LITMIR.BIZ

If you think that Jesus might have had something significant to say related to the well-being of the human race, this book is for you. If you think that Jesus' purpose was to get people into heaven after they died, this book is not for you. Actually, maybe it is, but you may not like it.
Through individual and group encounters and thought-provoking questions, through poetry, prayers, icons, and meditation exercises, this companion for the warrior mystic monk seeks to guide the reader into an encounter with the life force that holds together and flows through all creation.
This guide is intended for those who believe that Jesus began something central to the well-being of humanity and all creation, which has become almost lost within the institution of religion. Many who are embracing this emerging spiritual awakening remain within the church. The church continues to be family. At the same time, one's primary spiritual community is made up of those who are seeking awakening whether they are inside or outside of a religious institution.

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Parables of Jesus are stories about everyday life, ranging from a person's worldview to economic justice in society. This book examines most parables of Jesus from a critical literary perspective. Twenty-three narrative parables in the Synoptic Gospels are rearranged by their source: Markan parables, Q parables, Matthean unique parables, Lukan unique parables. Each parable invites readers to reengage Jesus's stories in the contemporary world.

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How is it that the person who created and defined the field of Black Studies and drafted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's prophetic Beyond Vietnam speech needs an introduction, even in movement circles today? In this provocative and poignant interview, Dr. Vincent Harding reflects on the communities that shaped his early life, compelled him to join movements for justice, and sustained his ongoing transformation. He challenges those committed to justice today to consider the enduring power of nonviolent social change and to root out white supremacy in all of its forms. With his relentless commitment to education and relationship-building across lines of difference, Harding never doubted the capacity of people to create the world we need.

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This volume provides a detailed account of the tireless, dedicated work of a small group of missionaries sent to China by the American Churches of Christ early in the twentieth century. The account includes the difficult years of preparation (1921-1928), the establishment of the Canton Mission to the onset of the Japanese threat (1929-1937), the heroic efforts during the Japanese occupation and war years (1938-1945), and finally, the work after the war until the communist takeover (1946-1949). The emphasis is on the people and their work: The Bensons and the Oldhams, who opened the Canton Mission in 1929, the Davises and the Whitfields, who were valuable additions to the work starting in 1933, and the Leungs and the Sos, their dedicated Chinese coworkers for over a decade. Their philosophies and strategies for missionary work are highlighted, and the pioneering work with its successes, failures, and lessons learned, is discussed. Finally, an attempt is made to assess the significance of the Canton Mission of the Churches of Christ within the historical framework of the early Protestant mission work in China.

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With the continual appearance of evidence that the emerging generation (the iGens) is not at all enamored of institutional churches, and is ignoring or forsaking them, it seemed a good time to take a step back, take a deep breath, and take a fresh look at what the church was intended to be and do in the New Testament document. The author spells out the landscape and reviews the profile of recent generations, and then sets about to set forth the church as the communal component of God's new creation in Christ. He engages in some challenges to the traditional understanding of the church, but sets forth a lively proposal in which every participant becomes interactive with the others, hence small fellowships. The younger iGens are into relationships, not institutions. This book portrays the church in relational terms, i.e., a church delivered from captivity to institutions and church professionals, hence a book that is controversial and perhaps a bit «cheeky» . . . but constructively challenging. The title is somewhat highjacked from the phenomenon known as the homebrew computer club, which is made up of six early computer scientists from whose creativity and relationship emerged much of the present computer and internet age.

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Medical imaging technologies can help diagnose and monitor patients' diseases, but they do not capture the lived experience of illness. In this volume, Devan Stahl shares her story of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis with the aid of magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Although clinically useful, Stahl did not want these images to be the primary way she or anyone else understood her disease or what it is like to live with MS. With the help of her printmaker sister, Darian Goldin Stahl, they were able to reframe these images into works of art. The result is an altogether different image of the ill body. Now, the Stahls open up their project to four additional scholars to help shed light on the meaning of illness and the impact medical imaging can have on our cultural imagination. Using their insights from the medical humanities, literature, visual culture, philosophy, and theology, the scholars in this volume advance the discourse of the ill body, adding interpretations and insights from their disciplinary fields.

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This brief volume brings together three of Norman Gottwald's classic essays that address issues of social class and ideology as they pertain to the interpretation of the biblical documents. The small format makes them useful for classroom and small-group use, providing definitions, theoretical concerns, and applications to specific texts. The author has been a leader in the social-scientific analysis of the Bible for almost fifty years.
Contents Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category in Biblical Studies Social Class and Ideology in Isaiah 40-55: An Eagletonian Reading Ideology and Ideologies in Israelite Prophecy

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Community Secondary Schools are the majority secondary schools in Tanzania. These are schools built by community initiatives with the aim of helping more children acquire a secondary education. Despite this good intention, these schools face a number of challenges. One such challenge has to do with academic performance. This book investigates this challenge. It examines the factors that contribute to students' poor performance in the community secondary schools in Tanzania to discern the main factors contributing to their poor performance. Many factors contribute to students' poor performance, such as lack of support from parents on educational issues, teachers' and students' attitudes and perceptions on education, inadequate learning and teaching materials and resources, learning and teaching environments, as well as lack of adequate motivation for teachers and students. This book explores these challenges and proposes future prospects to make such schools have efficient performance in Tanzania and other places of the world they are found.

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Womanist Sass and Talk Back is a contextual resistance text for readers interested in social (in)justice. Smith raises our consciousness about pressing contemporary social (in)justice issues that impact communities of color and the larger society. Systemic or structural oppression and injustices, police profiling and brutality, oppressive pedagogy, and gendered violence are placed in dialogue with sacred (con)texts. This book provides fresh intersectional readings of sacred (con)texts that are accessible to both scholars and nonscholars. Womanist Sass and Talk Back is for readers interested in critical interpretations of sacred (con)texts (ancient and contemporary) and in propagating the justice and love of God while engaging those (con)texts.

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When Reverend Mosby's son went to war, she, like so many other mothers, prayed for his safe return. Her prayers were answered. He came home, alive and whole. Or, so she thought.
The War Stole My Soul with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): What Now? is the result of a mother's mission to restore her son's faith in God and encourage his desire to live. In her quest to save her son from his despair, Reverend Mosby came to understand the debilitating effects of PTSD on the souls of veterans. She found there were no government resources to heal their broken spirits. Few church communities had either the knowledge of PTSD and its symptoms or the means to support its victims.
Reverend Mosby set out to educate those who could help those who suffer. She created a training program to raise awareness of PTSD among church leaders. Encouraged by the program's success, Reverend Mosby began speaking to church groups, veterans' organizations, corporations, and at conferences. And, now, through this book, she is expanding her reach so that no veterans and their caregivers will ever have to say: The War Stole My Soul with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): What Now?

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