Gifts of Gravity and Light


Book Description




Seamus Heaney's Gifts


Book Description

“The fact of the matter,” Seamus Heaney said in a 1997 interview with the Paris Review, “is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry.” Throughout his career, Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, maintained that poetry came to him from a mysterious source like a gift of grace. He also believed that the recipient of this sort of boon had an ethical obligation to share it with others. Seamus Heaney’s Gifts, by the noted scholar and poet Henry Hart, offers the first comprehensive examination of Heaney’s preoccupation with gifts and gift-exchange. Drawing on extensive research in Heaney’s papers, as well as three decades of correspondence with the poet, Hart presents a richly detailed study of Heaney’s life and work that foregrounds the Irishman’s commitment to the vocation of poetry as a public art to be shared with audiences and readers around the world. Heaney traced his devotion to gifts back to the actual present of a Conway Stewart fountain pen that his parents gave him at the age of twelve when he left his family farm in Northern Ireland to attend a private Catholic secondary school in Londonderry. He commemorated this gift in “Digging,” the first poem in his first book, and in two poems he wrote near the end of his life: “The Conway Stewart” and “On the Gift of a Fountain Pen.” Friends and doctors had warned him that his endless globetrotting to give lectures and poetry readings had damaged his health. Yet he felt obligated to share his talent with audiences around the world until his death in 2013. As Hart shows, Heaney found his first models for gift-giving in his rural community in Northern Ireland, the Bible, the rituals of the Catholic Church, and the literature of mystical and mythical quests. Blending careful research with evocative commentaries on the poet’s work, Seamus Heaney’s Gifts explains his ideas about the artist’s gift, the necessity of gift-exchange acts, and the moral responsibility to share one’s talents for the benefit of others.




Gravity and Grace


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On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition, this Routledge Classics edition offers the English reader the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever.




Gifts from Grandpa


Book Description

The aim of this volume originally was to occupy my time during the start of and worst of the Pandemic of 2020. As I started, I realized that I could write. For me writing was like surgery without anesthesia. The subject of the volume was to allow others to perhaps learn from my self-induced pain and pain brought by others, Although the sentiments are true to my heart, the examples used and people referred to are not meant to be actual history but lessons and teachings. The aim was not to generate money from my endeavors. It was to give those now and forever life lessons. All net proceeds will be directed to charitable endeavors. I do hope that these pages which follow serve to satisfy this dream.




Unexpected Gifts


Book Description

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.




The Embracing Life, Spirit, Faith, and Adversity (Gifts of Freedom, Book 1)


Book Description

Our society is blindly chasing after freedom.......financial freedom, freedom from sadness, we're on a quest for spiritual truth - yet, these pursuits leave most of us on an endless treadmill. The truth is, life changing freedom is available to all who have the answers to life's most important questions. What is the purpose for which I was created? How do I get to know my Creator? How do I live in wholehearted freedom? God did not design His creation to survive--but never really live. The aim of this book is to set people free through Biblical truth; offering clear succinct answers. The Gifts of Freedom will bring its readers hope, encouragement, joy and their purpose in life. Will you choose to learn about, receive, unwrap and use these wonderful gifts?




The Gift of Wonder


Book Description

Can you imagine a God who dances with shouts of joy, laughs when you laugh, loves to play, and invites us to join the fun? In this book Christine Sine invites us to pay attention to childlike characteristics that have the power to reshape us, with fresh spiritual practices that engage all our senses and help us embrace the wonder and joy that God intends for us.




The Last Lecture


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The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.




Defy Gravity


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New York Times best-selling author Caroline Myss draws from her years as a medical intuitive to show that healing is not only physical; it is also a mystical phenomenon that transcends reason. Inspired by ordinary people who overcame a wide array of physical and psychological ailments—from rheumatoid arthritis to cancer—Caroline dove into the works of the great mystics to gain a deeper understanding of healing’s spiritual underpinnings. Based on these studies, she demonstrates how conventional and holistic medicine often fall short in times of need. Both systems rely upon a logical approach to curing illness when there is nothing reasonable about the emotional, psychological, or spiritual influences behind any ailment. Integral to this mystical healing approach is the engagement of the soul, which we experience through exploring our seven shadow passions, building an empowered inner self around our seven inherent graces, and learning how to work with the mystical laws that govern it. This knowledge holds the key to understanding what it means to defy gravity and break through the boundaries of ordinary thought. You can heal any illness. You can channel grace. And you can learn to live fearlessly.




Gifts of Gravity and Light


Book Description

Gifts of Gravity and Light is a new collection of nature writing that shines a light on the natural world in all its biodiversity as experienced by those who, for reasons of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, upbringing or disability, are not often seen or heard when it comes to nature writing. With a foreword by Bernadine Evaristo, and contributions from Kaliane Bradley, Pippa Marland, Testament, Michael Malay, Tishani Doshi, Jay Griffiths, Luke Turner, Anita Roy, Raine Geoghegan, Zakiya Mckenzie, Alys Fowler and Amanda Thomson - these are the voices of those whose perspective is not necessarily that of a 'insider'. Telling in the story of the year in four broad sections - Winter, Spring , Summer, Autumn - this is an almanac that will entertain, surprise and enthral everyone for whom nature is as important as breathing.