Like all mothers, Rapp had ambitious plans for her first and only child, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, and level-headed, but fun. But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder.
The last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in “The Waste Land.” Here, in four linked poems (“Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding”), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.
A delightful collection of soul-inspiring poems from the world's great religious and spiritual traditions, accompanied by Ivan M. Granger's meditative thoughts and commentary. Rumi, Whitman, Issa, Teresa of Avila, Dickinson, Blake, Lalla, and many others. These are poems of seeking and awakening... and the longing in between. ------------ Praise for The Longing in Between "The Longing in Between is a work of sheer beauty. Many of the selected poems are not widely known, and Ivan M. Granger has done a great service, not only by bringing them to public attention, but by opening their deeper meaning with his own rare poetic and mystic sensibility." ROGER HOUSDEN author of the best-selling Ten Poems to Change Your Life series "Ivan M. Granger's new anthology, The Longing in Between, gives us a unique collection of profoundly moving poetry. It presents some of the choicest fruit from the flowering of mystics across time, across traditions and from around the world. After each of the poems in this anthology Ivan M. Granger shares his reflections and contemplations, inviting the reader to new and deeper views of the Divine Presence. This is a grace-filled collection which the reader will gladly return to over and over again." LAWRENCE EDWARDS, Ph.D. author of Awakening Kundalini: The Path to Radical Freedom and Kali's Bazaar
Emily Rapp was born with a congenital defect that required, at the age of four, that her left foot be amputated. By the time she was eight she'd had dozens of operations, had lost most of her leg, from just above the knee, and had become the smiling, indefatigable "poster child" for the March of Dimes. For years she made appearances at church suppers and rodeos, giving pep talks about how normal and happy she was. All the while she was learning to live with what she later described as "my grievous, irrevocable flaw," and the paradox that being extraordinary was the only way to be ordinary. Praise for Poster Child: "Rapp's precise and forthright descriptions of her exhausting physical ordeals and complex psychic wounds are simultaneously harrowing and fascinating, and they foster a strong bond between writer and reader...Rapp approaches the memoir as a supple, revelatory, involving and generous genre....She offers a fresh perspective on our obsession with physical perfection, especially the crushing expectations for women, and she writes delicately about the fears that disability engenders regarding intimacy and sex. Rapp's insider's view of the history of prostheses deepens our empathy and admiration for those who depend on artificial limbs, a growing population, once again, in yet another time of war and horrific injuries. Memoir, the conduit from the personal to the universal, is the surest way into the kind of significant psychological, sociological and spiritual truth Rapp is engaged in articulating. And there isn't one false note here. Not one inauthentic moment. No cheap manipulation. No self-importance...Her cauterizing specificity is compelling, her candor incandescent and her intelligence, courage and spiritual diligence stupendous."-Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times "You can't put down this excellent memoir ...Poster Child beautifully illustrates every human being's sometimes overt, sometimes co
“[An] often beautiful jewel of a book . . . Black’s power as a writer means she can take us with her to places that normally our minds would refuse to go.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) From the New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World comes an incisive memoir about how she came to question and redefine the concept of resilience after the trauma of her first child’s death. “Congratulations on the resurrection of your life,” a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly: She left the marriage that fractured under the terrible weight of her son’s illness, got remarried to a man who she fell in love with while her son was dying, had a flourishing career, and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But she rejected the idea that she was leaving her old life behind—that she had, in the manner of the mythical phoenix, risen from the ashes and been reborn into a new story, when she still carried so much of her old story with her. More to the point, she wanted to carry it with her. Everyone she met told her she was resilient, strong, courageous in ways they didn’t think they could be. But what did those words mean, really? This book is an attempt to unpack the various notions of resilience that we carry as a culture. Drawing on contemporary psychology, neurology, etymology, literature, art, and self-help, Emily Rapp Black shows how we need a more complex understanding of this concept when applied to stories of loss and healing and overcoming the odds, knowing that we may be asked to rebuild and reimagine our lives at any moment, and often when we least expect it. Interwoven with lyrical, unforgettable personal vignettes from her life as a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and teacher, Rapp Black creates a stunning tapestry that is full of wisdom and insight.
A bomb goes off on a college campus. A shaken Sara and Omar first notice each other. Their eyes lock and there it is - a beginning sparked in chaos, an end foretold. Four years later, their story is remembered, retold by friends, spoken of fondly by their teachers. That story unfolds between these covers: one about the noise that balloons make when they burst; of lessons on using your mother's death to your advantage; about a cry for help even though all you did was barely scrape your knee; about running faster than the wind, climbing mountains, and learning how to keep your balance in a thunderstorm. This is a tale of Pakistan and what it means to live and love in apocalyptic times. It is an ode to life in college - with all its hopes and despairs, plans and uncertainties, falling in love and trying to keep up the grades, figuring the possibilities of the self and letting go of who we are. Sheheryar B. Sheikh's The Still Point of the Turning World is a haunting meditation on young people and their awakening - into adulthood, romance and a political space that is constantly shifting around them.
Making use of his scholar's understanding, yet writing in an approachable and anecdotal style, Tom Wright captures the verve and sparkle of these letters. Paul wrote the letters while in prison facing possible death, but their passion and energy are undimmed. They reveal Paul's longing to see young churches grow in faith and understanding, rooted in Jesus himself, and to see this faith worked out in practice. Wright's stimulating comments are combined with his own fresh and inviting translation of the text. Tom Wright has undertaken a tremendous task: to provide guides to all the books of the New Testament, and to include in them his own translation of the entire text. Each short passage is followed by a highly readable discussion with background information, useful explanations and suggestions, and thoughts as to how the text can be relevant to our lives today. A glossary is included at the back of the book. The series is suitable for group study, personal study, or daily devotions.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST NPR “BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR” SELECTION NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becoming How does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? And how does music, with its patterns of rhythm and harmony, inform our experience of time? Uncommon Measure explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until performance anxiety forced her to give up the dream of becoming a concert solo violinist. Anchoring her story in illuminating research in neuroscience and quantum physics, Hodges traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined—one still shaped by classical music but moving toward the freedom of improvisation.
Fintan Buckley is a pleasant, rather conventional and unimaginative man, who works as a legal adviser in an import/export firm in Dublin. He lives in Howth and is married to Colette. They have two sons who are at university, and a small daughter. As he goes about his life, working and spending time with his family, Fintan begins to experience states of altered consciousness and auditory hallucinations, which seem to take him out of a linear experience of time. He becomes interested in how we remember or imagine the past, an interest trigged by becoming aware of early photography, particularly early colour photography. He also finds himself thinking more about his own past, including time spent holidaying in the north of Ireland as a child with his father's family. Over the years he has become distanced from them, and in the course of the novel this link is re-established and helps to bring him understanding and peace, although in a most unexpected way. Time Present and Time Past, Deirdre Madden's eighth novel for adults, is about time: about how not just daily life and one's own, or one's family's past, intersect with each other.