A Spiritual Life


Book Description

This revealing collection presents a selection of twenty poets, prophets, and preachers who share their understandings of what makes a "good spiritual life." They draw on their professional experiences and, as important, grace us with their personal thoughts. The result is essentially a textbook for spirituality courses, exposing readers to the spiritual lives of a wonderfully diverse group of people with a wide range of Christian experiences. Every reader is sure to find a perspective with which he or she can identify.




A World From Dust


Book Description

A World From Dust describes how a set of chemical rules combined with the principles of evolution in order to create an environment in which life as we know it could unfold. Beginning with simple mathematics, these predictable rules led to the advent of the planet itself, as well as cells, organs and organelles, ecosystems, and increasingly complex life forms. McFarland provides an accessible discussion of a geological history as well, describing how the inorganic matter on Earth underwent chemical reactions with air and water, allowing for life to emerge from the world's first rocks. He traces the history of life all the way to modern neuroscience, and shows how the bioelectric signals that make up the human brain were formed. Most popular science books on the topic present either the physics of how the universe formed, or the biology of how complex life came about; this book's approach would be novel in that it condenses in an engaging way the chemistry that links the two fields. This book is an accessible and multidisciplinary look at how life on our planet came to be, and how it continues to develop and change even today. This book includes 40 illustrations by Gala Bent, print artist and studio faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, and Mary Anderson, medical illustrator.




Life is a Beach


Book Description




Loss, Grief, and Attachment in Life Transitions


Book Description

Loss, Grief, and Attachment in Life Transitions gives readers an attachment-informed grief counseling framework and a new way of understanding non-death loss and its treatment. Loss and grief are viewed through a wide-angle lens with relevance to the whole of human life, including the important area of career counseling and occupational consultation. The book is founded on the key themes of the Transition Cycle: welcome and contact, attachment and bonding, intimacy and sexuality, seperation and loss, grief and meaning reconstruction. Rich in case material related to loss and change, the book provides the tools for adopting a highly personalized approach to working with clients facing a range of life transitions. This book is a highly relevant and practical volume for grief counselors and other mental health professionals looking to incorporate attachment theory into their clinical practice.




Big Book Awakening


Book Description

Written to be used in conjunction with, not instead of the "Big Book of Alcoholics anonymous." This book will help guide you through a personal experience with all "Twelve Steps" as they are outlined in the "AA Big Book." You write notes and questions from the "Big Book Awakening" into your own "Big Book" for personal consideration. After you have completed this process yourself your "Big Book" is now a powerful "working with others book" with questions and considerations that will help you work with others both one-on-one and in workshops. They them selves write the same notes into their own "Big Book" to one day do the same.




Say What You Mean


Book Description

Find your voice, speak your truth, listen deeply—a guide to having more meaningful and mindful conversations through nonviolent communication We spend so much of our lives talking to each other, but how much are we simply running on automatic—relying on old habits and hoping for the best? Are we able to truly hear others and speak our mind in a clear and kind way, without needing to get defensive or go on the attack? In this groundbreaking synthesis of mindfulness, somatics, and Nonviolent Communication, Oren Jay Sofer offers simple yet powerful practices to develop healthy, effective, and satisfying ways of communicating. The techniques in Say What You Mean will help you to: • Feel confident during conversation • Stay focused on what really matters in an interaction • Listen for the authentic concerns behind what others say • Reduce anxiety before and during difficult conversations • Find nourishment in day-to-day interactions “Unconscious patterns of communication create separation not only in our personal lives, they also perpetuate patterns of misunderstanding and violence that pervade our world. With clarity and great insight, Oren Jay Sofer offers teachings and practices that train us to speak and listen with presence, courage, and an open heart.” —Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge




Compass to Healing: My Journey to Wellness


Book Description

In the spring of 2015, I became very ill. For eighteen months, I could barely get off the couch. I was sick, had no energy, my anxiety went out of control, and I sank into a deep depression. In Compass to Healing: My Journey to Wellness, I share what happened to me when I finally gave up trying to fix, control, and micromanage the universe to protect my family and heal myself. Compass to Healing: My Journey to Wellness tells the story of my surrender to a higher power and the gifts and guidance that came to me in the form of a voice, signs, and messages, many of which I received from family, friends, and strangers, as I began to experiment with connecting, trusting, and communicating with that higher realm of power. In Compass to Healing: My Journey to Wellness, I begin to discover my own inner compass and a way out of fear and anxiety, and, in doing so, regain my health and courage and find myself gifted with miracles, faith, hope, and the great, healing love of family and friends—love that was there all along, and love that carried me through. I interpret my healing journey using the spiritual lens of the traditional, indigenous, Andean Medicine Wheel and its four cardinal directions. In Compass to Healing: My Journey to Wellness, my healing journey takes me south and west and brings me into contact with beautiful events, places, and people—each with something important to teach me.




Low Impact Living


Book Description

This book is the inspirational story of one project that shows you how you can become involved in building and running your neighbourhood. The author, co-founder of Lilac (Low Impact Living Affordable Community), along with other members of the community and the project team, explains how a group of people got together to build one of the most pioneering ecological, affordable cohousing neighbourhoods in the world. The book is a story of perseverance, vision and passion, demonstrating how ordinary people can build their own affordable, ecological community. The book starts with the clear values that motivated and guided the project’s members: sustainability, co-operativism, equality, social justice and self-management. It outlines how they were driven by challenges and concerns over the need to respond to climate change and energy scarcity, the limits of the ‘business as usual’ model of pro-growth economics, and the need to develop resources so that communities can determine and manage their own land and resources. The author’s story is interspersed with vignettes on topics such as decision making, landscaping, finance and design. The book summarises academic debates on the key issues that informed the project, and gives technical data on energy and land issues as well as practical ‘how-to’ guides on a range of issues such as designing meetings, budget planning and community agreements. Low Impact Living provides clear and easy to follow advice for community groups, practitioners, government, business and the development sector and is heavily illustrated with drawings and photographs from the architectural team.




Creative Social Policy


Book Description

Innovative and forward-thinking in its approach, this book advocates for the liberation of people’s creative potential through the systematic transformation of work and capital. Providing a detailed account and analysis of current social policy, Johannes Kananen envisions an emancipatory societal development that prioritises fulfilling human need as opposed to the accumulation of private capital.




Do More Great Work


Book Description

You work hard. You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with "Good Work" that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in "Bad Work"—endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps. Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "Great Work"—the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who’s found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work. When you’re up to your eyeballs answering e-mail, returning phone calls, attending meetings and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book for invaluable guidance. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that engages and challenges you, that has a real impact, that plays to your strengths—and that matters. The exercises are "maps"—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start and sustain Great Work, revealing how to: Find clues to your own Great Work—they’re all around you Locate the sweet spot between what you want to do and what your organization wants you to do Generate new ideas and possibilities quickly Best manage your overwhelming workload Double the likelihood that you’ll do what you want to do All it takes is ten minutes a day, a pencil and a willingness to change. Do More Great Work will not only help you identify what the Great Work of your life is, it will tell you how to do it.