Any Given Christmas

From standing alone in a doorway of a house on an early-May morning, looking out on the torn backstreets of a Texas city in the early 1990s, Fr. Tom Jackson--a marginal Episcopal priest and former shrink--began to experience a new life in what seemed to be a strange placeand the house would quickly become known as St. Dismas House (named for a criminal/saint)and the House would fill and overflow with hundreds and hundreds of folksand a roller-coaster ride would follow: a community life of work and ministry and emotion and loss and gain and there would be more Houses and more folks and more kaleidoscopic life. Although this personal narrative is a continuation of the journey described in Fr. Toms earlier diary, Go Back, You Didnt Say May I, it is, in fact, an entity unto itself: a record of the risks and glories of real people dealing with the life-and-death vagaries of Companionship at the turning of a new millenniumone day at a time.

Mothering is messy. Our joy and hope in raising children doesn’t change the reality that being a mom can be frustrating, stressful, and tiring. But just as God is using us to shape our children, God is using our children and motherhood to shape us. In The Better Mom, author Ruth Schwenk, herself a mother of four children, encourages us with the good news that there is more to being a mom than the extremes of striving for perfection or simply embracing the mess. We don’t need to settle for surviving our kids’ childhood. We can grow through it. With refreshing and heartfelt honesty Ruth emboldens moms to: Find freedom and walk confidently in purpose Create a God-honoring home environment Overcome unhealthy and destructive emotions such as anger, anxiety, and more Avoid glorifying the mess of mom-ing or idolizing perfection Cultivate life-giving friendships At the heart of The Better Mom is the message that Jesus calls us to live not a weary life, but a worthy life. We don’t have to settle for either being apathetic or struggling to be perfect. Both visions of motherhood go too far. Ruth offers a better option. She says, “It’s okay to come as we are, but what we’re called to do and be is far too important to stay there! The way to becoming a better mom starts not with what we are doing, but with who God is inviting us to become."

Ex-NFL star + snarky single mom = a touchdown of a holiday romance After two Super Bowl rings, MVP status, and retiring from the NFL while still on top, Mitch “Flash” Flashman’s millions should make life at the ripe old age of thirty-five a blessing. Yet he’s restless, rudderless, and can’t tell up from down. Roped into helping his brother coach a bunch of teenagers, Mitch finds himself playing defense against the many women in town wanting his attention. Except for one particular woman who doesn’t seem to like him much. Becca Bragg is mouthy, vulnerable, and sexy, and she captivates Mitch despite himself. But Mitch has no time for a sexy single mom when he’s still trying to figure out who he really is. With the playoffs, a boy’s future, and his own heart on the line, he’ll need to figure out how to pull the ultimate victory—winning Becca’s heart and keeping it. For good.

These essays explore the many ways theater and dramaturgy are used to shape the everyday experience of people in mass societies. Young argues that technologies combine with the world of art, music, and cinema to shape consciousness as a commodity and to fragment social relations in the market as well as in religion and politics. He sees the central problem of post-modern society as how to live in a world constructed by human beings without nihilism on the one hand or repressive dogmatism on the other. Young argues that in advanced monopoly capitalism, dramaturgy has replaced coercion as the management tool of choice for the control of consumers, workers, voters and state functionaries. Young calls this process the "colonization of desire." Desire is colonized by the use of dramaturgy, mass media, and the various forms of art in order to generate consumers, vesting desire in ownership and display rather than in interpersonal relationships with profound consequence for marriage, kinship, friendship and community. While Young focuses his critique on capitalist societies undergoing great changes, he insists that the same developments are to be found in bureaucratically organized socialist societies. The Drama of Social Life is of interest to those who study theories of moral development, cultural studies, the uses of leisure, politics, or simply the uses of "make believe." It is intended for the informed lay public as much as for social psychologists.

Treasury of stimulating, challenging brainteasers includes puzzles involving numbers, letters, probability, reasoning, whole numbers, more. The Enterprising Snail, The Fly and the Bicycles, The Lovesick Cockroaches, Mr. Wright and the Insurance Salesman, many others. No advanced math needed. Solutions included.

Contributions by Tanya Long Bennett, David Brauer, Cameron Williams Crawford, Emily Pierce Cummins, April Conley Kilinski, Justin Mellette, and Wendy Kurant Rollins As a white woman of means living in segregated Georgia in the first half of the twentieth century, Lillian Smith (1897–1966) surprised readers with stories of mixed-race love affairs, mob attacks on “outsiders,” and young female campers exploring their sexuality. Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith tracks the evolution of Smith from a young girls’ camp director into a courageous artist who could examine controversial topics frankly and critically while preserving a lifelong connection to the north Georgia mountains and people. She did not pull punches in her portrayals of the South and refused to obsess on an idealized past. Smith took seriously the artist’s role as she saw it—to lead readers toward a better understanding of themselves and a more fulfilling existence. Smith’s perspective cut straight to the core of the neurotic behaviors she observed and participated in. To draw readers into her exploration of those behaviors, she created compelling stories, using carefully chosen literary techniques in powerful ways. With words as her medium, she drew maps of her fictionalized southern places, revealing literally and metaphorically society’s disfunctions. Through carefully crafted points of view, she offers readers an intimate glimpse into her own childhood as well as the psychological traumas that all southerners experience and help to perpetuate. Comprised of seven essays by contemporary Smith scholars, this volume explores these fascinating aspects of Smith’s writings in an attempt to fill in the picture of this charismatic figure, whose work not only was influential in her time but also is profoundly relevant to ours.

Make Bob Proctor YOUR personal mentor! The Art of Living presents transcripts from legendary business speaker and mentor Bob Proctor’s most popular workshop—Matrixx—and brings this wisdom to a wider audience. With this book, readers will become a student of Bob Proctor’s as he teaches lessons and presents jewels of wisdom on living an extraordinary life. Readers will marvel at Proctor’s miraculous way of disseminating his decades of business wisdom into easy-to-understand parables and learn lessons on what our creative faculties are and how to use them, why we need to unlearn most of the false beliefs we’ve been indoctrinated with our whole lives, and how our intellects have the ability not only to put us ahead in life, but also to be our biggest detriment. Among many other invaluable lessons contained herein, as a new student of Bob’s, readers will learn: -How to obtain whatever it is that’s desired in life -How to erase negative thought patterns and retrain the brain for success -How to arrange work for maximum effectiveness

This is a comprehensive history of the world's midwinter gift-givers, showcasing the extreme diversity in their depictions as well as the many traits and functions these characters share. It tracks the evolution of these figures from the tribal priests who presided over winter solstice celebrations thousands of years before the birth of Christ, to Christian notables like St. Martin and St. Nicholas, to a variety of secular figures who emerged throughout Europe following the Protestant Reformation. Finally, it explains how the popularity of a poem about a "miniature sleigh" and "eight tiny reindeer" helped consolidate the diverse European gift-givers into an enduring tradition in which American children awake early on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. Although the names, appearance, attire and gift-giving practices of the world's winter solstice gift-givers differ greatly, they are all recognizable as Santa, the personification of the Christmas and Midwinter festivals. Despite efforts to eliminate him by groups as diverse as the Puritans of seventeenth century New England, the Communist Party of the twentieth century Soviet Union and the government of Nazi Germany, Santa has survived and prospered, becoming one of the best known and most beloved figures in the world.