Liberated Love

We all desire great love. Yet, there seems to be a lot in the way when it comes to cultivating a relationship we crave. Why is that? It’s time for a new template — one rooted in choice, truth, safety, and respect. To get us there, Mark Groves and Kylie McBeath, champions of positive philosophy, provide us a roadmap, one they walked themselves, to step out of protection mode and into connection mode. Groves and McBeath’s work—through their Create the Love seminars, workbooks, and consultation programs—have educated a new generation of relationship seekers on the best ways to practice and cultivate love. In Liberated Love, you’ll explore your original relationship blueprint and learn how it informs your current relationships (spoiler alert: it’s often a pretty direct line), and discover how limitation can be the key to finding freedom and experiencing full, fully-realized love with another person. Equipped with real-life situations and stories, exercises, rituals, and tools that lead to productive self-examination, Groves and McBeath illuminate how to be aware of our most instinctual defenses, survival strategies, and coping mechanisms, how to have conversations about relationships without turning them into “relationship conversations,” and how to date in a way that protects your heart as you open it up to new possibilities. In these pages, in a format you’ll want to turn to again and again, you’ll learn how to begin and maintain relationships that allow true self-expression—to feel safe and to feel real, involving, sustaining love.

I have come to notice one of the radiant accessories on a woman is the love of her man. With the love of a man, she appears enlightened to move freely and unencumbered knowing and relying upon his assured protection. She, in turn, is so pleased, she bestows honor on him. Complementing his character they portray a simultaneous reaction of Gods grace in cyclical motion. When one stops, plans lose momentum and tread less ground toward the purposes of God. This is where a prior season of cleansing and restoration prove beneficial. In this devotion to God, emotional healing, and spiritual fortitude is established. With the Lord, and through Holy Spirit, fears, insecurities, rejection, misguided decisions, and other negative emotions are discarded or diminished. Knowing self, through Him, she becomes self-less for him; this is an asset to keep the relationship moving and staying the course of God. ~Shellee A. Mitchell

Courageous Surrealist artist Claude Cahun championed freedom at every turn, from rejecting gender norms and finding queer love to risking death to sabotage the Nazis. At the turn of the twentieth century in Nantes, France, Lucy Schwob met Suzanne Malherbe, and lightning struck. The two became partners both artistically and romantically and transformed themselves into the creative personas Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Together, the couple embarked on a radical journey of Surrealist collaboration that would take them from conservative provincial France to the vibrancy of 1920s Paris to the oppression of Nazi-occupied Jersey during World War II, where they used art to undermine the Nazi regime. Cahun and Moore challenged gender roles and championed freedom at a time when strict societal norms meant that the truth of their relationship had to remain secret. Featuring ten photographs by Cahun and Moore, this graphic biography by cartoonist Kaz Rowe brings Cahun’s inspiring story to life. Ages twelve and up

The fighting female archetype--a self-reliant woman of great physical prowess--has become increasingly common in action films and on television. However, the progressive female identities of these narratives cannot always resist the persistent and problematic framing of male-female relationships as a battle of the sexes or other source of antagonism. Combining cultural analysis with close readings of key popular American film and television texts since the 1980s, this study argues that certain fighting female themes question regressive conventions in male-female relationships. Those themes reveal potentially progressive ideologies regarding female agency in mass culture that reassure audiences of the desirability of empowered women while also imagining egalitarian intimacies that further empower women. Overall, the fighting female narratives addressed here afford contradictory viewing pleasures that reveal both new expectations for and remaining anxieties about the "strong, independent woman" ideal that emerged in American popular culture post-feminism.

In these four booklets, theologians from all parts of the world reflect on the main theme and three sub-themes (Liberated by God's Grace: Salvation—Not for Sale; Human Beings—Not for Sale; Creation—Not for Sale) of the Lutheran World Federation's commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. This collection of essays provides profound insights into the crucial issues and challenges daily faced by the members of the worldwide Lutheran communion in very diverse contexts. The theological concept of justification by God's grace and its consequences for different dimensions of life serve as the main guiding principles for the essays, each one of which is accompanied by three questions that invite to further contextual reflection on the subject. This work comes in a boxed set of four booklets, which can only be purchased together: Booklet 1: Liberated by God ́s Grace – 500 years of Reformation Booklet 2: Salvation – Not for Sale Booklet 3: Human Beings – Not for Sale Booklet 4: Creation – Not for Sale A German translation will be published next year.

Introduction -- The politics of women's "domestic" alliances. Distaff power: plebeian female alliances in early modern England / Bernard Capp -- Between women: slanderous speech and neighborly bonds in Henry Porter's The two angry women of Abington / Ronda Arab -- The political role of the gossip in Swetnam the woman-hater, arraigned by women / Megan Inbody -- Virtual and actual female alliance in The maid's tragedy and The tamer tamed / Niamh J. O'Leary -- Failed alliances and miserable marriages in Katherine Philips's letters / Elizabeth Hodgson -- Women's alliances and the politics of the court. Performing patronage, crafting alliances: ladies' lotteries in English pageantry / Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich -- Tyrants, love, and ladies' eyes: the politics of female-boy alliance on the Jacobean stage Roberta Barker -- Her advocate to the loudest: Arbella Stuart and female courtly alliance in The winter's tale / Alicia Tomasian -- Not sparing kings: Aemilia Lanyer and the religious politics of female alliance / Christina Luckyj -- The politics of female kinship. Shakespeare revises Juliet, the nurse, and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet / Steven Urkowitz -- Crossing generations: female alliances and dynastic power in Anne Clifford's great books of record / Jessica l. Malay -- Exilic inspiration and the captive life: the literary/political alliances of the Cavendish sisters / Jennifer Higginbotham -- Afterword / Susan Frye and Karen Robertson

This volume puts Barth and liberation theologies in critical and constructive conversation. With incisive essays from a range of noted scholars, it forges new connections between Barth's expansive corpus and the multifaceted world of Christian liberation theology. It shows how Barth and liberation theologians can help us to make sense of – and perhaps even to respond to – some of the most pressing issues of our day: race and racism in the United States; changing understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality; the ongoing degradation of the ecosphere; the relationship between faith, theological reflection, and the arts; the challenge of decolonizing Christian thought; and ecclesial and political life in the Global South.

THE ART OF FRIENDLY CONFRONTATION This book describes the coping skills, strategies and methods to help others see your point of view. These skills work with the precursors of ego, anger and power in personal relationships and keep your own dignity with understanding role placement, power and reversal. When problems arise, as they always do, these conflict skills found in The Art of Friendly Confrontation identify the skills for fairness in relationships. $10.00 Understand purpose of coping skills, methods and strategies. Identify the precursors of conflict: ego, anger, power. Recognize role placement, role power, and role reversal. Evaluate vulnerability in healthy relationships. Identify coping skills to increase self esteem.