Blow Sand In His Soul

"Bates Wilson was a force of nature, like a river. Or a flash flood. And the course he carved through the desert landscape is still apparent today. Though he never received a high school diploma, Bates became one of the most respected men in the National Park Service. Canyonlands National Park today stands as a testament to his singular love of place, his ability to transcend political partisanship, and his damned good dutch oven cooking"--

Author Rev. Margaret Vredeveld knows firsthand the sorrow and anguish of a loved one's passing. In April of 2001, her youngest daughter, Sheri Joy, died at the age of twenty-eight of ovarian cancer. During that time, Vredeveld served as her daughter's spiritual guide while continuing to pastor her congregation; she soon came to realize that she had come to a better understanding of difficult times her parishioners faced. In Soothe Your Soul, Vredeveld shares a host of meditations to help people navigate some of life's most painful moments. Based on her personal life experiences and complemented with Scripture readings and songs, the meditations address a variety of topics, including conflict, confusion, gossip, hostility, self-doubt, anger, depression, and the death of a loved one. Filled with words to calm the spirit and uplift the heart, Soothe Your Soul offers reflections and teachings to guide people through some of life's most trying times and experiences.

One of America’s most significant architects of conservation and the environment, Stewart Udall, comes to life in this environmental biography. Perhaps no other public official or secretary of the interior has ever had as much success in environmental protection, natural resource conservation, and outdoor recreation opportunity creation as Udall. A progressive Mormon, born and raised in rural Arizona, Udall served as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior under the presidential cabinets of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson from 1961-1969. During these eight years, he established dozens of new national park units and national wildlife refuges, wrote the Endangered Species Preservation Act, lobbied for unpolluted water, and offered ways to beautify urban spaces and bring the impoverished out of poverty. Later in life, he continued as an advocate for conservation and the environment, specifically by proposing solutions to the challenges associated with global warming and the widespread use of oil. What can we learn from this farsighted individual? In a day and age of partisan politics, poor congressional approval ratings, and global warming and climate change, this captivating biography offers a profound and historical record into Udall’s life-long devotion to environmental issues he cared about most deeply—issues more relevant today than they were then. Intimate moments include Udall’s learning of the Kennedy assassination, his push for civil rights for African Americans, his meeting in the U.S.S.R. with Nikita Khrushchev—the first Kennedy cabinet member to do so—and his warnings about global warming 50 years prior to Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning film.

America’s national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why more than 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the environmental classic Refuge and the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, an exploration of what they mean to us and what we mean to them. From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas and more, Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.

A book consisting of Japanese Verse, which is 5-7-5 syllables per poem; in alphabetical order for an easy read. Various subjects. Based on Zen Buddhist philosophy of simplicity, and the idea of perfection that excludes the extraneous. Titled in order to catagorize the poems.

A souls voice is a story of the authors search for a relationship with her higher power. The poems help to clarify the feeling and clear thinking. Through openness of the muse and spirit to change overtime, brings a relevant and fitting understanding of the God power. Johns story is a comparison of a different path to the inner soul. Past lives reveal threads of the authors uniqueness. A thoughtful and revealing journey.