Facing Feelings in Faith Communities
Facing Feelings in Faith Communities

Author: William M. Kondrath

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013-08-05

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1566995205

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Facing Feelings in Faith Communities is based on a simple premise: We have emotions because we need them. God created us as affectively competent beings, William Kondrath argues, to help us understand our world and to give appropriate signals to people around us about what we are experiencing. When we express our feelings clearly, other people can more easily respond in ways that are helpful to us, thus enhancing our relationships and the work we might do together. Kondrath also recognizes that unfortunately, for many of us, our emotional software was infected early on with viruses (early familial and social conditioning) that distorted the way we responded to natural stimuli. Because we are underusing or misusing our emotional capacities, we are missing out on the opportunity to express our full humanity. Fortunately, we can re-program our emotional software. Facing Feelings in Faith Communities help us restore our emotional systems to their original state, or at least invites us to imagine how we would live differently if our emotional expressions were more nearly congruent with the situations and events we encounter. Kondrath invites us to explore six feelings--fear, anger, sadness, peace, power, and joy--through poetry, meditation on an evocative drawing, as well as through his own analysis of each feeling. Congregational Resources for Facing Feelings is a companion collection to this book. For more information, click here.

The Philosophy of Commonsense
The Philosophy of Commonsense

Author: Barry L. Clark

Publisher: Barry L. Clark

Published: 2019-11-17

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13:

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A presentation of an assertion that common-sense exists because first principles, natural moral law, and universal truths exist. Common-sense has served as a guide and a protection from ill-considered ideas and inflamed passions throughout history. It can guide us now through our current cultural war. Through an examination of the Strauss-Howe generational theory, the outcomes of past periods of history similar to our own era the book proposes that common-sense and the lessons our ancestors can teach us will be key in the solutions our children someday craft to resolve current issues. This book is important for parents to remind us of the knowledge we received from our parents and grandparents that we should pass along to our children. It is important for our children to help them understand that truth does exist and not everything from the past should be discarded willy-nilly.

The God of Wild Places
The God of Wild Places

Author: Tony Jones

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1538184451

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"I have read a lot of books in my life, but never one like this... this captivating memoir will take you places you might never have gone on your own: into the elemental mysteries of life, death, creatureliness, and divinity with someone who has turned from the orderliness of religion to find salvation in the God of the Wild. I'm glad I went." —Barbara Brown Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Church and Learning to Walk in the Dark A pastor walks out of the church and into the woods, in pursuit of the God he's lost. Millions of Americans, disillusioned with organized religion, yearn for meaning and transcendence in their lives, and many of them are finding that in nature. When pastor and theologian Tony Jones, Ph.D., had his crisis of faith, brought on by personal trauma and broken relationships, he sought solace in the outdoors - paddling a canoe, hunting with his dog, butchering deer. When he walked out of the church and into the woods, he left the orderly pews and numbered hymns for chaotic spaces and untamed wilderness. And he re-discovered God — a God who brings peace in the midst of storms, a God who lives in the community of our fellow creatures, a God who's acquainted with death. This is the God of wild places. In The God of Wild Places, Tony mines his own experiences, recent research in evolutionary psychology, and ancient wisdom from various spiritual and philosophical traditions to fashion lessons about solitude, the predator-prey relationship, the importance of place, risk, failure, and death, and the chaotic presence of God. Tony's guidance in The God of Wild Places promises to introduce a generation of Americans to the transcendence available only in untamed spaces; his writing draws on wisdom from Christianity to Buddhism, Kant to Cioran, Jim Harrison to Annie Dillard. This is a journey of loss and discovery through forests and fields, lakes and streams, from knowing to unknowing, from finding to losing — from life to death, and then back to life.