Befriending the North Wind

Befriending the North Wind PDF Author: Robyn Boeré
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506481841
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The death of a child horrifies. We recoil at its mention. Images of dead or dying children impose themselves on our attention in ways that challenge us to change. Yet the topic of dying children is studiously avoided. When we do take notice, we paint children as victims, innocent of both blame and agency, passive in the face of suffering. Children die secluded in homes and hospitals, allowing society to carry on as though it were not happening. Befriending the North Wind is about the moral lives of children and their agency in decisions about death. Our failure to be honest and open about the death of children hinders us from addressing their needs and confronting the sources of their suffering. This failure only adds to their suffering. Dying children often feel ignored, overlooked, and unable to exercise their agency to ameliorate their situation. Befriending the North Wind presents a reconstruction of our understanding of human nature in light of the dimensions of human meaning that children reveal and the new horizons they open to us. It asserts that children can die a good death and that they can and should have a voice in their end-of-life care. This agency is grounded in their ability to make meaning, to act, to imitate, to use language creatively, to grasp a plurality of meanings, to reach judgments, to contribute to the meanings of others and to shape their understanding. Children are moral agents. We grown-ups need to humble ourselves and listen.

George MacDonald's Children's Fantasies and the Divine Imagination

George MacDonald's Children's Fantasies and the Divine Imagination PDF Author: Colin Manlove
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 0718895541
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The great Victorian Christian author George MacDonald is the well-spring of the modern fantasy genre. In this book Colin Manlove offers explorations of MacDonald's eight shorter fairy tales and his longer stories At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, and The Princess and Curdie. MacDonald saw the imagination as the source of fairy tales and of divine truth together. For he believed that God lives in the depths of the human mind and “sends up from thence wonderful gifts into the light of the understanding.” This makes MacDonald that very rare thing: a writer of mystical fiction whose work can give us experience of the divine. Throughout his children’s fantasy stories MacDonald is describing the human and divine imagination. In the shorter tales he shows how the imagination has different regions and depths, each able to shift into the other. With the longer stories we see the imagination in relation to other aspects of the self and to its position in the world. Here the imagination is portrayed as often embattled in relation to empiricism, egotism, and greed.

Food, Farming and Religion

Food, Farming and Religion PDF Author: Gretel Van Wieren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351365355
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Although the religious and ethical consideration of food and eating is not a new phenomenon, the debate about food and eating today is distinctly different from most of what has preceded it in the history of Western culture. Yet the field of environmental ethics, especially religious approaches to environmental ethics, has been slow to see food and agriculture as topics worthy of analysis. This book examines how religious traditions and communities in the United States and beyond are responding to critical environmental ethical issues posed by the global food system. In particular, it looks at the responses that have developed within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, and shows how they relate to arguments and approaches in the broader study of food and environmental ethics. It considers topics such as land degradation and restoration, genetically modified organisms and seed consolidation, animal welfare, water use, access, pollution, and climate, and weaves consideration of human wellbeing and justice throughout. In doing so, Gretel Van Wieren proposes a model for conceptualizing agricultural and food practices in sacred terms. This book will appeal to a wide and interdisciplinary audience including those interested in environment and sustainability, food studies, ethics, and religion.

Funeral Culture

Funeral Culture PDF Author: Casey Golomski
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253036488
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death PDF Author: Caitlin Doughty
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393249905
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality.

Selected Fiction

Selected Fiction PDF Author: Manoj Das
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780141007007
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Selected short stories; includes a novella.

Why Medieval Philosophy Matters

Why Medieval Philosophy Matters PDF Author: Stephen Boulter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350094188
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Tackling the question of why medieval philosophy matters in the current age, Stephen Boulter issues a passionate and robust defence of this school in the history of ideas. He examines both familiar territory and neglected texts and thinkers whilst also asking the question of why, exactly, this matters or should matter to how we think now. Why Medieval Philosophy is also provides a introduction to medieval philosophy more generally exploring how this area of philosophy has been received, debated and, sometimes, dismissed in the history of philosophy.

The Rediscovery of America

The Rediscovery of America PDF Author: Ned Blackhawk
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300271247
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that • European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; • Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of empire; • the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; • California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; • the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; • twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

Finding God in the Movies

Finding God in the Movies PDF Author: Catherine M. Barsotti
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1585581569
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
You love movies. Who doesn't? In Finding God in the Movies Catherine Barsotti and Robert Johnston show you how to combine your love of movies with your desire for God. Introducing thirty-three films of faith--ranging from Tender Mercies to X-Men--the authors identify and explore key biblical themes like forgiveness, faith, and repentance. An enthusiastic guide for the individual movie lover or small group, this resource contains production notes and film synopses, relevant Scripture texts, theological reflection, recommended video clips, discussion questions, and more. It will deepen your fervor for film and for God.

Asariri

Asariri PDF Author: Rajni Sekhri Sibal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9389449448
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
A few days after Nisha loses her best friend, her father, she meets Asariri on a hilltop covered in daisies and irises in the Himalayas. Asariri befriends Nisha, a young single mother, who has lost her husband and father within a span of two years. Asariri is a bit of a poet and provides meaning to Nisha's life. Drawing upon all that is rational and profound, Asariri helps Nisha reconcile with death and accompanies her in her quest to understand all that matters to a rational person in a global world – happiness, life choices, dreams and success, balance in life and nature and peace and serenity – and all that needs to be comprehended to live a 'life full of life'. Asariri is a disembodied voice with access to a mystic ancient pool of infinite wisdom. A poignantly written story-moving, rich in character and deeply emotional.