Jesus in Our Wombs

Jesus in Our Wombs

Author: Rebecca J. Lester

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780520938205

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In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.


Jesus in Our Wombs

Jesus in Our Wombs

Author: Rebecca J. Lester

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005-04-04

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0520242688

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"A stunning first book, Jesus In Our Wombs is a haunting ethnography with fresh theoretical insights. Blending psychoanalytic theories with postmodern imageries, Lester demonstrates that the body is both a source and object of analysis. This is a model ethnography."—Vicki Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in the Twentieth-Century America "In Jesus In Our Wombs, Rebecca Lester uses her rich, evocative ethnography of the first year experiences of nuns-in-training to explore the formation and transformation of selves, the relationships of bodily practices, and the centrality of gender to these intertwined processes of self-formation and embodiment. This work will spark renewed interest in the potential of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theories of change to offer insights for crucial theoretical issues in anthropology and the social sciences more generally. A superb book."—Dorothy Hodgson, author of The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters between Maasai and Missionaries "This study of young Mexican nuns in their first year of training is a thought provoking and ethnographically rich work that will be an important contribution to the anthropological study of religion, gender, and embodiment. Through her careful analysis of the ways the postulates negotiate their training intellectually, emotionally, and bodily, Lester provides unique insights into the religious processes of personal transformation. A beautifully observed ethnography of life in a Catholic convent."—Joel Robbins, author of Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society


God Speaks Through Wombs

God Speaks Through Wombs

Author: Drew Jackson

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 151400268X

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In this dynamic collection of poems, Drew Jackson explores the first eight chapters of Luke's Gospel. These are declarative poems, faithfully proclaiming the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the "fresh words / that speak of / things impossible." This powerful poetry helps us hear the hum of deliverance—against all hope—that's been in the gospel all along.


Theology of The Womb

Theology of The Womb

Author: Christy Angelle Bauman

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 153266219X

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If it is true that God is a male, then His Divinity or Deity is expressed in His masculinity. Yet I am a woman, and there are parts of my body; such as my breasts, my vagina, and my womb that are telling a story about God that I have never learned or understood. This is an exploration of the significance of a womb that must shed and bleed before it can create. How will we engage our body which cyclically bleeds most of our life and can build and birth a human soul? How will we honor the living womb, that lives and sometimes dies within us? This is a book about the theology found in the cycle of the womb, which births both life and death. Every day each one of us is invited to create, and every day we make a decision knowing that from our creation can come death or life. Women's voices have been silenced for a long time as society and the church has quieted their bodies. Will we courageously choose to listen to the sound of your voice, the song of your womb, and speak for the world to hear?


Famished

Famished

Author: Rebecca J. Lester

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0520385748

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When Rebecca Lester was eleven years old—and again when she was eighteen—she almost died from anorexia nervosa. Now both a tenured professor in anthropology and a licensed social worker, she turns her ethnographic and clinical gaze to the world of eating disorders—their history, diagnosis, lived realities, treatment, and place in the American cultural imagination. Famished, the culmination of over two decades of anthropological and clinical work, as well as a lifetime of lived experience, presents a profound rethinking of eating disorders and how to treat them. Through a mix of rich cultural analysis, detailed therapeutic accounts, and raw autobiographical reflections, Famished helps make sense of why people develop eating disorders, what the process of recovery is like, and why treatments so often fail. It’s also an unsparing condemnation of the tension between profit and care in American healthcare, demonstrating how a system set up to treat a disease may, in fact, perpetuate it. Fierce and vulnerable, critical and hopeful, Famished will forever change the way you understand eating disorders and the people who suffer with them.


Theology from the Womb of Asia

Theology from the Womb of Asia

Author: C.S. Song

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2005-07-07

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 159752302X

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With 'Theology from the Womb of Asia', Song continues to demonstrate that he is one of the most creative and important theologians of our time. He forces us to expand the horizons of our theological vision, not only by drawing on the resources of Asian thought and experience, but also by insisting that we do theology with passion. Here he offers images, fables, poems, parables, and visions, woven together with his own compelling prose. The biblical stories with which we thought we were familiar become new and more compelling stories when we revisit them with this able and wise guide. And our whole approach to life and living is transformed by the freshness he breathes into all that he surveys with us. --Robert McAfee Brown, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Ethics, Pacific School of Religion In 'Theology from the Womb of Asia', C. S. Song shows how the story of God's compassion in Jesus and the many heartrending stories and poems of the Asian people are reaching out towards each other. Doing theology in this perspective is not a matter of application of doctrine, but of recognition of a relation between the suffering God and suffering humanity, which transcends many artificial and alienating distinctions. The book is an appeal to Asian theologians, but at the same time a necessary challenge to a Western academic theology and missionary thinking. --Bert Hoedemaker, Professor of Missions and Christian Ethics, University of Groningen, the Netherlands A splendid example of doing theology with Asian resources. A breath of fresh air to liven up traditional theology, using original reflections and observations with the backing of close knowledge of traditional theology. A book no theological college can do without. --Yeow Choo Lak, The South East Asia Graduate School of Theology, Singapore C. S. Song is Professor of Theology and Asian Cultures at Pacific School of Religion. His recent publications include 'The Believing Heart'.


Becoming Sinners

Becoming Sinners

Author: Joel Robbins

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2004-04-12

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0520238001

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A study of cultural change through the study of the Christianization of the Urapmin, a Melanesian society in Papua New Guinea.


Reclaiming Eve

Reclaiming Eve

Author: Suzanne Burden

Publisher: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780834132269

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Every daughter of Eve faces an identity crisis at some time in her life. And many of us wonder where we fit in on a regular basis. Whether you feel discouraged and damaged or desire a greater understanding of your spiritual condition, this book will help you embrace your identity as one reclaimed by Jesus Christ.


Desire and Denial

Desire and Denial

Author: Gordon Thomas

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13: 1497663415

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Desire and Denial confronts the fundamentals of Christian history, capturing the powerful interplay between the limits of sexuality within the Roman Catholic Church’s priesthood and sisterhood and compassionate accounts of mystic forces that make many doubt their calling.


Get the Word Out

Get the Word Out

Author: John Teter

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2009-10

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1458727165

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DO YOU LOVE TO TALK TO OTHERS ABOUT JESUS? DO YOU WANT TO SHARE YOUR FAITH BUT WONDER IF THE RIGHT WORDS WILL COME? Whether you love evangelism or fear it, this book is for you. John Teter offers stories from his experiences leading seeker Bible studies and witnessing to people around him that reveal how our witness is backed up by God himself, who follows through on the work he prompts us to begin. Even now God is preparing the way for you to get his Word out to those around you. Will you accept the challenge?