Beauty Begins

You are, and always have been, beautiful. “Beauty begins. That’s the point of this book. Our understanding of beauty got started somewhere and somehow, and probably due to someone. Now that may have been a good start, but then again it may not have. But regardless of what your past looks like, we want to offer up this word of hope: It’s never too late to make peace with your reflection.” We live in a culture that’s obsessed with beauty. Walk by any magazine stand or turn on a television and you’ll be bombarded with the images and ideals that our culture believes are the epitome of what it means to be beautiful. And if you’re like most women, you’ve probably spent countless hours trying to measure up to this standard whether you realize it or not. But if you don’t make peace with your reflection, you’ll end up declaring war on yourself. That’s where mother-daughter team Chris Shook and Megan Shook Alpha want to help. In Beauty Begins, they challenge each of us to trade the pressure of perfection for God's perfect love. Poignant, relevant, and relatable, Beauty Begins is for every woman who wants to reclaim what it means to be truly beautiful.

“Beauty begins. That’s the point of this book. Our understanding of beauty got started somewhere and somehow, and probably due to someone. Now that may have been a good start, but then again it may not have.” We live in a culture obsessed with beauty. Walk by any magazine stand or turn on a television and you’ll be bombarded with the images and ideals that our culture believes are the definition of beautiful. And if you’re like most women, you’ve probably spent countless hours trying to measure up to this standard whether you realize it or not. But if you don’t make peace with your reflection, you’ll end up declaring war on yourself. That’s where mother-daughter team Chris Shook and Megan Shook Alpha want to help. In Beauty Begins, they challenge each of us to trade the pressure of perfection for God's perfect love. Poignant, relevant, and relatable, Beauty Begins is for every woman who wants to reclaim what it means to be truly beautiful.

Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy's keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland's close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato's failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections between beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy.

Can we afford to chase beauty in a world that emphasizes distraction and naked ambition over a lifestyle of wonder and spiritual restfulness? The everyday road of life is littered with the pains of growing up, loving and failing to love, of peace and discord. What is God saying through all the muck of life? God speaks to us through beauty. But to hear his words, we must slow down and listen with our hearts. What would happen if we slowed down and looked at the world and our lives with new eyes? The Beauty Chasers shows us a secret passageway that leads beyond the utility mindset that banished beauty from our hearts. Author Tim Willard gives us a guidebook for discovering how to see the world with fresh eyes and let beauty guide us in life and our relationship with God. The Beauty Chasers will... inspire you to live life as a participant instead of a spectator. guide you toward a life of presence rather than distraction. give you permission to slow down and drink from the well of spiritual rest. refresh your perspective on the "wonder-full" ways of God. help you live like beauty matters. Are you ready to live life to a different cadence? Do you find yourself longing to recapture the wonder in your spiritual journey? Are you willing to walk the path less traveled? If so, then read on, friend.

How does prayer work? What does the Bible really say about money? Does the Bible have anything to say about friendship? You’ll find answers to these questions and many more, quickly and easily in The Handbook of Bible Application. The Bible is full of wisdom about life. Yet it’s not always easy to connect the dots between the various Bible passages on any particular subject—whether it’s a question about dealing with money or about overcoming depression. The Handbook of Bible Application is your guide to the Bible, organized by topics that impact the way you live your life every day: accountability, attitudes, contentment, depression, doubt, encouragement, friendship, money, popularity, sex, singleness, worry, and hundreds of other topics. This is a biblical resource you won’t want to be without.

The Christian mystery, celebrated in the Roman Catholic liturgy, is a sensible mystery, and calls out for artistic expression. Living Beauty explores the Christian mystery and points to the need for a liturgical aesthetic as a means to encounter the divine mystery. A liturgical aesthetic gives an account of Christian worship in terms of a new set of categories that includes divine beauty, a theology of sensibility, and the new notion of a unitive revelatory experience.

What is it that makes something beautiful? Is beauty solely in the eye of the beholder, or something deeper, more significant? In Beauty (and the Banana), Nixon writes as an introductory book for Christian leaders, providing the reader an overview of the historical, hermeneutical, and heuristic considerations of beauty. Using the artwork Comedian (a banana taped to a wall) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan as a springboard, Nixon addresses various fundamental factors of beauty--ontology (being), teleology (form and understanding), and immutability (transcendence and eternality). Integrating poetry and classical ideals throughout, Beauty (and the Banana)'s response to the above questions may surprise all who read--beauty is more than meets the eye.

This is a pathbreaking comparative and trans-national study of the neglected influences of nation, empire and race upon the development and electoral fortunes of the Labour Party in Britain and the Australian Labor Party from their formative years of the 1900s to the elections of 2010. Based upon extensive primary and secondary source-based research in Britain and Australia over several years, it makes a new and original contribution to the fields of labour, imperial and 'British world' history. The book offers the challenging conclusion that the forces of nation, empire and race exerted much greater influence upon Labour politics in both countries than suggested by 'traditionalists' and 'revisionists' alike. The book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars in history and politics and all those interested in and concerned with the past, present and future of Labour politics in Britain, Australia and more generally.