Joyful Defiance

Download or read book Joyful Defiance written by Anna M. Madsen and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sitting in the pew at her husband's funeral, author Anna Madsen heard the last verse of the great Reformation hymn: "Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom's ours forever!" Reflecting on this experience, Madsen realized that death takes victories when its power appears to be greater than life. And she defiantly refused to cede death any more wins: "Not my spirit, not my strength, not my joy, and certainly not those of my children." The challenge is to acknowledge death in its manifold forms and own one's indignation and grief, and yet transcend it so that even if we are angry, we do not become anger. This book names the tension between grief and hope, acknowledges the reality of both, and defines a path forward to a life of joyful defiance. That path runs through Holy Saturday, a day that has one foot in the fear, grief, and death of Good Friday while the other is in Easter, a day of hope, freedom, life, and joy. Christians are not immune from experiencing anxiety, anger, exhaustion, and grief--emotions and effects arising from personal and communal trauma, including the trauma of death. Yet, the accompanying angst and pain, while real, are not the last word for people of faith. This book is written particularly for advocates, caregivers, and those who suffer in any number of ways, among them chronic illness, chronic injustice, and chronic exhaustion. Despite facing grief, anger, fear, and fatigue, readers will be encouraged not just to cope but to embrace hope and joy again, and then to plow them back into the ground of the wider world for the sake of their neighbors.

Download or read book Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice written by Michelle C. Hughes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teaching is hard work. Teaching is rewarding work. An abundance of research on teachers’ mental health, teacher burnout, and attrition in the profession has proven the truth of the first claim. And, without reading a word of academic research, teachers know the truth of the second: there are numerous challenges and complexities involved in this noble profession. Teachers also know the truth of our second claim—that teaching is immensely rewarding work. The editors and authors of Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice: Transforming Teaching Challenges into Opportunities argue that the reciprocities of teaching keep them and countless other teachers in the profession. While teaching is one of the most demanding professions on earth, it is also one of the most rewarding professions. Editors Michelle C. Hughes and Ken Badley hope readers and teaching colleagues alike will be reminded of the rewards and the unexpected paybacks found in teaching. Joyful Resilience as Educational Practice is offered as a love letter, a "hang-in-there, you’ve got this" message to teacher colleagues everywhere. May readers be reminded that teaching is a calling. The editors invite readers to wrestle with, take courage, and find joyful resilience in the professional challenges named in this book.

Download or read book Defiant Joy written by Stasi Eldredge and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all spend a lot of energy reaching for happiness, but we're never quite able to hang on to it. Real life happens, and our circumstances take us on an emotional rollercoaster. Oftentimes, the Bible's call to "be joyful always" seems out of reach--but it doesn't have to be. We are called to live. And, miraculously, to live with joy. Join bestselling author Stasi Eldredge as she shows us how to choose a joy that stands against the tides of life's real and often overwhelming pain. Defiant Joy reminds us that a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world was meant to be ours. This joy isn't simply happiness on steroids, it's the unyielding belief that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. It's the stubborn determination to be present in whatever may come and interpret both goodness and grief by the light of heaven. Defiant Joy will give you the encouragement you need to: Finally experience daily joy Learn how to have a posture of holy defiance when circumstances threaten to weigh down your soul Find new perspectives on the painful circumstances you've faced In Defiant Joy, Stasi invites us with courage, candor, and tender vulnerability to a place beyond sadness or happiness, leading the way as we learn how to maintain a posture of holy defiance that neither denies nor diminishes our pain but dares to live with expectant, unwavering hope.

Download or read book Sovereign Joy written by Miguel A. Valerio and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sovereign Joy explores the performance of festive black kings and queens among Afro-Mexicans between 1539 and 1640. This fascinating study illustrates how the first African and Afro-creole people in colonial Mexico transformed their ancestral culture into a shared identity among Afro-Mexicans, with particular focus on how public festival participation expressed their culture and subjectivities, as well as redefined their colonial condition and social standing. By analyzing this hitherto understudied aspect of Afro-Mexican Catholic confraternities in both literary texts and visual culture, Miguel A. Valerio teases out the deeply ambivalent and contradictory meanings behind these public processions and festivities that often re-inscribed structures of race and hierarchy. Were they markers of Catholic subjecthood, and what sort of corporate structures did they create to project standing and respectability? Sovereign Joy examines many of these possibilities, and in the process highlights the central place occupied by Africans and their descendants in colonial culture. Through performance, Afro-Mexicans affirmed their being: the sovereignty of joy, and the joy of sovereignty.

Download or read book The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism written by Louis Bouyer and published by Scepter Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Black Voices in Early Modern Spanish Literature, 1500-1750 written by Diana Berruezo-Sánchez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, Diana Berruezo-Sánchez recovers key chapters in the history of Afro-Iberian diasporas by exploring the literary contributions and life experiences of black African communities and individuals in early modern Spain. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, international trade involving chattel slavery led to significant populations of enslaved, free(d), and half-manumitted black African women, men, and children in the Iberian Peninsula. These demographic changes transformed Spain's urban and social landscapes. In exploring Spain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on cultural forms of the period, Berruezo-Sánchez examines a broad range of texts and unearths new documents relating to black African poets, performers, and black confraternities. Her discoveries evince the broad yet largely disregarded literary and artistic impact of the African diaspora in early modern Spain, expanding the scope of linguistic practices beyond habla de negros and creating space for early modern black poets in the Spanish literary canon. These textual sources challenge established understandings of black Africans and black African history in early modern Spain. They show how black Africans exerted significant cultural agency by collectively contributing to and shaping the literary texts of the period, including those of the popular genre villancicos de negros, and by developing artistic traditions as musicians, dancers, and poets. As both creators and consumers of cultural forms, black African men and women navigated a restrictive, coercive slave society yet negotiated their own physical and cultural spaces.

Download or read book Spirit Wheel written by Steven Charleston and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2023 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Choctaw elder Steven Charleston comes this new collection of more than two hundred prayerful meditations on the Spirit Wheel, the mystery that dwells behind and within creation. Charleston guides readers through the four hallmarks of Native spirituality - tradition, kinship, vision, and balance - to find the Spirit who loves without exception.