In the process of evolution, human beings have overcome a multitude of challenges and trials. One such recent encounter was with the pandemic COVID-19. The onslaught of a pandemic is not new in history, not so frequent and will also not be the last. However, during this pandemic, while some people perished, many evolved fighting against it and that’s what makes the journey of human species fascinating. This book is a perception of the journey of a variety of demographics through the pandemic and the series of lockdowns initiated to contain it. If on one hand, there was a closure of economic, religious, education and governmental institutions, on the other, there were attempts made to go digital and cope with new realities. While the women and LGBTQ+ community became vulnerable in their homes, the migrant labourers and sailors longed to return to their homes. If addiction to adult films was worrying, the actors in this industry struggled to survive. The small shopkeepers and domestic helpers were left in a lurch. The journey was tough yet extraordinary. As we move towards a new normal, how well prepared are we? Do we have any lessons learnt?
Join Adam and Christine Jeske as they mine their experience, from riding motorcycles in Africa to dicing celery in Wisconsin, in search of a God who is always present and who is charging every moment with potential. You'll discover the amazing things God is doing in the shadows of even the most ordinary day.
A deeply personal introduction to the biblical theology and spirituality of Opus Dei by the bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn. To conspiracy theorists, Opus Dei is a highly secretive and powerful international organization. To its members, however, Opus Dei is a spiritual path, a way of incorporating the teachings of Jesus into everyday life. In Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace, Scott Hahn, a member of Opus Dei, describes the organization’s founding, its mission, and its profound influence on his life. Hahn recounts the invaluable part Opus Dei played in his conversion from Evangelical Christianity to Catholicism and explains why its teachings remain at the center of his life. Through stories about his job, his marriage, his role as a parent, and his community activities, Hahn shows how Opus Dei’s spirituality enriches the meaning of daily tasks and transforms ordinary relationships. He offers inspiring insights for reconciling spiritual and material goals, discussing topics ranging from ambition, workaholism, friendship, and sex, to the place of prayer and sacrifice in Christianity today. Engaging and enlightening, Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace is at once a moving personal story and an inspiring work of contemporary spirituality.
David Hartsough knows how to get in the way. He has used his body to block Navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines. Waging Peace is a testament to the difference one person can make. Hartsough’s stories inspire, educate, and encourage readers to find ways to work for a more just and peaceful world. Inspired by the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Hartsough has spent his life experimenting with the power of active nonviolence. It is the story of one man’s effort to live as though we were all brothers and sisters. Engaging stories on every page provide a peace activist’s eyewitness account of many of the major historical events of the past sixty years, including the Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam War movements in the United States and the little-known but equally significant nonviolent efforts in the Soviet Union, Kosovo, Palestine, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Hartsough’s story demonstrates the power and effectiveness of organized nonviolent action. But Waging Peace is more than one man’s memoir. Hartsough shows how this struggle is waged all over the world by ordinary people committed to ending the spiral of violence and war.
Retire early, sell everything, buy a boat and sail around the world. What could go wrong? Told with great suspense and sparkling with wry humor, Escape from the Ordinary captures the terrors and pleasures that come with forging ahead against great odds on the adventure of a lifetime.
An ordinary family is faced with an extraordinary challenge a child with cystic fibrosis. This is their story, rich and moving, as they laugh and cry and learn and grow. Their love, faith and commitment to each other carry them through battles with depression, anger, despair, and the ravages of the disease as they join a race with death for a cure. What emerges is The Spirit of Lo, which enables the family and their community to face each new day of life's dance on the edge of mortality
This book follows the journey of Donald Leslie Cameron, a Scotsman who left home at seventeen to work in the remote regions of Arctic Canada for the Hudson’s Bay Co. Skipping from island to island in the remotest outposts of the Canadian Arctic, Cameron’s career brings him into contact with the fur traders and fishermen of the Inuit First Nations, with the adventurous men and women who populate the northernmost towns, and eventually, with the love of his life. Along the way, Cameron learns the trade of retailing and fur-buying as a manager for the Hudson’s Bay Co, rising through the ranks of the corporation and traveling half of Canada’s northern expanse. The work was prompted by Cameron’s large family of six children, thirty-eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren to capture the sense of accomplishment, to tell the tale of his adventure, and to preserve his part of the history and geography of Northern Canada.
“One of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years”—Slate On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day—chosen completely at random—turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, prejudice, selflessness, coincidence, and startling moments of human connection, along with evocative foreshadowing of momentous events yet to come. Lives were lost. Lives were saved. Lives were altered in overwhelming ways. Many of these events never made it into the news; they were private dramas in the lives of private people. They were utterly compelling. One Day asks and answers the question of whether there is even such a thing as “ordinary” when we are talking about how we all lurch and stumble our way through the daily, daunting challenge of being human.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The raw, candid, unvarnished memoir of an American icon. The greatest movie star of the past 75 years covers everything: his traumatic childhood, his career, his drinking, his thoughts on Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, John Huston, his greatest roles, acting, his intimate life with Joanne Woodward, his innermost fears and passions and joys. With thoughts/comments throughout from Joanne Woodward, George Roy Hill, Tom Cruise, Elia Kazan and many others. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and Vanity Fair "Newman at his best…with his self-aware persona, storied marriage and generous charitable activities…this rich book somehow imbues his characters’ pain and joy with fresh technicolor." —The Wall Street Journal In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman’s family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor’s life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story. The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. That same stipulation applied to Newman himself. The project lasted five years. The result is an extraordinary memoir, culled from thousands of pages of transcripts. The book is insightful, revealing, surprising. Newman’s voice is powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always meeting that high standard of searing honesty. The additional voices—from childhood friends and Navy buddies, from family members and film and theater collaborators such as Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill, Martin Ritt, and John Huston—that run throughout add richness and color and context to the story Newman is telling. Newman’s often traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Marlon Brando and James Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward—their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is revelatory and introspective, personal and analytical, loving and tender in some places, always complex and profound.
