Dewey Greene had everything . . . and he had nothing until he discovered the treasure of Painful Gifts. His personal journey from incredible pain to spiritual growth calls all who think they know God, but don't know the wonder of His personal presence. Walk with Greene as he discovers how pain is a gift that can draw us to a real, vibrant, and personal relationship with the living God. "Dewey Greene is a modern prophetic voice who calls all believers to personal honesty in dealing with their shadow sides." -- Donna Scott, Director Emerita of Stillpoint
For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women’s resilience, strength, and power. Beadwork served many uses, from the ceremonial to the economic, as women created beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Like other Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions with deep connections to the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis S’eiltin, and Larry McNeil foreground the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse, boundary-pushing artworks. Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.
The Gifts from Losing You is a poignant chronicle that shares a family's experience of their first year grieving the sudden loss of their only son and brother, aged 19. Written by his mother, it is a story of personal tragedy, immeasurable love, heartbreak, and sadness, coupled with gratitude, courage, and perseverance. Her reflections explore the themes of loss, shock, pain, acceptance, and eternal love. She focuses on how her family found a way to weave their grief into the fabric of their lives while opening their hearts and minds to the gifts bestow on them. She discovers that deep despair and blessing can co-exist simultaneously in grief. This unique perspective has guided them in their healing, enabling them to live alongside their heartache. From her experience as a health coach, she shares the self-care practices that enabled her to cope with her devastating reality. For anyone suffering the loss of a child or a loved one, this part memoir, part self-help book provides hope and inspiration, with insights to help you navigate your path out of the dark, toward the light.
In this heartfelt and thoughtful book, Christopher Heuertz writes of the dangers of isolation, the challenges we face when we join together and the struggles and joys that emerge from genuine community bonding. “Ironically, as much as we yearn for deep friendships and meaningful communities, many of us seem to be unable to find our way into them. Even if we know we’re made for community, finding one and staying there seems almost impossible. Though we hate to admit it, if we stay long enough in any relationship or set of friendships, we will experience failure, doubt, burnout, loneliness, transitions, a loss of self, betrayal, frustration, a sense of entitlement, grief, and weariness. Yet it’s these painful community experiences, these tensions we struggle to navigate, that hold surprising gifts.” —FROM THE PREFACE IN A STRIKINGLY confessional tone and vividly illustrated through story, Unexpected Gifts names eleven inevitable challenges that all friendships, relationships, and communities experience if they stay together long enough. Rather than allowing these challenges to become excuses to leave, Chris Heuertz suggests that things like betrayal, transitions, failure, loss of identity, entitlement, and doubt may actually be invitations to stay. And if we stay, these challenges can become unexpected gifts. *** Betrayal, failure, loss of identity, doubt. If your relationships have suffered from any of these pitfalls, this book will show you that staying together can create something more—even something beautiful. IN THIS HEARTFELT and thoughtful book, Christopher Heuertz writes of the dangers of isolation, the challenges we face when we join together, and the struggles and joys that emerge from genuine community bonding. Whether readers are forming a new community, searching for deeper community, or participating in a longtime community, they will find inspiration, caution, guidance, and encouragement as they discover the beauty of pressing in to the ambiguities of growing relationships in this tender and honest testimony about how we are woven together by grace.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This tenth-anniversary edition of the game-changing #1 New York Times bestseller features a new foreword and new tools to make the work your own. For over a decade, Brené Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveler. She is both a social scientist and a kitchen-table friend whom you can always count on to tell the truth, make you laugh, and, on occasion, cry with you. And what’s now become a movement all started with The Gifts of Imperfection, which has sold more than two million copies in thirty-five different languages across the globe. What transforms this book from words on a page to effective daily practices are the ten guideposts to wholehearted living. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families, they also walk us through the unattainable and sabotaging expectations that get in the way. Brené writes, “This book is an invitation to join a wholehearted revolution. A small, quiet, grassroots movement that starts with each of us saying, ‘My story matters because I matter.’ Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance.”
Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. Physical. Emotional. Mental. Spiritual. Pain comes in many forms, diligently avoided by most of us, even at the risk of sacrificing the quality of our lives. But pain can—and should—be a catalyst for change, a doorway through which we travel on our journey from suffering to joy. In The Gift of Pain, author Barbara Altemus links her personal journey of discovery with parallel experiences of world-renowned visionaries, artists, healers, and peacemakers to explore and understand the nature of pain. By drawing on themes of pain—failure, loss, addiction, lack of community, and loss of homeland, among others—these contributors share their intensely personal times of darkness and how these experiences ultimately lead to spiritual awakening and even joy. Includes stories of transformation from: Isabel Allende • Butch Artichoker • Chief Arvol Looking Horse • Margaret Ayers • Rev. Michael Beckwith • Blaze Bonpane • Joan Borysenko • Barbara Brennan • Rickie Byars • Jack Canfield • Deepak Chopra • Larry Dossey • John Funmaker • Dick Gregory • Alaine Haubert • Goldie Hawn • Dr. Gerald Jampolsky • Rigoberta Menchu Tum • Dr. Roy Nakai • Kahu O Te Range • Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi • Martin Sheen • Jana Shiloh • Steven Simon • Frieda Tomosoa • Iyanla Vanzant
Middle teens, just by living their ever eventful lives, shape and enrich the adults around them. Sacred Gifts taps the opportunities for growth and sacred insight that come when parents ponder and appreciate the gifts of wisdom these "fragile creators of chaos" bring to the family and to the world. Each chapter unwraps a gift that Tina Brennan received from one of the many teenage experiences of her seven children and invites the reader to reflect on how that gift might become part of his or her life. Book jacket.
The astonishing, Job-like story of how an existence filled with loss, suffering, questioning, and anger became a life filled with shocking and incomprehensible peace and joy. Vaneetha Risner contracted polio as an infant, was misdiagnosed, and lived with widespread paralysis. She lived in and out of the hospital for ten years and, after each stay, would return to a life filled with bullying. When she became a Christian, though, she thought things would get easier, and they did: carefree college days, a dream job in Boston, and an MBA from Stanford where she met and married a classmate. But life unraveled. Again. She had four miscarriages. Her son died because of a doctor's mistake. And Vaneetha was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, meaning she would likely become a quadriplegic. And then her husband betrayed her and moved out, leaving her to raise two adolescent daughters alone. This was not the abundant life she thought God had promised her. But, as Vaneetha discovered, everything she experienced was designed to draw her closer to Christ as she discovered "that intimacy with God in suffering can be breathtakingly beautiful."
