Fierce Goodbye


Book Description

What does the Bible say on the topic of suicide? What does it not say? G. Lloyd Carr, now professor emeritus of biblical and theological studies at Gordon College, Mass., began to ask these questions after a precious daughter-in-law died by suicide. He embarked on a thorough canvassing of the scriptures and church history on this topic, which helped him on his grief journey. His poet wife, Gwendolyn C. Carr, found solace in writing out her responses and thoughts in moving, sensitive poetry. Their combined efforts in this distinctive book meld the pain and poignancy of the devastating experience of a family member's suicide with expertise from their respective professions. Fierce Goodbye is first and foremost a penetrating account of a family dealing with suicide, and offers solid guidance for those who worry about the eternal fate of a loved one. It provides a reliable and readable summary of Christian thinking about suicide, useful for pastors, counselors, students, and teachers. Free downloadable study guide available here.




Ghetto Fire


Book Description

Ghetto Fire is a collection of poetry from Author/Poet, J ASHELEY BROWN. This volume presents some of the best of his collective work with over 20 new poems added. Read his rants and ravings, his musings and observations and learn how creation is the fire in which we all burn.




Something Fierce


Book Description

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER (The Globe and Mail) A Globe and Mail Best Book [2011] A Quill & Quire Book of the Year [2011] A National Post Best Book [2011] A BBC Radio Book of the Week [October 2011] One of the CBC’s 15 Memoirs by Canadian Women Worth Reading [2015] Six-year-old Carmen Aguirre fled to Canada with her family following General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile. Five years later, when her mother and stepfather returned to South America as Chilean resistance members, Carmen and her sister went with them, quickly assuming double lives of their own. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria. Something Fierce takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictator-ruled Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile in the eventful decade between 1979 and 1989. Dramatic, suspenseful and darkly comic, it is a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life and a passionate argument against forgetting.




Preventing Suicide


Book Description

Many pastors, chaplains and pastoral counselors play a vital role as agents of hope to people who are struggling, but most of them feel overwhelmed and unprepared to prevent suicides. Informed by her work as a psychologist, Karen Mason's guide to suicide prevention is an essential resource for proactive pastors.




Bag of Bones


Book Description

A powerful tale of grief, love’s enduring bonds, and secrets of the past from #1 New York Times bestselling author and master storyteller Stephen King. Four years after the sudden death of his wife, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls “Sara Laughs,” Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie’s and Kyra’s struggle—and as he falls in love with both of them—he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs…now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here—and just what do they want of Mike Noonan?




Mennonites and Media: Mentioned in It, Maligned by It, and Makers of It


Book Description

Anabaptists and Mennonites have often been the subject of media scrutiny: sometimes admired, at other times maligned. Luther called them schwarmar, a German word meaning "fanatics" that alludes to a swarm of bees. In contrast, American independent film producer John Sayles drew inspiration from Mennonite conscientious objectors for his 1987 award-winning film, Matewan. Voltaire's Candide features a virtuous Anabaptist. Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest contains an Anabaptist reference. An Anabaptist chaplain is central to Joseph Heller's antiwar classic, Catch-22. President Lincoln and General Stonewall Jackson both had something to say about Mennonites. Garrison Keillor tells Mennonite jokes. These are just a few of the dozens of fascinating media references, dating from the early 1500s through the present, which are chronicled and analyzed here. Mennonites, although often considered media-shy, have in fact used media to great advantage in shaping their faith and identity. Beginning with the Martyrs Mirror, this book examines the writings of Mennonite authors John Howard Yoder, Donald Kraybill, Rudy Wiebe, Rhoda Janzen, and Malcolm Gladwell. Citing books, film, art, theater, and Ngram, the online culturomic tool developed by Harvard University and Google, the author demonstrates that Mennonites "punch above their weight class" in the media, and especially in print.




Malicious


Book Description

Why do you think people are drawn to the darkness? Well, Im not sure, answered Diana, looking around first as if the question had been addressed to someone else in the room instead. Ill tell you why. Its because the devil has tricked them into seeing no future for themselves in the light. The darkness . . . it just makes more sense when youre lost and tired of wandering aimlessly with no purpose. Its . . . knowing youre different in a bad way, like maybe youve seen too much to be pure or have done too many misdeeds to deserve peace. If you feel like the light doesnt want you, you turn the other way completely instead of being an orphan. You find a place to . . . belong. Everything has a dawn and a dusk. True to the suns nature, the beginning was brightdare I say promising. Toward the end of it all, the darkness consumed, and all the goodness weakened like the dusks devouring. I felt the thunder long before I saw the lightning but it was too latetoo late to run and hide and too late to take shelter. All that was left to do was brace yourself and hope for the best. It was the twenty-third year of my life. It was the longest year Id ever lived365 days, just the same as all the others but far longer in terms of growth. I learned so much about the world and its strange people. I think back to when I was just a little girl. Id lie in bed and scream for my mother all because I was too afraid to swing my feet over the side of my bed. I feared a monster would grab ankles and pull me under. And if I was lucky enough to outrun that monster, then surely the one in the closet hiding behind the coat hangers would get me. Back then, those were my worst fears. Simple, irrational, but easy to understand if you consider the mind of a child. But that was a very long time ago. When you grow up, you get scared of other things, and those things are far more difficult to make sense of but twice as hard to overcome. Its the place where deceptive beauties gather to profit and enthrall. Enter Malicious, a wicked game unfit for the weak and immature. If they just wanted to get drunk, they would have gone to a bar. They came here to see beautiful women, and since you are beautiful, you possess all the power. Youre not here to make friends. Your only objective is to make money. Now get on stage and dance, theyre waiting.




The Final Falcon Says I Do


Book Description

Mr. Right under her nose… When Freya Falcon is jilted on her wedding day, the notoriously stubborn and brooding Jackson Falcon discovers a protective side brought out by this newly vulnerable woman. Freya is surprised by Jackson's behaviour. They've spent so long denying any romantic interest in each other that she hasn't seen how kind, thoughtful and downright gorgeous the man really is! But her heart is raw, and despite his charms, she can't quite trust him…. It's up to the final Falcon brother to prove to Freya that he has indeed been Mr. Right all along.




Fierce Attachments


Book Description

Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments—hailed by the New York Times for the renowned feminist author’s “mesmerizing, thrilling” truths within its pages—has been selected by the publication’s book critics as the #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years. In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick’s groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O’Brien has called “the principal crux of female despair”: the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of “urban peasants,” Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother’s romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick’s struggle to find herself in love and in work. As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader’s admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter’s mother. Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre. “[Gornick] stares unflinchingly at all that is hidden, difficult, strange, unresolvable in herself and others—at loneliness, sexual malice and the devouring, claustral closeness of mothers and daughters...[Fierce Attachments is] a portrait of the artist as she finds a language—original, allergic to euphemism and therapeutic banalities—worthy of the women that raised her.”—The New York Times




Crisis Ministry


Book Description

Covers more than 25 pastoral care crises arranged from A-Z, Abortion to Suicide.