The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality
Author: Belden C. Lane File Type: pdf In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference.Interweaving a memoir of his mothers long struggle with Alzheimers and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within. It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the false self that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might make some desert in our lives.Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a performance of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition. **
Author: John M. Budd
File Type: pdf
This book addresses some of the most pressing issues in library and information science. It offers informed insight and perspectives on six essential and timely questions facing the profession ul lWhat is information?l lWhat is information literacy?l lWhat roles do academic libraries play in higher education today? l lHow can we effectively educate librarians?l lWhat are the ethical and moral bases of the library and information professions?l lWhat is the future of librarianship?l ulWritten by John M. Budd, one of librarianships most-respected educators and the author of twelve previous books, and copublished with Beta Phi Mu, the International Honor Society for librarianship, this is sure to become one of professions most talked-about books. **
Author: Paul Shepard
File Type: pdf
When we grasp fully that the best expressions of our humanity were not invented by civilization but by cultures that preceded it, that the natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams, we will be on the way to a long overdue reconciliation between opposites which are of our own making. --from Coming Home to the Pleistocene Paul Shepard was one of the most profound and original thinkers of our time. Seminal works like The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature and Madness introduced readers to new and provocative ideas about humanity and its relationship to the natural world. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Paul Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme, the central tenet of his thought that our essential human nature is a product of our genetic heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and that the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of todays ecological and social ills. Coming Home to the Pleistocene provides the fullest explanation of that theme. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepards life work and constitutes the clearest, most accessible expression of his ideas. Coming Home to the Pleistocene pulls together the threads of his vision, considers new research and thinking that expands his own ideas, and integrates material within a new matrix of scientific thought that both enriches his original insights and allows them to be considered in a broader context of current intellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepards work What can we do to recreate a life more in tune with our genetic roots? In this book, Paul Shepard presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being. Coming Home to the Pleistocene is a valuable book for those familiar with the life and work of Paul Shepard, as well as for new readers seeking an accessible introduction to and overview of his thought.
Author: Peter Gratton
File Type: pdf
Explains and contextualises the key concepts in Jean-Luc Nancys entire body of work This dictionary equips students and scholars alike with insights into the philosophical and theoretical background to Nancys work. Drawing on the internationally recognised expertise of a multidisciplinary team of contributors, the entries explain all of his main concepts, in particular his focus on community and aesthetics, contextualising these within his work as a whole and relating him to his contemporaries. Contributors include Jane Hiddleston, Ian James, Oliver Marchart and Todd May **
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
File Type: epub
A new, comprehensive English anthologyWhat is the meaning of life? How should I live? Is there any purpose to the universe? Generations have turned to the great German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer for answers to such essential questions of existence. His influence has extended not only to later philosophersNietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein among thembut also to musicians, artists, and important novelists such as Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and Proust.The Essential Schopenhauer, the most comprehensive English anthology now available of this seminal thinkers writings, will open English readers to Schopenhauers profound ideas. Selected by Wolfgang Schirmacher, president of the International Schopenhauer Association, The Essential Schopenhauer is an invaluable and accessibleintroduction to Schopenhauers powerful body of work.
Author: John Michael Greer
File Type: epub
This volume is an A-Z of alternative history. It helps you discover everything you wanted to know about secret societies like the Freemasons, the historical mystery of Atlantis, why King Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci and Hitler are key figures, plus conspiracy theories, forgotten sciences, and ancient wisdom.
Author: Damian Rogers
File Type: pdf
Im ill-equipped for this. I sit by a fake fireplace that frames a real flame. Ive been crossed by two crows today. Multi-vectored, Rogerss poems hum with life and tension, their speaker poised as mother, seer, reporter and daughter. They speak of loss and cold realities (misplaced charms of luck, a tour of an assisted-living facility, coins thrown into Niagara Falls). They also interweave dreams and visions O Lion, I am an old handmaiden I will not lay the pretty baby in the lap of the imposter. Simple but evocative, at once strange and plain, Rogerss poems of address ricochet off the familiar Dear Reader or Dickinsons Dear Master ... Rogerss poems provide instructions for what to leave, what to take and what to fight. They act as selvage between the vast mother-ocean the mem of memory and the fabric we make of the uncertain in-between. HoaNguyen,The Boston Review How can we live with the kind of pain that worsens each day? Dear Leaderexplains through bold endurance, enumerated blessings and the artistic imagination. By pasting stark truths over, or under, images of strange, compelling beauty, Rogers creates a collage, a simulation of the human heart under assault, bleeding but unbroken. Part Orpheus, part pop-heroine who can paint the daytime black, all, an original act of aesthetic violence and pure, dauntless, love. Lynn Crosbie Praise for Paper Radio Paper Radio jumped out at me and I cant say why, but thats what you want poetry to do, and I never want to say why. Because its real and talking to me. Because its bloody and horrifying beauty. Its the Clash and Buckminster Fuller, Auden and Bowie. Bob Holman Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. **About the Author Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Author: Matthew T. Rutz
File Type: pdf
Scholars working in a number of disciplines _ archaeologists, classicists, epigraphers, papyrologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, Mayanists, philologists, and ancient historians of all stripes _ routinely engage with ancient textual sources that are either material remains from the archaeological record or historical products of other connections between the ancient world and our own. Examining the archaeology-text nexus from multiple perspectives, contributors to this volume discuss current theoretical and practical problems that have grown out of their work at the boundary of the division between archaeology and the study of early inscriptions. In 12 representative case-studies drawn from research in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica, scholars use various lenses to critically examine the interface between archaeology and the study of ancient texts, rethink the fragmentation of their various specialized disciplines, and illustrate the best in current approaches to contextual analysis. The collection of essays also highlights recent trends in the development of documentation and dissemination technologies, engages with the ethical and intellectual quandaries presented by ancient inscriptions that lack archaeological context, and sets out to find profitable future directions for interdisciplinary research.
Author: Carol J. White
File Type: epub
In Time and Death Carol White articulates a vision of Martin Heideggers work which grows out of a new understanding of what he was trying to address in his discussion of death. Acknowledging that the discussion of this issue in Heideggers major work Being and Time is often far from clear, White presents a new interpretation of Heidegger which short-circuits many of the traditional criticisms. White claims that we are all in a better position to understand Heideggers insights after fifty years because they have now become a part of the conventional wisdom of common opinion. His view shows up in accounts of knowledge in the physical sciences, in the assumptions of the social sciences, in art and film, even in popular culture in general, but does so in ways ignorant of their origins. Now that these insights have filtered down into the culture at large, we can make Heidegger intelligible in a way that perhaps he himself could not. White presents the best possible case for Heidegger, making him more intelligible to those people with a long acquaintance with his work, those with a long aversion to it and in particular to those just starting to pursue an interest in it. White places the problems with which Heidegger is dealing in the context of issues in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, in order to better locate him for the more mainstream audience. The language and approach of the book is able to accommodate the novice but also offers much food for thought for the Heidegger scholar. **Review Carol J. Whites work has a natural cadence and a clarity of expression which makes the philosophical questions being dealt with come alive and appear seductively clear. Such is the richness of the intellectual world she weaves that insights abound yet come in and out of focus as the philosophical terrain shifts... It open us culture and processes of social ordering to a deepened understanding of the interplay between action and presence. Journal of Futures Studies Carol Whites Time and Death Heideggers Analysis of Finitude is a book rich in thought, dense in original interpretive claims, and overflowing with supporting textual references. Inquiry Carol Whites book probably stands as the most scholarly publication on Heideggers analysis of death that is currently available. Including an indispensable foreword to the book, the noted Heidegger scholar, Hubert Dreyfus, identifies no less than eight positions on death and dying that various philosophers read into the relevant sections of Being and Time, concisely illuminating the arguments and counter-arguments for each stance. This provides us with a context for this publication, but it is also used as a testament to the towering contribution made by White, since Dreyfus argues that her position is the most compelling interpretation of Heideggers account on death, based not just on the philosophers earlier work, but consistent with writings produced throughout his life... White uncompromisingly explores the ideas behind the terms (or jargon, if you prefer), leaving the reader with a significantly richer and more coherent understanding of Heideggers overall project, and, I might add, an appreciation of the crucial importance of finitude in the corpus of his thought as a whole. Existential Analysis About the Author Carol J. White was formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, USA. Mark Ralkowski is a graduate student at University of New Mexico, USA.