powerful medicine, serenity, strength, healing, and regeneration. All insight, vision, creativity, and revelation arise from darkness. It is through learning to stay present and meet the dark with curiosity rather than judgment that we connect to an unwavering light within. Welcoming darkness with curiosity, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing. Dharma teacher, shamanic practitioner, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light. Tull explores the medicine of darkness for personal and collective healing, through topics such as: Befriending the Night: The Radiant Teachings of Darkness Honoring Our Pain for Our World Seeing in the Dark: The Quiet Power of Receptivity Dreams, Possibility, and Moral Imagination Releasing Fear—Embracing Emergence Tull shows us how the labeling of darkness as “negative” becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes us uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. We can only find the radical path to wholeness by learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light.
As tourists we demand the same standards of service wherever we go, yet we always want the destination to be distinctive. Based on fieldwork in Tanzania & Indonesia, this book explores how tourism fantasies are rewarded in an increasingly homogenised world.
“Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America’s tragic adventurism across the globe.” —Pico Iyer Eden lies in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his room. We see them through the eyes of Eden’s best friend, a fellow Marine who didn’t make it back home—and who must relive the secrets held between all three of them as he waits for Eden to finally, mercifully die and join him in whatever comes after. A breathtakingly spare and shattering novel that explores the unseen aftereffects—and unacknowledged casualties—of war, Waiting for Eden is a piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and love. “The Tim O’Brien of our era.” —Vogue “Devastating.” —The Wall Street Journal “Haunting. . . . Daring.” —The Boston Globe “Heart-wrenching.” —NPR
All twelve years of Eden's life have been spent in an antique oil lamp. She lives like a princess inside her tiny, luxurious home, but to Eden, the lamp is nothing but a prison. She hates being a genie. All she wants, more than anything, is freedom. When Eden finds a gateway to Earth inside the lamp, she takes her chance. In a moment, she's entered the world she loves. And this time, she won't be sent back after three wishes. Posing as the new kid at a California middle school, Eden revels in all of Earth's pleasures—but quickly learns that this world isn't as perfect as she always thought it was. Eden soon finds herself in the middle of a centuries-old conflict between powerful immortals. A ruthless organization run by a former genie will stop at nothing to acquire the lamp and its power—including hurting Tyler and Sasha, the mortal friends who have given Eden a home. To save her friends—and protect the magic of the lamp—Eden will have to decide once and for all where she belongs.
I yearned to be acknowledged as a deserving Luna, even though the entire pack never addressed me as such. Nevertheless, I persevered, striving for their respect. Within each pack, leaders must earn the pack's allegiance rather than coerce it. Hence, I continued to push myself beyond the limits I had never before explored. Yet, despite my relentless efforts, I was deceived and betrayed. My so-called mate, Brett, and my supposed best friend, Jennifer, shattered my trust. We grew up without parents, but I cared for Jennifer as a sister would. Nevertheless, she plunged a metaphorical knife into my back. Now and future, never again will I allow anyone to exploit my vulnerability, I will reclaim my standing.
In this analysis of Milton's artistry as an epic poet, John G. Demaray offers a fresh perspective on one of the world's great epic poems. Placing Paradise Lost against the background of Renaissance theatrical and literary formspageants, baroque spectacles, masques, musical dramas, and Continental heroic worksDemaray offers the first extended critical reading of the poem as a unique theatrical epic incorporating heroic conventions, theological materials, and elements of visual pageantry. He examines Milton's early experiments in prophetic verse and theatrical forms, the poet's exposure to Italian theater and art during travels in 163839, and the influence of classical, Continental, and British works upon evolving drafts of Paradise Lost. He relates the epic in new ways to the writings of Jonson, Dryden, and others. Readers interested in seventeenth-century literature, Renaissance and baroque theater, the epic, religious writings, and the creative processes of Milton's imagination will all find many original insights in Milton's Theatrical Epic.
Lavinia Williamson, born into an abolitionist family in the mountains of Virginia, falls in love with a handsome plantation owner from eastern Virginia, marries him, and becomes the lady of the manor. Viewing the social injustice of human bondage on their plantation, she becomes a friend to the family’s slaves. After the death of her own daughter, she is especially taken with one of her husband’s daughters by a beautiful slave. Lavinia is torn between the love/hate relationship she has with her philandering husband, the responsibilities of running a tobacco plantation worked by the slaves she begins to love as her own people, and the question of human rights. What can one woman do to change the world around her? Lavinia’s involvement with the Underground Railroad that secretly operates through Virginia gives her life meaning, but it also creates fear, secrecy, hope, failure, triumph, and the conviction that she is in the right.
An exploration of the way Adam and Eve introduced the idea of love into the world, and how they continue to shape our deepest feelings about relationships, family, and togetherness. Since antiquity, Adam and Eve have stood at the center of every conversation about men and women. Yet instead of celebrating them, history has blamed them for bringing sin, deceit, and death into the world. In this fresh retelling of their story, Bruce Feiler travels from the Garden of Eden in Iraq to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, discovering how Adam and Eve should be hailed as exemplars of a long-term, healthy, resilient relationship. At a time of discord and fear over the strength of our social fabric, Feiler shows how history's first couple can again be role models for unity, forgiveness, and love.
