Like Roses Rising from Concrete

Like Roses Rising from Concrete PDF Author: Gregory E. Bryant
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546265066
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
These fifty-two spiritual reflections cover a variety of topics that will be of interest to the spiritually curious who want to know more about Christ, the Black Church, Urban America, and even, the late rapper, poet, and actor, Tupac Shakur. Some entries are autobiographical testimonies; others are short theological essays. Most offer the reader ways to apply biblical truth to life’s situations; and more than a few include a social critique of the worst elements of American culture, coupled with references to noteworthy people and events in African American history. Each entry will provide food for the mind, heart, and soul. The title of this book was inspired by the powerful metaphor depicted in Shakur’s famous poem about a rose that resiliently grows up above unyielding forces—forces meant to suppress its potential. These essays originally were crafted through the author’s weekly discipline of preparing spiritual reflections for publication in his congregation’s Sunday morning worship bulletin. What is presented here are expanded or modified versions of these weekly entries. Though none were, or are sermons, together, they are presented in the chronology and thematic focus that Pastor Bryant normally lifts up during the cycle of a year of preaching. The themes reflect those liturgical celebrations that are recognized in many African American mainline congregations from January to December: Epiphany, Black History Month, Lent, Easter, Mother’s Day, Pentecost, Father’s Day, Women’s Day, Ordinary Time, Youth Sunday, Stewardship Month, Senior’s Day, Friends and Family Sunday, Men’s Day, Advent, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Watch Night. It is the author’s hope that these pastoral essays, each one like a rose ascending and pushing upward, will exalt the beauty of Christ, the strength of faith, the power of the Word of God, and the fascinating story of what God has done and is doing in the world, especially through the lives of those who have been, in the words of the Negro Spiritual, “buked and scorned...and talked about as sure as you were born.”

Like Roses Rising from Concrete

Like Roses Rising from Concrete PDF Author: Gregory E. Bryant
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546265066
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
These fifty-two spiritual reflections cover a variety of topics that will be of interest to the spiritually curious who want to know more about Christ, the Black Church, Urban America, and even, the late rapper, poet, and actor, Tupac Shakur. Some entries are autobiographical testimonies; others are short theological essays. Most offer the reader ways to apply biblical truth to life’s situations; and more than a few include a social critique of the worst elements of American culture, coupled with references to noteworthy people and events in African American history. Each entry will provide food for the mind, heart, and soul. The title of this book was inspired by the powerful metaphor depicted in Shakur’s famous poem about a rose that resiliently grows up above unyielding forces—forces meant to suppress its potential. These essays originally were crafted through the author’s weekly discipline of preparing spiritual reflections for publication in his congregation’s Sunday morning worship bulletin. What is presented here are expanded or modified versions of these weekly entries. Though none were, or are sermons, together, they are presented in the chronology and thematic focus that Pastor Bryant normally lifts up during the cycle of a year of preaching. The themes reflect those liturgical celebrations that are recognized in many African American mainline congregations from January to December: Epiphany, Black History Month, Lent, Easter, Mother’s Day, Pentecost, Father’s Day, Women’s Day, Ordinary Time, Youth Sunday, Stewardship Month, Senior’s Day, Friends and Family Sunday, Men’s Day, Advent, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Watch Night. It is the author’s hope that these pastoral essays, each one like a rose ascending and pushing upward, will exalt the beauty of Christ, the strength of faith, the power of the Word of God, and the fascinating story of what God has done and is doing in the world, especially through the lives of those who have been, in the words of the Negro Spiritual, “buked and scorned...and talked about as sure as you were born.”

The Rose that Grew from Concrete

The Rose that Grew from Concrete PDF Author: Tupac Shakur
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671028456
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
A collection of verse by the late hip-hop star Tupac Shakur includes more than one hundred poems confronting such wide-ranging topics as poverty, motherhood, Van Gogh, and Mandela.

Concrete Rose

Concrete Rose PDF Author: Angie Thomas
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062846752
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
International phenomenon Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood. A Printz Honor Book! If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison. Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control. Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father. Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different. When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can't just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

The Way of the Rose

The Way of the Rose PDF Author: Clark Strand
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812988957
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

Rising from the Rails

Rising from the Rails PDF Author: Larry Tye
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466818751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."—Newsday An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African American men in the country by the 1920s. In the world of the Pullman sleeping car, where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, porters developed a unique culture marked by idiosyncratic language, railroad lore, and shared experience. They called difficult passengers "Mister Charlie"; exchanged stories about Daddy Jim, the legendary first Pullman porter; and learned to distinguish generous tippers such as Humphrey Bogart from skinflints like Babe Ruth. At the same time, they played important social, political, and economic roles, carrying jazz and blues to outlying areas, forming America's first black trade union, and acting as forerunners of the modern black middle class by virtue of their social position and income. Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon. • Named a Recommended Book by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times

The Song Poet

The Song Poet PDF Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1627794956
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.

Rise

Rise PDF Author: Patty Azzarello
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 1607742616
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A straight-shooting Silicon Valley executive reveals insider career strategies to becoming a great leader, developing your network, succeeding without wasting time, and managing trade-offs between your work and life so your life works. Patty Azzarello became the youngest general manager at Hewlett-Packard at age thirty-three, ran a $1 billion software business at thirty-five, and became a CEO at thirty-eight-all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk. In Rise, Azzarello shares the insider secrets to advancing your career (while having a life) in three practical steps: Do Better: Set ruthless priorities, and work and lead more strategically to deal with frustrating obstacles. Look Better: Build your credibility with the people who can help (or blacklist) you. Connect Better: Develop your network without being political. Get on "the List" of people who get the best opportunities. Whether you are just starting up the corporate ladder, stuck midcareer, transitioning, or eyeing the corner office, Rise shows you the difference between getting ahead and just working hard.

Tuesday Nights in 1980

Tuesday Nights in 1980 PDF Author: Molly Prentiss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501121065
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
“An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale…As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.” —Booklist (starred review) A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way—and ultimately collide—amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s. Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost. As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.

Hattie and the Fox

Hattie and the Fox PDF Author: Mem Fox
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481479296
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
"Hattie the Hen spots the danger--but no none seems to care!"--Pg 4 of cover.

If Mayors Ruled the World

If Mayors Ruled the World PDF Author: Benjamin R. Barber
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030016467X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
"In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time--climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people--the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big for governments to deal with. Benjamin Barber contends that cities, and the mayors who run them, can do and are doing a better job than nations. He cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. The book features profiles of a dozen mayors around the world, making a persuasive case that the city is democracy's best hope in a globalizing world, and that great mayors are already proving that this is so"--