Elizabeth Ferry explores how members of the Santa Fe Cooperative, a silver mine in Mexico, give meaning to their labor in an era of rampant globalization. She analyzes the cooperative's practices and the importance of patrimonio (patrimony) in their understanding of work, tradition, and community. More specifically, she argues that patrimonio, a belief that certain resources are inalienable possessions of a local collective passed down to subsequent generations, has shaped and sustained the cooperative's sense of identity.
These twelve essays from Unitarian Universalist leaders emerge as part of a movement in the faith from focusing on individual identity to relational connectedness. Through personal stories and thoughtful reflections, the contributors describe how we might grow our souls through our connections with one another and with the Holy. They invite us to move beyond the age-old theological question "Who am I?" and ask instead, "Whose are we?" This new emphasis suggests that we are all part of something larger, something that both includes us and transcends us. Group exercises and journaling prompts accompany the essays, making this an ideal resource for use in congregational settings or small gatherings. Helping us to be more vulnerable with one another and to express things not easily defined in precise ways, Not for Ourselves Alone offers fertile new ways for Unitarian Universalists to grow in the life of the spirit.
Recent posthuman philosophies, human-computer interface studies, and technology-inspired biopolitical discourses and practices are reinventing and reimagining loneliness in different communities. Cloneliness: The Reproduction of Loneliness takes a cross-cultural approach to loneliness by examining 20th-century artistic expressions and examinations of loneliness in the context of more recent global expressions grounded in social networks, virtual reality, the biopolitical commons, academic credentialization and such practices as Hikikomori. Newer forms of loneliness, pushed by the algorithms of biopolitical capitalism, result in what this books calls "cloneliness." Michael O'Sullivan plots the transformation in loneliness in literature and philosophy in readings that take us from Henry James and such classic works as Frank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice and Richard Yates's Eleven Kinds of Loneliness to more recent expressions in such writers as David Foster Wallace, Yiyun Li, and Sayaka Murata. Michael O'Sullivan argues that cloneliness as an institutional practice of reproduction in society nurtures, normalizes, and reproduces loneliness in order to create subjects who are more willing to accept ideologies of competition, extreme individualism, and the stresses of being "interconnected loners."
How do we love people who we are afraid of? The political climate of the US in recent years has revealed significant divisions in our nation and our neighborhoods, divisions often fueled by fear. For those who follow a call and commitment to love our neighbors, how do we love in the midst of this fear? In this book, Cassie Trentaz looks that question in the eyes and asks her friends and neighbors in four communities currently facing pressure and often viewed with suspicion--immigrants, Muslim Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and young African American men--what feels like love to them and, alternatively, what does not. Trentaz brings their honest, heartfelt responses in their own words, helping us to know people we might not know and bringing us powerful stories of offerings of love that were received as love as well as stories of good intentions that missed their mark. She then offers us tools to help us act on what we hear. This book is both an invitation and a toolbox for listening. It takes love from a good idea to a concrete force that can speak to our fears, reach across divisions, and just might heal our world.
The contemporary philosopher William Desmond has many companions in thought, and one of the most important of these is Augustine. In lucid prose that draws on the riches of a vibrant philosophical-theological tradition, Renée Köhler-Ryan explores Desmond’s metaxological philosophy. She brings together philosophy, theology and literature to elaborate on the conversation that Desmond’s philosophical work in discovering how humans are constantly ‘between’ sustains with a tradition of thinkers that also includes Plato, Thomas Aquinas and Shakespeare. Whether considering how our elemental wonder at creation brings us closer to God, or how our most intimate revelations about being human happen in the interior space of prayer, reading Desmond with Augustine illuminates a porous and interdisciplinary space of inquiry. With a foreword from Desmond himself, Companions in the Between is a unique contribution to the growing body of scholarship on his thought. Köhler-Ryan’s analysis will entice any reader who wants to know more about how contemporary philosophy can contest a space where philosophers are formulaically expected to shy away from divine transcendence.
In Liturgy and the New Evangelization, Timothy O’Malley provides a liturgical foundation to the church’s New Evangelization. He examines questions pastoral ministers must treat in order to foster the renewal of humanity that the New Evangelization seeks to promote. Drawing on narrative, as well as theological concepts in biblical, patristic, and systematic theology, O’Malley invites readers into a renewed experience of the liturgical life of the church, learning to practice the art of self-giving love for the renewal of the world.
For parents trying to pass on the Catholic faith to their children and to their friends, this simple book will help them how to explain what Catholics do on Sunday and why they do it. The Mass should work at the deepest level of our being, changing us into people who share God's own life. For this to happen, we need to take part in it in a way that is inspired by the spirit of the Church's Liturgy. In simple language the First Section of this book leads us step by step through the Mass so that we may take part in it with a deeper reverence and understanding. Should we wish to dig more deeply, the Second Section is one into which we can dip from time to time to examine the meaning of some words associated with Sacred Scripture and the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Third Section considers some extra spirituality dealing with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This book would be very suitable as an instruction text-book in Post-Primary Schools.
