The Promise of Living

The Promise of Living PDF Author: George A. Goens
Publisher: Turning Stone Press
ISBN: 1618520539
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In 2004, George Goens lost his daughter during the birth of his second grandchild. How does one respond to the simultaneous crash of life and death? In The Promise of Living: Loss, Life and Living, Goens wrestles with his conflicting emotions over the convergence of two very disparate events – one celebrating the beginning of life, one grieving the loss of another. Goens begins his story at the expected date of his daughter Betsy’s birthing of her second child, Luke – his grandson. Goens’ joy slowly twists into panic, then horror when phone calls from his son reveal that the process has gone awry. Stricken by a rare complication, Betsy delivers a healthy baby but dies soon after the birth. Thus begins Goens’ journey of grief, anger and despair as he struggles to reconcile the paradox of his daughter’s premature passing juxtaposed to the developing life of his grandchildren, their family and his own life. “Inexplicable events happen in life, many contrary to our belief in the natural order,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “Our rational plans and sense of equilibrium are upset. Chaos seems to reign in both our internal and external worlds.” Goens re-examines his beliefs, his relationships, his perceptions, his values, his fears and his dreams of the future. He relives his close relationship with his daughter, his mid-life crisis that included a scandalizing affair costing him his marriage and job, and another shocking loss involving the shooting murder of a school principal in a district for which he served as superintendent. He wrestles with a grief many of his friends label as “excessive” and is humbled by his inability to take their advice and “move on.” He comes to realize that, even while living in a community with family and friends, everyone must ultimately face loss alone in the quiet of their own hearts and souls. “Life’s only script consists of birth and death,” Goens writes. “We fill in what comes between. . . .Whimsy and mystery, serendipity and surprise fill our lives. The clichéd story of a main character succumbing to tragedy, falling into a funk, having an epiphany, and seeing the light and then proceeding back into normalcy doesn’t really happen. . . . Finding peace takes time and is a creative process of small steps, plateaus, and setbacks,” he adds. Woven throughout the book is Goens’ poetry, in equal measures stirring, contemplative, and inspiring, as exemplified in “Love and Sorrow”: Love and sorrow are two sides of the same coinOne’s sorrow is in direct proportion to one’slove for another when they are gone. I am thinking of you in this time of unrelenting sorrowin celebration of your beautiful and endearing life. In spite of heart-wrenching circumstances, Goens and his family find a way to heal through acceptance and forgiveness, and he honors the life of his daughter by living his own to its full potential. Readers who have experienced their own devastating loss – or who are close to someone else who has – will find comfort, inspiration and wisdom in his story.

The Promise of Living

The Promise of Living PDF Author: George A. Goens
Publisher: Turning Stone Press
ISBN: 1618520539
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 2004, George Goens lost his daughter during the birth of his second grandchild. How does one respond to the simultaneous crash of life and death? In The Promise of Living: Loss, Life and Living, Goens wrestles with his conflicting emotions over the convergence of two very disparate events – one celebrating the beginning of life, one grieving the loss of another. Goens begins his story at the expected date of his daughter Betsy’s birthing of her second child, Luke – his grandson. Goens’ joy slowly twists into panic, then horror when phone calls from his son reveal that the process has gone awry. Stricken by a rare complication, Betsy delivers a healthy baby but dies soon after the birth. Thus begins Goens’ journey of grief, anger and despair as he struggles to reconcile the paradox of his daughter’s premature passing juxtaposed to the developing life of his grandchildren, their family and his own life. “Inexplicable events happen in life, many contrary to our belief in the natural order,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “Our rational plans and sense of equilibrium are upset. Chaos seems to reign in both our internal and external worlds.” Goens re-examines his beliefs, his relationships, his perceptions, his values, his fears and his dreams of the future. He relives his close relationship with his daughter, his mid-life crisis that included a scandalizing affair costing him his marriage and job, and another shocking loss involving the shooting murder of a school principal in a district for which he served as superintendent. He wrestles with a grief many of his friends label as “excessive” and is humbled by his inability to take their advice and “move on.” He comes to realize that, even while living in a community with family and friends, everyone must ultimately face loss alone in the quiet of their own hearts and souls. “Life’s only script consists of birth and death,” Goens writes. “We fill in what comes between. . . .Whimsy and mystery, serendipity and surprise fill our lives. The clichéd story of a main character succumbing to tragedy, falling into a funk, having an epiphany, and seeing the light and then proceeding back into normalcy doesn’t really happen. . . . Finding peace takes time and is a creative process of small steps, plateaus, and setbacks,” he adds. Woven throughout the book is Goens’ poetry, in equal measures stirring, contemplative, and inspiring, as exemplified in “Love and Sorrow”: Love and sorrow are two sides of the same coinOne’s sorrow is in direct proportion to one’slove for another when they are gone. I am thinking of you in this time of unrelenting sorrowin celebration of your beautiful and endearing life. In spite of heart-wrenching circumstances, Goens and his family find a way to heal through acceptance and forgiveness, and he honors the life of his daughter by living his own to its full potential. Readers who have experienced their own devastating loss – or who are close to someone else who has – will find comfort, inspiration and wisdom in his story.

Rivers of Living Waters

Rivers of Living Waters PDF Author: Augustine S. Chea
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 145200028X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
This daily devotional which is intended to speak life in the lives of readers is named “Rivers of Living Waters: A Daily Devotional” because water symbolizes Life. The message it contains is intended to be quick and powerful as it speaks to the contemporary issues of life. The spirit of the message it contains is truth. Because the words that we speak are spirit and life, the author suggest that the words of this book be whispered by readers as they read, because when the written word is spoken, it is even more powerful; that is the power of the tongue. A page a day will enrich your life.

The Promise of Welfare Reform

The Promise of Welfare Reform PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Segal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0789029219
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Presents articles from 23 community practitioners and researchers who challenge the "reform" that has turned public aid from a right to a privilege.

The Promise of American Life

The Promise of American Life PDF Author: Herbert David Croly
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
"The Promise of American Life" is a book by Herbert Croly that opposed aggressive unionization and supported economic planning to raise general quality of life in early twentieth-century America. It made a significant impact on many leading progressives, influencing Theodore Roosevelt to adopt the platform of "The New Nationalism" after reading it, and being popular with intellectuals and political leaders of the later "New Deal". Croly advocated a new political consensus that included as its core nationalism, but with a sense of social responsibility and care for the less fortunate. Since the power of big business, trusts, interest groups and economic specialization had transformed the nation in the latter part of the 19th century, Croly pressed for the centralization of power in the Federal Government to ensure democracy, a "New Nationalism".

The Promise of American Life

The Promise of American Life PDF Author: Herbert Croly
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400851238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 613

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Book Description
The Promise of American Life is part of the bedrock of American liberalism, a classic that had a spectacular impact on national politics when it was first published in 1909 and that has been recognized ever since as a defining text of liberal reform. The book helped inspire Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, put Herbert Croly on a path to become the founding editor of the New Republic, and prompted Walter Lippmann to call him twentieth-century America’s "first important political philosopher." The book is at once a history of America and its political ideals and an analysis of contemporary ills, from rampant economic inequality to unchecked corporate power. In response, Croly advocated combining the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian traditions and creating a strong federal government to ensure that all Americans had a fair shot at individual success. The formula still defines American liberalism, and The Promise of American Life continues to resonate today, offering a vital source of renewal for liberals and progressives. For this new edition, Franklin Foer has written a substantial foreword that puts the book in historical context and explains its continuing importance.

Qualitative Inquiry, Cartography, and the Promise of Material Change

Qualitative Inquiry, Cartography, and the Promise of Material Change PDF Author: Aaron M. Kuntz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351700766
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
What are the problems to which materialist methodologies are posed as a solution? In this book, Aaron M. Kuntz maps the impact of materialism on contemporary practices of inquiry in education and the social sciences. Through this work, the author challenges readers to consider inquiry as a mode of ethically engaged citizenship with implications for resisting our contemporary moment towards a more equitable future. The author engages his own inquiry as radical cartographic work, drawing forth distinctions between dialectical and dialogic formations of materialism in order to develop what he terms relational materialism—an engaged orientation to living that dwells in the entangled relations of affirmative ethics and enduring practices of resistance and refusal. Drawing upon examples from higher education, contemporary culture, and normative assumptions of governance, the author considers the potential that we might generate living alternatives to the contemporary status quo; daily practices no longer dependent on binary division or standardized calculations of what "matters." As such, the author advocates for practices of virtuous inquiry (future-orientated ethical assertions of what one should do) that orient inquiry as materially ethical activity. Despite the often-overwhelming state of inequity and exploitation in our contemporary world, Kuntz generates an affirmative ethical stance that we can become relationally different, guided by a virtuous determination to articulate inquiry as the cartographic work of disruption and imagination. This text will prove valuable to graduate students and faculty who take inquiry seriously and seek the means to understand their work as engaged in the necessary challenge for material change.

Restoring the Promise of American Labor Law

Restoring the Promise of American Labor Law PDF Author: Sheldon Friedman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172424X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
The product of an October 1993 conference on labor law reform jointly sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell U. and the Department of Economic Research at the AFL-CIO, this volume both argues the need for fundamental reform of the legal and institutional underpinnings o

The Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British and Anglophone Novel

The Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British and Anglophone Novel PDF Author: Kelly M. Rich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192645617
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The Promise of Welfare in the Postwar British Novel offers a new literary history of the Second World War and its aftermath by focusing on wartime visions of rebuilding Britain. Shifting attention from the "People's War" to the "People's Peace," this book shows that literature returns to the historic transition from warfare to welfare to narrate its transformative social potential and darker failures. The welfare state envisioned that managing individuals' private lives would result in a more coherent and equitable community, a promise encapsulated in the 1942 Beveridge Report's promise of care from the "cradle to the grave." The postwar novel reveals the intimate effects that follow when infrastructures of collective living seek to organize social interaction, tracing these effects through quasi-administrated home spaces such as girls' hostels, makeshift sanatoria, and experimental schools. Mid-century writers including Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, and Samuel Selvon used the militarized Home Front to present postwar Britain as a zone of lost privacy and new collective logics. As the century progressed, and as the unrealized dreams of welfare came to be dismantled, authors including Alan Hollinghurst, Michael Ondaatje, and Kazuo Ishiguro registered an unfulfilled nostalgia for a Britain that never was, situating British domestic policies within trajectories of historic and social violence. Contemporary fiction continues to reanimate the transition from a warfare state to a welfare state, preserving its transformative potential while redefining its possible futures. With this long view of postwar fiction, this volume demonstrates the holding power of welfare's promises of repair and Britain's mid-century on the British cultural imagination.

The Promise of Memory

The Promise of Memory PDF Author: Matthias Fritsch
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791465509
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Argues for a closer connection between memories of injustice and promises of justice as a means to overcome violence.

The Promise of Baptism

The Promise of Baptism PDF Author: James V. Brownson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802833071
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Christians who otherwise love each other and work together on shared projects and causes nonetheless often disagree on the subject of baptism. Should infants be baptized, or is baptism for believers only? What exactly does baptism mean? What happens, if anything, when someone is baptized? Which is better -- sprinkling or immersion? These disagreements are disheartening to some and confusing to many. The sacrament of baptism from a Reformed perspective is clearly and thoughtfully outlined in this useful book. James Brownson explains the scriptural basis, the theological underpinnings, and the practical implications of this particular element of the faith. Organized into thirty brief, tightly focused chapters -- each of which centers on a key question -- and enhanced by thoughtful discussion questions, The Promise of Baptism will be an important resource for pastors, students, and laypersons seeking to better understand this sacrament that lies at the heart of the church's life. A sampling of key questions addressed: What is a sacrament, and how does it differ from an "ordinance"? What's the relationship between baptism and being "born again"? How do the sacraments bring God's grace to us? Can someone be "saved" without being baptized? Can someone be baptized without being saved? Does baptism take the place of circumcision as the mark of the new covenant? What is "confirmation" or "profession of faith," and what is its relationship to baptism? What happens after baptism?