As We Are and As We May Be by Walter Besant: Reflect on the social and moral dimensions of humanity with Walter Besant's "As We Are and As We May Be." This essay explores the possibilities of individual and collective improvement, shedding light on the potential for positive change. Key Aspects of the Book "As We Are and As We May Be": Social Reflections: Walter Besant delves into societal issues, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities for societal progress. Moral Aspirations: The essay encourages readers to consider their moral and ethical responsibilities in shaping a better future. Optimistic Vision: "As We Are and As We May Be" presents an optimistic outlook on the potential for human improvement and social transformation. Walter Besant was a British novelist and social reformer known for his advocacy of social and educational reforms. His essay reflects his dedication to addressing pressing societal issues.
Those who begin to consider the subject of the working woman discover presently that there is a vast field of inquiry lying quite within their reach, without any trouble of going into slums or inquiring of sweaters. This is the field occupied by the gentlewoman who works for a livelihood. She is not always, perhaps, gentle in quite the old sense, but she is gentle in that new and better sense which means culture, education, and refinement. There are now thousands of these working gentlewomen, and the number is daily increasing. A few among them—a very few—are working happily and successfully; some are working contentedly, others with murmuring and discontent at the hardness of the work and the poorness of the pay. Others, again, are always trying, and for the most part vainly, to get work—any kind of work—which will bring in money—any small sum of money. This is a dreadful spectacle, to any who have eyes to see, of gentlewomen struggling, snatching, importuning, begging for work. No one knows, who has not looked into the field, how crowded it is, and how sad a sight it presents. For my own part I think it is a shame that a lady should ever have to stand in the labour market for hire like a milkmaid at a statute fair. I think that the rush of women into the labour market is a most lamentable thing. Labour, and especially labour which is without organization or union, has to wage an incessant battle—always getting beaten—against greed and injustice: the natural enemy of labour is the employer, especially the impecunious employer; in the struggle women always get worsted. Again, in whatever trade or calling they attempt, the great majority of women are hopelessly incompetent. As in the lower occupations, so in the higher, the greatest obstacle to success is incompetence. How should gentlewomen be anything but incompetent? They have not been taught anything special, they have not been 'put through the mill'; mostly, they are fit only for those employments which require the single quality that everybody can claim—general intelligence. Hopeless indeed is the position of that woman who brings into the intellectual labour market nothing but general intelligence. She is exactly like the labourer who knows no trade, and has nothing but his strong frame and his pair of hands. To that man falls the hardest work and the smallest wage. To the woman with general intelligence is assigned the lowest drudgery of intellectual labour. And yet there are so many clamouring for this, or for anything. A few months ago a certain weekly magazine stated that I, the writer, had started an Association for Providing Ladies with Copying Work—all in capitals. The number of letters which came to me by every post in consequence of that statement was incredible. The writers implored me to give them a share of that copying work; they told terrible, heart-rending stories of suffering. Of course, there was no such Association. There is, now that typewriting is fairly established, no copying work left to speak of. Even now the letters have not quite ceased to arrive.
God desires oneness with the church; and we are brought into oneness with God not through birth but through a marriage covenant. God has offered His Son as the groom through which the church, as His bride, can be married back into the family of God. The preparations for this marriage are ongoing, and so we should know what to do to get ready for the big day. That We May Be One will help the bride of Christ prepare for this magnificent wedding day and teach believers how to have the kind of zeal that brings them to oneness with God. By preparing for this oneness with God, the bride of Christ can build a desire to know God deeply and intimately. Satan separated us from our Father, but more and more today he is pushing us toward this sweet reunion in marriage. At the end is the complete victory of the church over Satan, so the time is now to prepare to join heaven as one with the Godhead. We were originally created in the likeness of God, but through our marriage with Christ, He will receive us to become one with Him. He gives a seed and expects it back to Him multiplied—which is the love to the seed. So He does also want us—a lovely harvest.
Transcending divisions and healing the broken Body of Christ. Disunity is a reality within churches today. Left unaddressed, political disagreements and racial inequities can fester into misunderstanding, resentment, and anger. But often the act of addressing this discord prompts further animosity, widening fissures into gaping fault lines between fellow members of the same community. Gary Agee, a pastor well-versed in leading diverse congregations, reflects here on the roots of division within the church and the virtues and practices that can promote the restoration of unity. With disarming honesty and humility, Agee offers sage advice gleaned from Scripture and years of practical experience to show how we might fulfill Jesus’s prayer on behalf of the church: “That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. . . . That they may be one as we are one.” At the end of each chapter, Agee includes exercises, discussion questions, and suggested practices, providing a concrete path to unity through dialogue and action.
This book imagines several traits of heaven, a place of consciousness and life beyond death. In particular, It considers the ways heaven might surprise us, such as having a heavenly body, that animals may be in heaven, and that heaven may be to the "the side of us." By considering several such traits, the author intends to show the surprising joy and beauty is closer than we might think.
There has been a revolutionary shift of thinking in Pauline Studies, fundamentally changing the image of Paul. Postmodern literary criticism of Paul's epistles and sociorhetorical criticism of his letters has created a New Perspective approach to Pauline studies. At the same time, feminist criticism of the Pauline corpus has been growing. Unfortunately there has been hardly any interaction and exchange of research results between these different strands of scholarship. The result of this is that in Pauline studies scholars are hardly aware of feminist perspectives. Similarly, feminist interpretations of Paul, not fully conversant with the most recent strands of Pauline research, are often based on traditional images of Paul. Ehrensperger's analysis of feminist commentaries on Paul thus contains a rather negative depiction of theological thinking. However, both strands of research, feminist and those of the New Perspective, provide fresh and illuminating insights that emphasize similar aspects from different perspectives. Ehrensperger advocates a closer interaction between these two schools of Pauline studies. She analyzes Romans 14-15, exploring the results of recent research in both Pauline schools. Pauline studies from the New Perspective emphasize the Jewish context and texture of Paul's thinking. She sets these in dialogue with feminist theology, which focuses on issues of identity, diversity, and relationality. Her study results in a perspective on Paul which views him as a significant dialogue partner in the search for a theology beyond anti-Semitism and misogyny, beyond force and domination. Kathy Ehrensperger studied theology at the Universities of Basel and Berne, and was a pastor for sixteen years in Switzerland. She is currently a Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter.
The 21 poems in this collection were influenced by the work of many, including Neruda and Tagore, the nature poems of Galway Kinnell and Jim Harrison, and the modernist poets Hart Crane, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. It is perhaps Williams most of all whose imagist aesthetic infuses the poems. I've always liked the Zenlike attention he gives to the real, ordinary things of the world, so that in essence, they become extraordinary, a part of the reader's imagination. The poems can be divided up thematically into Cape Cod poems, fishing poems, New England nature poems, and spiritual pieces. Most of them came quite spontaneously and I let the words arrange themselves on the white tundra of my notebook pages with little thought of form; later, I tried to find the internal music, sense, and rhythm in each, adhering to Williams dictum that a poem is a little universe. In a sense each is an unfinished fragment, not wholeness itself but a search for wholeness and form. The first story, "Tracks of the Beleaguered" emerged after a two or three year gestation period not unusual for my process. I had been wanting to write a Vermont story for some time, one that would include a veteran of World War II tracking a wounded whitetail deer high up a mountain. I wanted the buck to embody the soul of the Green Mountains wild, primordial unchanged by technology and industry. Elisha represents the wounded modern exile, seeking a higher and more profound sense of identity after the dehumanizing brutality of the Pacific island fighting. I was reading Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology around the same time, and came upon a passage about the Buriat of Siberia and how with shamans there is usually a summons, a calling, which begins with a crisis and a dream of being broken apart physically, the discovery of an extra bone, followed by an interfusion of beingness. In a sense, Elisha and the buck become one, seeking sanctuary from the senseless violence and appearance-driven industrialized world. "Billie Holiday at the Atlantic House" is less esoteric and has its origins in trips to Provincetown where I frequently go to write, and where the actual Atlantic House exists on Masonic Street. Billie Holiday really did perform two separate engagements there. This one lived in my imagination for a year or so as well, percolating until all of the elements coalesced and resonated. I liked the idea of having Lucas be a Portuguese fisherman who listened and empathized with the blues and Jazz singer; I liked the innocence and naiveté of the storyline. To create a fictive Holiday, I listened to the Verve recordings I own, and went online to listen to rare interviews with her. Like Elisha in the first story, Lucas is somewhat out of step with society, and instead lives a vivid and intense inner life. As in the Vermont story and poems, the natural world predominates, always there for sanctuary, solitude, and transcendent experience. These thematic strands continue in the novella Whoever We May Be At Last whose title comes from The Ninth Duino Elegy by Rilke. The germ of the story came in a dream I had two years ago, and I spent a summer writing the first draft, watching it take on a life of its own. I wanted the setting to be a relatively small rivertown in Connecticut with a history of industry. I liked the idea of the story being told through five narrators, each having a connection to the central figure, Ian, who's about to enlist in the Marines and fight in Afghanistan. It's difficult for me to talk about this one, since it's more visceral than anything I've written before. I'll let the reader decide on interpretations. In some respects it s about the nature of sacrifice, the portrayal of a modern American town coming to terms with loss. Artistically, it seems to represent a living process of the imagination, of trying to piece together a semblance of the truth, and not so much a finished product, b
Readers of this book will have the exciting and at times convicting experience of sitting at the feet of the Lord and gaining His perspective of who He is and what His goals are for each and every person He has created. Each day's lesson was transcribed by Annette Kraft during her times of prayer and Bible study. Included are appropriate scripture verses to help clarify and validate each lesson. Through very simple, clear, and loving words, one can actually sense the power of the sacrificial love of God, our Father, in sending His Son as the perfect example and sacrifice for each of our lives. The progression of the lessons leads one on a precise path of growth with the Savior. It begins with the initial relationship, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and continues through growing in grace to the sanctification process. There are even instructions about how to deal with the present tumult in our world, and how to depend on God in the midst of all our struggles. These one-hundred-and-fifty-three lessons were received during the final year of Annette's life as her body was being consumed by cancer. The miraculous way she continued to survive during this period was an indication of the Lord using her faithful heart to deliver such an important message.
