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Imperfect Solo: A Dark Comedy of Random Misfortune
by Steven Boykey SidleyFor Readers of Jonathan Tropper and Philip Roth, the Darkly Comic, Poignant Story of a Man Caught Between the Aspirations of Youth and the Realities of Middle Age—Called “A Perfect Riff on What It Means to Be Human in This Unsettled Age” (Renée Montagne, NPR) Meyer is filled with dread. His fading musical aspirations, his tyrannical CEO, his ex-wives, his exiting girlfriend, his elderly father, his beloved and troublesome children, and his confused and bewildered life all attest to his conviction that the sky will soon fall on his head. And then it does. This is the story of a man adrift in anxiety, ill fortune, and comic mishap, buffeted by the existential and prosaic concerns that modern life in Los Angeles inflicts. Forty years old, caught in the netherworld between the reckless optimism of youth and the resignation of age, Meyer tries to find handrails and ballast. Funny, intellectually probing, and poignant, Imperfect Solo follows the flailing and hapless Meyer as he seeks hope and redemption while his world unravels around him. Surrounded by the absurdities of a fading America, the affection of flawed but well-meaning friends and family, and the randomness of everyday life, he tries gamely to stay afloat. He must navigate love lost and found and lost again, the indignities of aging, the courage to stand up to assholes, and the search for the perfect sax solo. Will Meyer find grace? Can he, or we, ever?
Imperfect Spirituality
by Polly CampbellPulling a raisin out of a two-year-old's nose probably wasn't on Buddha's path toward enlightenment, but it was one of the obstacles for author Polly Campbell. For many, stuck raisins and other real-life moments provide sometimes the only opportunity for spiritual growth in a day. Imperfect Spiritualityshows readers how to integrate those every-day moments with traditional spiritual techniques to experience personal growth and greater well-being all in the course of your regular routine. Any activity can be transformed into a spiritual practice. Don't have a half-hour to meditate? Can't drop everything ala Elizabeth Gilbert and trek to Italy or India? Do a mini-meditation while stopped at a red light. Working to be mindful and present? Start by brushing your teeth.Imperfect Spirituality is filled with practical tips and dozens of examples like these, as well as anecdotes from real people who are striving to grow both spiritually and personally. Each chapter features fascinating research about how the mind body spirit connection really works as well as illuminating ,quotes, and informative, easy-to-do takeaways from leading-edge academic and spiritual experts who both study and practice the techniques explored in the book. Popular blogger and workshopper Polly Campbel, a favorite journalist for Daily Om and Psychology Today, emerges here as a fresh and important new voice in spirituality who offers a path to enlightenment for "the rest of us."
Imperfect Spirituality: Extraordinary Enlightenment for Ordinary People
by Polly CampbellPulling a raisin out of a two-year-old's nose probably wasn't on Buddha's path toward enlightenment, but it was one of the obstacles for author Polly Campbell. For many, stuck raisins and other real-life moments provide sometimes the only opportunity for spiritual growth in a day. Imperfect Spiritualityshows readers how to integrate those every-day moments with traditional spiritual techniques to experience personal growth and greater well-being all in the course of your regular routine. Any activity can be transformed into a spiritual practice. Don't have a half-hour to meditate? Can't drop everything ala Elizabeth Gilbert and trek to Italy or India? Do a mini-meditation while stopped at a red light. Working to be mindful and present? Start by brushing your teeth. Imperfect Spirituality is filled with practical tips and dozens of examples like these, as well as anecdotes from real people who are striving to grow both spiritually and personally. Each chapter features fascinating research about how the mind body spirit connection really works as well as illuminating ,quotes, and informative, easy-to-do takeaways from leading-edge academic and spiritual experts who both study and practice the techniques explored in the book. Popular blogger and workshopper Polly Campbel, a favorite journalist for Daily Om and Psychology Today, emerges here as a fresh and important new voice in spirituality who offers a path to enlightenment for "the rest of us."
Imperfection
by Patrick Grant“…aspirations to perfection awaken us to our actual imperfection.” It is in the space between these aspirations and our inability to achieve them that Grant reflects upon imperfection. Grant argues that an awareness of imperfection, defined as both suffering and the need for justice, drive us to an unrelenting search for perfection, freedom, and self-determination. The twenty-one brief chapters of Imperfection develop this governing idea as it relates to the present situation of the God debate, modern ethnic conflicts, and the pursuit of freedom in relation to the uncertainties of personal identity and the quest for self-determination. Known for his exploration of the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka, as well as his contribution to the study of Northern Ireland and the complex relationships among religion, literature, and ethnicity, Grant provides the reader with an analysis of the widespread rise of religious extremism across the globe. Referencing Plato, Van Gogh, Jesus, and the Buddha, he enlightens the reader with both succinct and original insights into human society. Imperfection is the result of an important Canadian public intellectual at work.
Imperfections: A Novel
by Lynda DurrantAs the Civil War looms, a teenager finds refuge from her abusive father in a Shaker community in this &“lovely and thought-provoking&” novel (Kirkus Reviews). Rosemary Elizabeth likes Pleasant Hill. Unlike her former home, the Kentucky Shaker community is serene and full of beautiful things. The food is plentiful and delicious, and she dresses in spotless white garments. Above all, she and her younger siblings are now safe from their drunken, often violent, father, and from the war between the Union and the Confederacy, which is said to be drawing closer every day. Perfection is the goal at Pleasant Hill, and Rosemary Elizabeth vows to be perfect so she&’ll be allowed to stay. As time passes, however, she finds herself more and more at odds with the Shaker path, the rules that are supposed to govern everything she says and does and even what she dreams. If she eliminates all the imperfections the Shakers find in her, will anything remain? &“Built around a historical incident—a visit by the soldiers of Morgan&’s Raiders to Pleasant Hill in 1862—this fine coming-of-age novel rewards readers with an unusual glimpse into a rarely portrayed religion as well as a different perspective on the Civil War.&” —Booklist
Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain
by Peter van der VeerPicking up on Edward Said's claim that the historical experience of empire is common to both the colonizer and the colonized, Peter van der Veer takes the case of religion to examine the mutual impact of Britain's colonization of India on Indian and British culture. He shows that national culture in both India and Britain developed in relation to their shared colonial experience and that notions of religion and secularity were crucial in imagining the modern nation in both countries. In the process, van der Veer chronicles how these notions developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to gender, race, language, spirituality, and science. Avoiding the pitfalls of both world systems theory and national historiography, this book problematizes oppositions between modern and traditional, secular and religious, progressive and reactionary. It shows that what often are assumed to be opposites are, in fact, profoundly entangled. In doing so, it upsets the convenient fiction that India is the land of eternal religion, existing outside of history, while Britain is the epitome of modern secularity and an agent of history. Van der Veer also accounts for the continuing role of religion in British culture and the strong part religion has played in the development of Indian civil society. This masterly work of scholarship brings into view the effects of the very close encounter between India and Britain--an intimate encounter that defined the character of both nations.
Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia Studies in International and Global History)
by Michael Christopher LowWith the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases. European, especially British Indian, officials also feared that lengthy sojourns in Arabia might expose their Muslim subjects to radicalizing influences from anticolonial dissidents and pan-Islamic activists. European colonial empires’ newfound ability to set the terms of hajj travel not only affected the lives of millions of pilgrims but also dramatically challenged the Ottoman Empire, the world’s only remaining Muslim imperial power.Michael Christopher Low analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extraterritorial reach of British India’s steamship empire in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Imperial Mecca recasts Ottoman Arabia as a distant, unstable semiautonomous frontier that Istanbul struggled to modernize and defend against the onslaught of colonial steamship mobility. As it turned out, steamships carried not just pilgrims, passports, and microbes, but the specter of legal imperialism and colonial intervention. Over the course of roughly a half century from the 1850s through World War I, British India’s fear of the hajj as a vector of anticolonial subversion gradually gave way to an increasingly sophisticated administrative, legal, and medical protectorate over the steamship hajj, threatening to eclipse the Ottoman state and Caliphate’s prized legitimizing claim as protector of Islam’s most holy places. Drawing on a wide range of Ottoman and British archival sources, this book sheds new light on the transimperial and global histories traversed along the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450-680 AD (Church History)
by John MeyendorffAlmost without exception, the "histories of the Church" available in print are, in fact, histories of Western Christianity, with only brief and superficial mentions of the East. This volume, the second in a planned series of six, attempts to achieve a more balanced approach. Filling the needs of students, but also of a wider readership, it describes the expansion of Christianity in the East and the West in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries - from Ireland and the Indian Ocean and from Germany to Nubia. It exposes the tensions which arose between the inevitable cultural pluralism and the needs of Church unity, an issue which stands at the center of modern ecclesiological concerns. It discusses the debates on the identity of Christ, formally solved by the decrees of the great ecumenical councils, but which left Christendom divided. It defines the problems raised by the arbitrariness of Eastern Roman emperors and by the gradual development of Roman primacy.
Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific (Studies in Pacific Worlds)
by Amanda Hendrix-KomotoIn the nineteenth century, white Americans contrasted the perceived purity of white, middle-class women with the perceived eroticism of women of color and the working classes. The Latter-day Saint practice of polygamy challenged this separation, encouraging white women to participate in an institution that many people associated with the streets of Calcutta or Turkish palaces. At the same time, Latter-day Saints participated in American settler colonialism. After their expulsion from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, Latter-day Saints dispossessed Ute and Shoshone communities in an attempt to build their American Zion. Their missionary work abroad also helped to solidify American influence in the Pacific Islands as the church became a participant in American expansion.Imperial Zions explores the importance of the body in Latter-day Saint theology with the faith&’s attempts to spread its gospel as a &“civilizing&” force in the American West and the Pacific. By highlighting the intertwining of Latter-day Saint theology and American ideas about race, sexuality, and the nature of colonialism, Imperial Zions argues that Latter-day Saints created their understandings of polygamy at the same time they tried to change the domestic practices of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto tracks the work of missionaries as they moved through different imperial spaces to analyze the experiences of the American Indians and Native Hawaiians who became a part of white Latter-day Saint families. Imperial Zions is a foundational contribution that places Latter-day Saint discourses about race and peoplehood in the context of its ideas about sexuality, gender, and the family.
Impermanence in Plain English
by Bhante Gunaratana Julia HarrisThe bestselling author of Mindfulness in Plain English guides the reader toward a direct and personal realization of one of the foundational tenets of Buddhism: all things that arise must pass away.In Impermanence in Plain English, the beloved author and teacher Bhante Gunaratana, alongside Julia Harris, clearly and masterfully explains the key Buddhist insight of impermanence and invites the reader to personally investigate its truth. Once-youthful bodies grow old and weary. New thoughts, feelings, and sensations arise and fade every second. Impermanence is not some abstract, metaphysical idea. This is the Dhamma, and you can see it for yourself. Drawing from Pali scriptures and writing with fresh, direct language, Bhante Gunaratana and Julia Harris highlight the Buddha&’s exhortation that we must directly realize for ourselves the liberating insights that free us from suffering and cyclic existence, without relying only on the word of religious authorities or academic or philosophical musings.
Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance
by Harshita Mruthinti KamathLearn more at www.luminosoa.org.Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don stri-vesam (woman’s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance circumscribed to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic Brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. However, the power of the Brahmin male body in stri-vesam is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian dance form. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries—village to urban, Brahmin to non-Brahmin, hegemonic to non-normative—to explore the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance.
Implacable: El poder que necesita para no darse por vencido
by John Bevere¡Usted ya tiene lo que necesita para finalizar bien!La idea nunca fue que los cristianos meramente vivieran. Usted fue creado para sobresalir ante cualquier adversidad y para demostrar grandeza. En este imprescindible libro, el autor de éxitos de ventas John Bevere explora todo lo necesario para terminar bien. Más que una estrategia para sobrevivir, Implacable presenta una nueva forma de pensar, una que con entusiasmo declara como el apóstol Pablo: &“Me gozo en las debilidades&”. Su sólida base bíblica le ayudará a florecer en cada temporada de la vida.
Implementing Takaful in India: Prospects, Challenges, and Solutions
by Syed Ahmed SalmanThis book encourages insurance companies and regulators to explore offering Islamic insurance to boost the insurance industry in India. The distinctive features of Takaful also make it appealing even to non-Muslims. According to the 2012 World Takaful Report, India has immense potential for Takaful is based on the size of its Muslim population and the growth of its economy. However, it is surprising that Takaful has yet to be introduced in India since it has been offered in non-majority Muslim countries, such as Singapore, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. When the concept and practice of Takaful are examined, it is free from interest, uncertainty, and gambling. These are the main elements prohibited in Islam. However, it has been evidenced that these elements are also banned in teaching other religions believed by the Indians. Given this landscape, this book fills the gap in research on the viability of Takaful in India, focusing on its empirical aspects by examining the perception of Indian insurance operators toward Takaful.
Importing Care, Faithful Service: Filipino and Indian American Nurses at a Veterans Hospital (Critical Issues in Health and Medicine)
by Stephen M. CherryEvery year thousands of foreign-born Filipino and Indian nurses immigrate to the United States. Despite being well trained and desperately needed, they enter the country at a time, not unlike the past, when the American social and political climate is once again increasingly unwelcoming to them as immigrants. Drawing on rich ethnographic and survey data, collected over a four-year period, this study explores the role Catholicism plays in shaping the professional and community lives of foreign-born Filipino and Indian American nurses in the face of these challenges, while working at a Veterans hospital. Their stories provide unique insights into the often-unseen roles race, religion and gender play in the daily lives of new immigrants employed in American healthcare. In many ways, these nurses find themselves foreign in more ways than just their nativity. Seeing nursing as a religious calling, they care for their patients, both at the hospital and in the wider community, with a sense of divine purpose but must also confront the cultural tensions and disconnects between how they were raised and trained in another country and the legal separation of church and state. How they cope with and engage these tensions and disconnects plays an important role in not only shaping how they see themselves as Catholic nurses but their place in the new American story.
Impossible God: Derrida's Theology (Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology)
by Hugh Rayment-PickardImpossible God introduces Derrida's theology for a new generation interested in Derrida's writings and in the future of theology, and clarifies Derrida's theology for those already familiar with his writings. Derrida's theological concerns are now widely recognised but Impossible God shows how Derrida's theology takes its shape from his earliest writings on Edmund Husserl and from explorations into Husserl's unpublished manuscripts on time and theology. Rayment-Pickard argues that Derrida goes beyond both the nihilism of the 'death of God' and the denials of negative theology to affirm a theology of God's 'impossibility'. Derrida's 'impossible God' is not another God of the philosophers but a powerful deity capable of wakening us into faith, ethical responsibility and love. Showing how central theology has been to Derrida's philosophy since the beginning of his career, Impossible God presents an accessible study of a neglected area of Derrida's writing which students of philosophy and theology will find invaluable.
Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization
by Os GuinnessECPA 2017 Christian Book Award Finalist The church in the West is at a critical moment. While the gospel is exploding throughout the global south, Western civilization faces militant assaults from aggressive secularism and radical Islam. Will the church resist the seductive shaping power of advanced modernity? More than ever, Christians must resist the negative cultural forces of our day with fortitude and winsomeness. What is needed is followers of Christ who are willing to face reality without flinching and respond with a faithfulness that is unwavering. Os Guinness describes these Christians as "impossible people," those who have "hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable, without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord." Few accounts of the challenge of today are more realistic, and few calls to Christian courage are more timely, resolute—and hopeful. Guinness argues that we must engage secularism and atheism in new ways, confronting competing ideas with discernment and fresh articulation of the faith. Christians are called to be impossible people, full of courage and mercy in challenging times.
Impossible Realities: The Science Behind Energy Healing, Telepathy, Reincarnation, Precognition, and Other Black Swan Phenomena
by Maureen CaudillImpossible Realities is one of the first books to examine the science behind psychic and paranormal activity. A former Defense Department expert on artificial intelligence, Maureen Caudill provides evidence for a wide range of paranormal phenomena.Impossible Realities presents a wealth of anecdotal and empirical evidence to prove the existence (and power) of:psychokinesis (most famously spoon bending)remote viewingenergy healingtelepathy, animal telepathyprecognitionsurvival after deathreincarnationCaudill presents the strongest case yet for bringing paranormal phenomena from the margins into the realm of the normal and credible. This is a book both for true believers and skeptics alike.
Imposter
by Davis BunnMatt Kelly's knack for concealing his identity is his greatest asset as a federal agent. But when an assignment gets personal, discovering who he really is may prove to be the toughest mission of all.
Impostor: Gain Confidence, Eradicate Shame, and Become Who God Made You to Be
by Rita A SchulteThe courage to be yourself Are you tired of pretending? Of spending so much time and energy trying to live up to the expectations of others? Of being afraid to show people the real you? Do you sometimes feel like an impostor in your own life? So many women today are living the &“try hard&” life. Trying to be perfect. Trying to maintain control. Trying to be what others want them to be. In her counseling practice Rita Schulte meets women in this place almost daily. In Impostor she combines medical research with moving stories from her own life and practice to help you uncover the lies, distortions, and other contributing factors that set up the imposter self. You will learn: · How five core needs drive our behavior · Why we pretend · Why we fear being known · How to give up the &“try hard&” life once and for all Most importantly you&’ll discover what it takes to distinguish the impostor&’s identity from the one that is intrinsically yours in Christ. Healing will come as you remove the mask and begin the journey of self-discovery.
Impressions of Paul
by Paul MobleyThis book studies Paul's life from birth as Saul of Tarsus, with a little known about his parents, how he became a tent maker, later his advanced schooling at the feet of Gamaliel, and as an adult his persecution of Christians. His life changed dramatically on the road to Damascus when Christ appeared to him. Then, fully convinced he become a Christian and worked with the same vigor and energy becoming one of the well known apostles, and writing much of the New Testament. Now he was the enemy and suffered for it. His study reveals life at the time, and his in particular as a Christian.
Imprisoned with ISIS: Faith in the Face of Evil
by Petr JasekAs a child, Petr Jasek (Peter Yash-eck) watched Soviet tanks roll through the streets of his village in Czechoslovakia, taking the country by force and subjecting it to decades of Communist oppression. Petr grew up in the underground church and benefitted from financial help and Bibles smuggled in to his family. As an adult living in the free Czech Republic, Petr chose to begin serving persecuted Christians—especially in Islamist hotspots in Africa and the Middle East. In 2015, he was arrested in Sudan, convicted as an enemy of the state, and sentenced to life in prison, where he was forced to share a group cell with ISIS terrorists. The true story of what God did in and through Petr has already inspired tens of thousands around the world. Now, for the first time, Petr tells the whole story.
Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches
by Kate ScelsaA witchy, atmospheric lesbian contemporary romance set in Salem—from the acclaimed author of Fans of the Impossible Life. Perfect for fans of Nina LaCour and Becky Albertalli.Seventeen-year-old Eleanor is the last person in Salem to believe in witchcraft—or think that her life could be transformed by mysterious forces. After losing her best friend and first love, Chloe, Eleanor has spent the past year in a haze, vowing to stay away from anything resembling romance.But when a handwritten guide to tarot arrives in the mail at the witchy souvenir store where Eleanor works, it seems to bring with it the message that magic is about to enter her life. Cynical Eleanor is quick to dismiss this promise, until real-life witch Pix shows up with an unusual invitation. Inspired by the magic and mystery of the tarot, Eleanor decides to open herself up to Pix and her coven of witches, and even to the possibility of a new romance.But Eleanor’s complicated history continues to haunt her. She will have to reckon with the old ghosts that threaten to destroy everything, even her chance at new love.Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches is a romantic coming-of-age about learning to make peace with the past in order to accept the beauty of the present.
Improv Leadership: How to Lead Well in Every Moment
by David Miller Stan EndicottYou already know that there's no script for effective leadership... That's why Improv Leadership reveals five skills that will help you unleash your own leadership potential on every unexpected challenge and status quo.Anyone can read books and apply lessons, but only the best can develop what they know to bring out the best in any person or circumstance. These natural leaders understand the key principles of connecting, coaching, and communicating and use these ideas to build strong teams.In Improv Leadership, Stan Endicott and David Miller share five leadership competencies that all great, improvisational leaders have:Story Mining--how to uncover a person's story and let it shape the way you lead themPrecision Praising--how to craft praise to inspire, motivate, and even course-correct your teamMetaphor Cementing--how to create concrete illustrations to "cement" an idea in someone's mindLobbing Forward--how to challenge people to look beyond today to what might be in the futureGoing North--how to use indirect influence to redirect a person's perspectiveIMPROV leaders apply these five competencies to initiate powerful conversations, create memorable moments with forward momentum, and craft personal coaching strategies that help people, and teams, grow.The five competencies of IMPROV Leadership are not rigid steps to follow. They are fluid and can be applied to any industry of field. You can't predict every challenge you'll face. There's no playbook that covers every decision. But you can cultivate teams of people who love their work (and each other) and who perform at a high level. And you can lead well in any situation.
Improving Educational Gender Equality in Religious Societies: Human Rights And Modernization Pre-arab Spring
by Sumaia A. Al-KohlaniIn this book, Al-Kohlani examines fifty-five Muslim and non-Muslim countries from 1960 to 2010 in response to “religious theory” that associates certain religions with gender inequality and “modernization theory” which downplays the role of religion on gender inequity and associates gender inequality with socioeconomic factors. The author explores both schools of thought and posits that, on average, Muslim countries have lower educational equality in comparison to non-Muslim countries with less religious constitution. An interdisciplinary study drawn from the fields of world politics, public policy in education, and political religion, this book responds not only to debates within academia, but also to larger debates in society about the role of religion in the state, the specific challenges of the relationship of Islam and the public policies, and the relationship between constitution and gender equality.
Improving Psychiatric Care for Older People
by Claire HiltonThis book is open access under a CC BY 4. 0 license. This book tells the story of Barbara Robb and her pressure group, Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions (AEGIS). In 1965, Barbara visited 73-year-old Amy Gibbs in a dilapidated and overcrowded National Health Service psychiatric hospital back-ward. She was so appalled by the low standards that she set out to make improvements. Barbara's book Sans Everything: A case to answer was publicly discredited by a complacent and self-righteous Ministry of Health. However, inspired by her work, staff in other hospitals 'whistle-blew' about events they witnessed, which corroborated her allegations. Barbara influenced government policy, to improve psychiatric care and health service complaints procedures, and to establish a hospitals' inspectorate and ombudsman. The book will appeal to campaigners, health and social care staff and others working with older people, and those with an interest in policy development in England, the 1960s, women's history and the history of psychiatry and nursing.