Entering the Twofold Mystery

Entering the Twofold Mystery PDF Author: Erik Varden
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472979443
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Erik Varden published The Shattering of Loneliness in 2018. Now, with the world in the throes of uncertainty and turbulence, he helps us interpret the signs of the times, convinced that the perennial experience of monks and nuns has much to teach us. The principles of monasticism have become attractive to many, awakened as we are to the importance of integrity, the pursuit of peace, asceticism as a path to freedom, hospitality and contemplative seeing. After a deeply personal introduction, Varden invites us to consider what makes a monk. He then takes us on a pilgrimage through the Church's year, drawing on Scripture, tradition and literary and religious figures of our time. Varden lets the reader discover the generous breadth and depth of a monk's outlook on life. In so doing he provides inspiration, enjoyment and enlightenment in equal measure.

The Shattering of Loneliness

The Shattering of Loneliness PDF Author: Erik Varden
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472953274
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
The experience of loneliness is as universal as hunger or thirst. Because it affects us more intimately, we are less inclined to speak of it. But who has not known its gnawing ache? The fear of loneliness causes anguish. It prompts reckless deeds. To this, every age has borne witness. No voice is more insidious than the one that whispers in our ear: 'You are irredeemably alone, no light will pierce your darkness.' The fundamental statement of Christianity is to convict that voice of lying. The Christian condition unfolds within the certainty that ultimate reality, the source of all that is, is a personal reality of communion, no metaphysical abstraction. Men and women, made 'in the image and likeness' of God, bear the mark of that original communion stamped on their being. When our souls and bodies cry out for Another, it is not a sign of sickness, but of health. A labour of potential joy is announced. We are reminded of what we have it in us to become. That our labour may be fruitful, Scripture repeatedly exhorts us to 'remember'. The remembrance enjoined is partly introspective and existential, partly historical, for the God who took flesh to redeem our loneliness leaves traces in history. This book examines six facets of Christian remembrance, complementing biblical exegesis with readings from literature, ancient and modern. It aims to be an essay in theology. At the same time, it proposes a grounded reflection on what it means to be a human being.

Awestruck

Awestruck PDF Author: Tim Cooper
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498271251
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 88

Book Description
Have you ever met someone who changed your life? Have you ever met someone who left you speechless? Have you ever met someone who left you amazed? Have you ever met someone that left you awestruck? It was an everyday occurrence when real people encountered Jesus for the first time. Time after time they found their lives turned upside down after their encounter. There was the career fisherman who dropped his nets and found his cross. There was the crippled man taking his first steps. The blind opened their eyes to see Jesus for the first time. There was the woman who bled for more than a decade who rejoiced in her first day of relief. There was the father who welcomed his daughter back to life. The Gospel of Mark captures these encounters and more. These weren't everyday encounters. These were life-altering events that changed the course of history one life at a time. Mark shows everyday men and women left awestruck by their encounters with God in the flesh finding new life and fresh perspective each step of the way. The best part is that God still desires those encounters for us today.

Becoming Who God Intended

Becoming Who God Intended PDF Author: David Eckman
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736914617
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
"Becoming Who God Intended" answers the heart questions of those who are deeply frustrated with their Christian life: Is it "normal" that my emotional experience doesn't match up with the Bible?" Why do I feel "alive" only when I engage in habitual sins and compulsions?" Do I just have to live with anxiety, anger, shame, and depression?" Every person's "heart life" is filled with "pictures" of reality--often false ones, says David Eckman. But as believers use the truth of their new identity in Christ to develop "biblical "pictures, they will be able to truly accept God's acceptance of them, be freed from negative emotions and habitual sins...and finally experience a life that matches what Scripture promises.

The Woman Who Waited

The Woman Who Waited PDF Author: Andreï Makine
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628723637
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
A moving, utterly captivating love story: Romeo and Juliet as if told by Chekhov or Dostoevsky. In a remote Russian village a woman waits, as she has waited for almost three decades, for the man she loves to return. Near the end of World War II, nineteen-year-old Boris Koptek left the village to join the Russian army, swearing to the sixteen-year-old love of his life, Vera, that as soon as he returned they would marry. Young Boris, who with his engineering battalion fought his way almost to Berlin, was reported killed in action crossing the Spree River. But Vera refuses to believe he is dead, and each day, all these years later, faithfully awaits his return. Then one day the narrator arrives in the village, a twenty-six-year-old native of Leningrad, who is fascinated both by the still-beautiful woman and her exemplary story, and little by little he falls madly in love with her. But how can he compete with a ghost that will not die? Beautifully, delicately, but always powerfully, Andreï Makine delineates in masterly prose the movements and madness that constitute the dance of pure love. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The Song That I Am

The Song That I Am PDF Author: Elisabeth-Paule Labat
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0879076801
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music is a short but full-to-the-brim essay on the decisive role that great music (whether Bach, Tavener, or Gregorian chant) ought to play in the spiritual life. With admirable restraint Élisabeth-Paule Labat shares her interior experience of music and thus continually opens up fresh vistas through worlds of sound and spirit. With her uncanny gift of language, Labat precisely describes soundings and yearnings of the soul that many of us glimpse fleetingly. Because "only the lover sings" (St. Augustine), her final illumination is that the experience of profound music ought to transform us into the beauty that we hear.

Baxter's Explore the Book

Baxter's Explore the Book PDF Author: J. Sidlow Baxter
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310871395
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1846

Book Description
Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.

The Joy of God

The Joy of God PDF Author: Mary David
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472971337
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Sister Mary David Totah was a nun of the Benedictine contemplative community of St Cecilia's Abbey on the Isle of Wight. American by birth, she was educated at Loyola University, the University of Virginia and Christ Church, Oxford. After a distinguished teaching career, she entered religious life in 1985. For 22 years until her early death from cancer she guided the young nuns of her abbey with enthusiasm, wisdom and wit. The spirituality to be found in the pages of this book demonstrates to the reader why her influence should have been so great and so deep. Her notes to the novices deal with issues of relevance to a world beyond the cloister: What is the meaning of suffering? How do we cope with living with people who annoy us? How do we relate to a God we cannot see? How do we make the big decisions of life? Sister Mary David's teaching was both profound and intensely practical, suffused with faith in God's joy in our work, leisure, community and family life but above all in our view and understanding of ourselves. This book, with an introduction by Abbot Erik Varden OCSO (author of The Shattering of Loneliness) shows us how to realize the Joy that is God.

The Water Thief

The Water Thief PDF Author: Ben Pastor
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466858834
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
In 304 c.e. Aelius Spartianus, officer and historian at the court of Diocletian in Dalmatia, is writing the biographies of past Roman rulers, including Hadrian, who has been dead for nearly 175 years. Aelius's particular charge is to investigate the unsolved mystery of the drowning death in the Nile of Hadrian's favorite, young Antinous. Soon his duty turns twofold: the hunt for Antinous's grave, supposed to conceal proof of a conspiracy against Rome, and the murder of a wealthy army supplier and his servant. The mystery thickens as deaths multiply; scholarly work turns into a race against time and into a confrontation with risk, lies, and half-truths at the hands of priests, authorities, and former colleagues. While the trials against Christians (later known as the Great Persecution) inflame Egypt, Aelius gathers clues in odd places until his road leads inescapably to Rome. Joined in his search by a blind retired soldier who is well experienced in counterespionage, Aelius scavenges for evidence in a world capital in decline. From Rome his breathless trail takes him to Hadrian's country estate, which is now acres and acres of monumental ruins in the wilderness. In the haunted stillness of roofless halls and overgrown gardens, Aelius deciphers the great plan of the villa, an astronomical chart confirming how the danger against Rome is clear and imminent. But who is behind it all? How deadly close is danger? In order to save the state and himself, Aelius must solve not only the puzzle of Antinous's drowning, but also the murders that have marred his path. Internationally renowned and critically acclaimed author Ben Pastor brings her thematic skill to bear in this new historical mystery. International Praise for the Works of Ben Pastor "History blends with absolute perfection to personal story, and the novel is like an orchestral score, with pages of rare evocative power. It is narrative one reads with admiration and even devotion." ---La Stampa Turrolibri on Kaputt Mundi "The mystery plot develops within a perfectly wrought historical milieu. . . . A novel of great emotional impact." ---Il Giorno on The Horseman's Song "Along with Margaret Doody and Elizabeth George, Ben Pastor is considered one of the strongest female voices of today's mystery writing. Her investigative tales show a breathless rhythm, a perfect blend of action thriller and authorial narrative." ---La Repubblica on The Dead in the Square "Pastor's plot is well crafted, her prose sharp." ---Publishers Weekly on Lumen

A Life Poured Out

A Life Poured Out PDF Author: Jean Jacques Perennes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
"The life, work, and martyrdom of an Algerian bishop who worked tirelessly to bring peace to his native land." -- Back cover.