Redeem your story, redefine your creativity, and make a life that truly matters Sometimes the greatest gift you can receive is for your life to fall apart. After years stuck in a painful cycle fueled by past abuse and ongoing addiction, actor, artist, and director Blaine Hogan finally hit rock bottom. No longer able to hide behind the veneer of success or find comfort in the shadows of compulsion, Blaine was forced to look at the story his life was telling and realize he'd lost the plot. Desperate to find hope, he gave up a budding career and took a major life detour where he discovered that facing his past was the key to unlocking a new kind of creativity. In Exit the Cave, Blaine shares the stories that shaped him while exploring how our relationship to our past defines how we imagine the future and live in the present. Through powerful personal revelations, he invites you to take up the practices of radical imagination and real creativity so you can tell a better story with your life. If you've ever been stuck, addicted, ashamed, discontented, or lost, take courage--a richer, more imaginative, and meaningful life is waiting for you just outside the cave. "A tender but fierce story of survival, reckoning, and redemption. Blaine manages to somehow weave themes of acting, allegory, addiction, family, and faith into one beautifully written account of his own healing. This is the kind of story that will redeem you."--Laura McKowen, bestselling author of We Are the Luckiest "Blaine Hogan has inspired me for many years with his unique way of seeing the world. In this book you'll find a blast of inspiration and a trusty guide to help you exit the cave and enter a world that is real and beautiful and vital."--Brad Montague, New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of The Circles All Around Us, Becoming Better Grownups, and Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome

Something Old, Something New: Contemporary Entanglements of Religion and Secularity offers a fresh perspective on debates surrounding a significant if underappreciated relationship between religious and secular interests. In entanglement, secularity competes with religion, but neither side achieves simple dominance by displacing the other. As secular ideas and practices entangle with their religious counterparts, they interact and alter each other in a contentious but oddly intimate relationship. In each chapter, Wayne Glausser focuses on a topic of contemporary relevance in which something old-e. g., the sacrament of extreme unction, Greek rhetorical tropes, scholastic theology-entangles with something new: psilocybin therapy for the dying, new atheism, cognitive science. As traditional religious knowledge and values come into conflict with their secular counterparts, the old ideas undergo stress and adaptation, but the influence works in both directions. Those with primary allegiance to secular interests find themselves entangled with aspects of religious thinking. Whether they do it intentionally or without knowing, entangled secularists engage with and sometimes borrow from older paradigms they believe they have surpassed. Glausser's approach offers a new perspective in the conversation between believers and secularists. Something Old, Something New is a book that theists, atheists, agnostics, and everyone still searching for the right label will find respectful but provocative.

"World and Church" deals with the conflict between religiosity and life in the world. Deliberately, Schillebeeckx turns around the order of the words in the idiom 'church and world', thereby stressing the embedding of faith and church life in particular contexts. In the first three chapters he reflects on this tension as he experienced it in burgeoning existentialism and debates between Catholics and Marxists in those turbulent years in Paris, where he was living immediately after World War II. It includes thoughts on pastoral work among the working class and the then popular pretres-ouvriers movement. He looks at some social problems and the mutual interrogation of believers and non-believers, also in light of the ideological compartmentalisation ('pillarization') evident in diverse spheres of European society: education, social work and health care. Schillebeeckx concludes by considering the responsibility of Catholic intellectuals and academics for the future of the world and the church, including the possible significance of a Catholic university

Ruth Haley Barton's award-winning, practical introduction to the spiritual practice of silence and solitude is an invitation to you to journey into the real presence of God and hear and his voice. Much of the Christian faith is about words - preaching, teaching, talking with others. But the hectic demands and noise of daily modern life can drown out God's words, and keep us from fully meeting him. Taking the story of Elijah the prophet as inspiration and example, Invitation to Solitude and Silence explores the power of quietness and stillness in connecting with God. Filled with practical exercises that draw on Ruth's own experience, it encourages and challenges us to rethink how we see silence and solitude and to use them to invite God deeper into our lives. Invitation to Solitude and Silence is ideal for anyone looking for spiritual disciplines to help them connect more fully with God and practices to aid their spiritual formation. Ruth's gentle wisdom will expand your idea of what prayer can be, and help you find time to rest and renew your faith so that your relationship with God is strengthened. Helpful and hopeful, this book is a reminder that God does not push himself where he is not wanted but waits for us to respond from the depths of our desire. Will you say yes?

Music in the California missions was a pluralistic combination of voices and instruments, of liturgy and spectacle, of styles and functions-and even of cultures-in a new blend that was non-existent before the Franciscan friars made their way to California beginning in 1769. This book explores the exquisite sacred music that flourished on the West Coast of America when it was under Spanish and Mexican rule; it delves into the historical, cultural, biographical, and stylistic aspects of California mission music during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The book explores how mellifluous plainchant, reverent hymns, spunky folkloric ditties, "classical" music in the style of Haydn, and even Native American drumming were interwoven into a tapestry of resonant beauty. Aspects of music terminology, performance practice, notation, theory, sacred song, hymns, the sequence, the mass, and pageantry are addressed. Russell draws upon hundreds of primary documents in California, Mexico, Madrid, Barcelona, London, and Mallorca, and it is through the melding together of this information from geographically separated places that he brings the mystery of California's mission music into sharper focus. In addition to extensive musical analysis, the book also examines such things as cultural context, style, scribal attribution, instructions to musicians, government questionnaires, invoices, the liturgy, architectural space where performances took place, spectacle, musical instruments, instrument construction, shipping records, travelers' accounts, letters, diaries, passenger lists, baptismal and burial records, and other primary source material. Within this book one finds considerablebiographical information about Junipero Serra, Juan Bautista Sancho, Narciso Duran, Florencio Ibanez, Pedro Cabot, Martin de Cruzelaegui, Ignacio de Jerusalem, and Francisco Javier Garcia Fajer. Furthermore, it contains five far-reaching appendices: a Catalogue of Mission Sources; Photos of Missions and Mission Manuscripts (with over 150 color facsimiles); Translations of Primary Texts; Music Editions (that are performance-ready); and an extensive Bibliography.

The new NLT Premium Value Compact Bible, Filament-Enabled Edition has readable text, an attractive layout, and an affordable price in a thin, easy-to-carry size. And while it has the same low price of basic text Bibles, the NLT Premium Value Compact offers much more. It not only features a bold new design and the trusted and much-loved New Living Translation (NLT) but also includes the groundbreaking Filament Bible app. This app enables you to use your mobile phone or tablet to connect every page to a vast array of related content, including study notes, devotionals, interactive maps, informative videos, and worship music.

The Filament Bible app turns this Bible into a powerful study and devotional experience, offering more to expand your mind and touch your heart than you can possibly hold in your hand.

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This book offers the first comprehensive examination and analysis of the receipt, transmission, and interpretation of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In Orthodoxy, the Old Testament has commonly been equated with the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible attested by fourth- and fifth-century Christian manuscripts. As Eugen Pentiuc shows throughout this work, however, the Eastern Orthodox Church has never closed the door to other text-witnesses or suppressed interpreters' efforts to dig into the less familiar text of the Hebrew Bible for key terms or reading variants. The first part of the book examines the reception of the Old Testament by the early Eastern Orthodox Church, considering such matters as the nature of divine revelation, the paradox of the inclusion of the Jewish scriptures in the Christian Bible, and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Pentiuc's investigation is not limited to the historic-literary sources but extends to the visual, imaginative, and symbolic aspects of the Church's living tradition. In the second part of the book he looks at the various ways Orthodox Christians have sought to assimilate the Old Testament in the spiritual, liturgical, and doctrinal fabric of their faith community. Special attention is given to liturgy (hymnody, lectionaries, and liturgical symbolism), iconography (frescoes, icons, illuminations), monastic rules and canons, conciliar resolutions, and patristic works in Greek, Syriac and Coptic. This wide-ranging and accessible work will serve not only to make Orthodox Christians aware of the importance of the Old Testament in their own tradition, but to introduce those who are not Orthodox both to the distinctive ways in which that community approaches scripture and to the modes of spiritual practice characteristic of Eastern Orthodoxy.

The new NLT Large Print Premium Value Thinline Bible, Filament-Enabled Edition has a comfortably readable text, an attractive layout, and an affordable price in a thin and easy-to-carry size. And while it has the same low price of basic text Bibles, the NLT Large Print Thinline now offers much more. It not only features a bold new design and the trusted and much-loved New Living Translation (NLT) but also includes the groundbreaking Filament Bible app. This app enables you to use your mobile phone or tablet to connect every page to a vast array of related content, including study notes, devotionals, interactive maps, informative videos, and worship music.

The Filament Bible app turns this Bible into a powerful study and devotional experience, offering more to expand your mind and touch your heart than you can possibly hold in your hand.

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Of course, you can use this Bible without the app, but when you want to dig deeper, grab your phone or tablet and open the Filament Bible app. It’s so easy to use.

The Forge will appeal to fans of the Kendricks' films: Lifemark, Overcomer, War Room, Courageous, Fireproof, Facing the Giants, and Flywheel.

As Cynthia Wright’s marriage implodes, she is forced to raise her teenage son, Isaiah, alone. The pressure of providing for them through her salon is a full-time job in itself. When Cynthia sees Isaiah pulling away and escaping into video games, tensions rise and prayers feel unanswered. Angry and hurt, Isaiah starts acting like the father who abandoned him, and Cynthia gives him an ultimatum while turning to her twin sister, Elizabeth Jordan, for support. Elizabeth enlists a seasoned prayer warrior who challenges Cynthia to pray boldly and believe God for the impossible.

Caught in the middle, Isaiah longs for respect, but sees no clear path to becoming a good man. Desperate for a job, he wanders into Moore Fitness, Inc. and encounters the owner, Joshua Moore, who introduces him to the concept of working for a coach rather than a boss. Needing the work, Isaiah reluctantly begins his mentoring process with Joshua. While Cynthia clings to hope, no one sees the coming storms brewing at the company and in Isaiah’s heart.

The Forge is about the power of prayer, the transformation only God can achieve, and the lasting influence one person can have on others.

After living for years under the occupation by the evil Fangs of Dang, the Igiby children find a map rumoured to lead to the lost Jewels of Anniera - the one thing the Fangs will do anything to find. The family is thrown headlong into a perilous adventure, uncovering truths about who they are that will change their world forever. Repackaged with new illustrations, this is the opportunity to discover the Wingfeathers.

Naturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, the resources of classical theism and orthodox Christianity provide the better explanation of the moral realities under consideration. Among such realities is the fundamental insight behind the problem of evil, namely, that the world is not as it should be. Baggett and Walls argue that God and the world, taken together, exhibit superior explanatory scope and power for morality classically construed, without the need to water down the categories of morality, the import of human value, the prescriptive strength of moral obligations, or the deliverances of the logic, language, and phenomenology of moral experience. This book thus provides a cogent moral argument for God's existence, one that is abductive, teleological, and cumulative.

For Kahlil Gibran, re-telling the story of Jesus had been the ambition of a life time. He had known it from childhood, when as a poor boy in the Middle-East, he'd been taught by a priest reading the bible with him. Now, in his maturity - and a successful writer in the USA - he wanted tell the story as no one had told it before. With 'Jesus, the Son of Man', (1928) he did just that; set alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, here is 'The Gospel according to Gibran.' Gibran's approach is to allow the reader to see Jesus through the eyes of a large and disparate group of people. Some of these characters will be familiar: amongst others, we hear from Peter; Mary his mother; Luke; Pontius Pilate, Thomas and Mary Magdalene. But many other characters are new, created by Gibran, including a Jerusalem cobbler, an old Greek shepherd - and the mother of Judas. 'My son was a good man and upright,' she tells us. 'He was tender and kind to me, and he loved his kin and his countrymen.' What connects these people is the fact that they all have an opinion about Jesus; though no two opinions are the same. 'The Galilean was a conjuror, and a deceiver,' says a young priest. But then a woman caught in adultery experienced him in a different way. 'When Jesus didn't judge me, I became a woman without a tainted memory, and I was free and my head was no longer bowed.' Not all the women like him, however. A widow in Cana, whose son is a follower, remains furious: 'That man is evil! For what good man would separate a son from his mother?' While a lawyer has mixed feelings: 'I admired him more as a man than as a leader. He preached something beyond my liking; perhaps beyond my reason.' A philosopher is in awe, however: 'His senses were continually made new; and the world to him was always a new world.' With each fresh voice, a different aspect of Jesus' character is explored; and a different reaction named. Gibran concludes by reminding us that all the characters and attitudes presented in the story live on in the world today, with nothing different now from then. The Logician is clear in his distrust: 'Behold a man disorderly, against all order; a mendicant opposed to all possessions; a drunkard who would only make merry with rogues and castaways.' But for Gibran himself, whose Lebanese roots placed him close to the original steps of the Galilean, Jesus is worth rather more; and is present still: 'But Master, Sky-heart, knight of our fairer dream, You do still tread this way. No bows nor spears shall stray your steps; You walk through all our arrows. You smile down upon us, And though you are the youngest of us all, You father us all. Poet, Singer, Great Heart! May our God bless your name.'