Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion

Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion

Author: Wendy Farley

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

Published: 1990-01-01

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9780664250966

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Offering an alternative to classic Christian theodicies (justification of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil), Wendy Farley interprets the problem of evil and suffering within a tragic context, advocating compassion to describe the power of God in the struggle against evil.


Silent Compassion

Silent Compassion

Author: Richard Rohr

Publisher: Franciscan Media

Published: 2023-07-11

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 1632534142

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“At the heart of this offering is an invitation to be still. Such stillness, however, is not a barren field, devoid of substance. It is a silence replete with beauty. It is what Buddhism refers to as sunyata, the boundlessness that characterizes the truth of existence.” —Mirabai Starr, from the foreword In Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, Richard Rohr focuses on finding God in the depths of silence. Divine silence is more than the absence of noise; it has a life of its own. We are invited into its living presence to find the wholeness of being and peace it brings. This book will inspire you and show that the peace of contemplation is not something just for monks, mystics, and those divorced from the worries of the world, but rather for all people who can quiet their own mind to listen in the silence. What’s more, this silence can absorb paradoxes, contradictions, and the challenges of life, ultimately connecting us with the great chain of being. While different faiths use different languages and different words, silence can become a common place for all to experience God. In May 2013, the Festival of Faiths conference in Louisville, Kentucky, featured His Holiness the Dalai Lama in an event called “Sacred Silence: Pathway to Compassion.” Richard Rohr was selected as the Christian presence among a small group of “world renowned experts on contemplative practice and compassion.” Others represented Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Silent Compassion curates the Franciscan friar’s talks from that event as well as interviews that place his thoughts in the context of his larger work as founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. This is an updated and expanded edition of Rohr’s original presentation on the subject.


God Has a Name

God Has a Name

Author: John Mark Comer

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1400249570

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What you believe about God sets the foundation of the person you will become. In God Has a Name, pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer invites you to rethink many of the prevalent myths and misconceptions about God and weigh them against what God actually tells us about himself. After all, what you believe about God will ultimately shape the type of person you become. We all live at the mercy of our ideas, and nowhere is this more true than our ideas about God. The problem is many of our ideas about God are wrong. Not all wrong, but wrong enough to form our souls in detrimental and disheartening ways. God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself in the Bible. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including: Why do we feel this gap between us and God? Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him? What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires? What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine? No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God Has a Name invites you to step into a fresh and biblically rooted vision of who God is that has the potential to alter your life with God and shape who you become.


Compassion in Action

Compassion in Action

Author: Ram Dass

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2011-04-27

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0307786218

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Featuring an eye-catching new cover, this classic guide is for those ready to commit time and energy to relieving suffering in the world. No two people are better qualified to help us along this path than Ram Dass, who has spent more than 25 years teaching and writing on the subject of living consciously, and Mirabi Bush, who succeeded him as chairperson of the Seva Foundation.


A Theology of Compassion

A Theology of Compassion

Author: Oliver Davies

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2016-08-05

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1532604734

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The wholesale rejection of metaphysics today has become the test of the postmodern. In this groundbreaking volume Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics, as the language of createdness, based not in a return to outmoded concepts of essence but in a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. This repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in the divine self-naming in Exodus--which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts--and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology of divine speech and relation, focused in Jesus Christ, who, as the triadic "Word" of God, speaks creatively at the heart of human culture and action and who, as the redeeming "Compassion" of God, regenerates the world.


Compassion

Compassion

Author: Henri J. M. Nouwen

Publisher: Image

Published: 2006-01-17

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0385517521

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In this provocative essay on that least understood virtue, compassion, the authors challenge themselves and us with these questions: Where do we place compassion in our lives? Is it enough to live a life in which we hurt one another as little as possible? Is our guiding ideal a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain? Compassion answers no. After years of study and discussion among themselves, with other religious, and with men and women at the very center of national politics, the authors look at compassion with a vigorous new perspective. They place compassion at the heart of a Christian life in a world governed far too long by principles of power and destructive control. Compassion, no longer merely an eraser of human mistakes, is a force of prayer and action -- the expression of God's love for us and our love for God and one another. Compassion is a book that says no to a compassion of guilt and failure and yes to a compassionate love that pervades our spirit and moves us to action. Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison have written a moving document on what it means to be a Christian in a difficult time.


Angel Animals Book of Inspiration

Angel Animals Book of Inspiration

Author: Allen Anderson

Publisher: New World Library

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1577316665

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In this extraordinary book, the Andersons offer true stories about animals who all but prove the existence of miracles--and whose unconditional love has healed their human companions during their darkest hours.


Compassion and Meditation

Compassion and Meditation

Author: Jean-Yves Leloup

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-06-25

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1620551101

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A profound reflection on how complementary themes in Buddhism and Christianity could serve as the basis for a truly ecumenical faith • Compares Zen meditation with the Greek Orthodox practice of Hesychasm (prayer of the heart) • Shows how Buddha and Jesus represent the distinct yet complementary values of meditation and compassion In Asian spiritual traditions the mountain traditionally symbolizes meditation while the ocean signifies compassion. Jean-Yves Leloup uses this metaphor to compare Buddhist and Christian approaches to meditation and compassion to reveal the similarities and divergences of these profound practices. Emphasizing their complementary nature, Leloup describes how Jesus and Buddha are necessary to one another and how together they form a complete system: Jesus as awakening through love, and Buddha as awakening through meditation. Where Buddha represents the forests, Jesus represents the trees. Buddha is brother to the universe, whereas Jesus is brother to humanity. Nevertheless, these two religious traditions have a profound common ground. Compassion is central to Buddhism, and meditation practices have been central to many Christian traditions. Both view murder, theft, and the destructive use of sexuality as great barriers to realizing our essential being, and both agree on the need to rise above them. Here, however, Leloup suggests that both faiths could benefit from the precepts of the other. The complementary aspects of Christianity and Buddhism offer the possibility for a truly profound ecumenical religion whose interfaith relations are based on deep understanding of the true meaning and practice of meditation and compassion and not merely shared goodwill.