Longings From Behind And Beyond The Walls

Longings from Behind and Beyond the Walls by Rukhsana Ayyub A memoir about the life of my mother, and other women in her family, living, loving and sometimes rebelling against the confines of the veils and the walls in a small town in Pakistan. Conflicting desires of wanting the freedom yet longing for the protection and safety the walls provided. Creating wonderful opportunities for her children yet fearing their independence. A reminder that change cannot be forced unless one is ready to accept it. Change is possible, and the yearning to be free eventually does win even if it takes a few generations to bring about that change.

In Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire, Lara Blanchard examines the writing of interiority in paintings of women, considering correspondences to examples of erotic poetry and how such works address the concerns of artists, patrons, and viewers.

Joseph Palmisano explores the interreligious significance of empathy for Jewish-Christian understanding. Drawing on the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and Edith Stein (1891-1942), he develops a phenomenological category of empathy defined as a way of ''re-membering'' oneself with the religious other. Palmisano follows Heschel's and Stein's personal and spiritual journeys through the darkest years of Nazi Germany. He shows that Heschel's call to Christian interlocutors for a return to God is an ecumenical call to humanity to embrace perceived others: a call to live life as a response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic answer in Edith Stein's witness of empathy with regard to the Holocaust. Stein, a Catholic, creates a dialectical bridge with the Jewish 'other,' neither distancing herself nor denying her Jewish roots. Stein's simultaneously Jewish and Christian fidelity is a model for interreligious relations. It is also a challenge to Catholics to remember their religion's Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with others. Beyond the Walls is a critical contribution to the fostering of interreligious understanding, offering both a model of the ideal Jewish-Christian relationship in Heschel and Stein and criteria with which to evaluate contemporary initiatives and controversies concerning interreligious dialogue.

Beyond the Wall is an exploration of the limits of human understanding, encouraging us to engage in a curious and compelling journey as our imagination travels through time from 1917 New York to modern-day South Carolina. As we travel in time, we are challenged to move from what we think we know into a realm of infinite possibilities. Beginning prior to the Great War in Europe, part 1 is "The Journal," the personal reflections of Gabrielle Carteret, an unmarried woman in her midtwenties who lives in a castle built by an eccentric English aristocratic father on an island in the middle of the Hudson River. Gabrielle is beautiful, endlessly curious, and eager to learn, well aware, beyond the allure of her wealth, of her inability to satisfy the expectations of New York society. Through her brother, John, Gabrielle is introduced to the Withers family of Charleston and, following her marriage, settles into a Georgian mansion surrounded by trees and beautiful gardens, all but hidden behind a tall, ivy-covered wall. "The Journal" is funny and endearing, often profound, and occasionally sad. It is a glimpse into life and the struggles of womanhood during a time in history. Part 2, "The Gift," begins a hundred years after the final journal entry, the story of Gabrielle's adopted granddaughter, Reid Withers Hill, a sensitive, mysterious child who was abandoned at a truck stop near the city when she was not yet three years old. As the story begins, Reid is in her middle fifties and is reflecting on her life in the Charleston mansion. Perhaps it is her nebulous beginning or undefined racial heritage, perhaps it is that she realizes she is simply different, but Reid has never been at ease in the world. As the natural course of events occur and death removes from her life those whom she loves most, Reid withdraws behind the safety of the wall and into a lonely world of fantastic nightly dreams. Her mental health is questioned, and it is left to friends to keep her grounded. This is no simple book. At the surface, there are historical settings, fantasy, and beautiful love stories to enjoy. But beneath the surface, it is a study of the human spirit, our underlying search for purpose, and the ultimate fulfillment of that purpose. As threads from Gabrielle's journal are tugged in "The Gift" and as they are woven into place, the full tapestry is revealed, and troubling questions find their answers. Even once read, however, one may well find oneself pondering new questions, more questions. And so it goes.

An escape route through the sewers of Warsaw Ghetto has led Misha to the partisans on the other side of the wall. Yet as he tried to cheat and beat the Nazi regime, he finds his nerve-racking new existence spiked with as much fear and danger as the past. Misha is playing a deadly game, but the prize is his life...

Beyond the Walls of Separation is an essential and easy-to-read guidebook for chaplains and volunteers working in the context of prison, and for all those who are professionally or through family links related to those in prison. The book tells the story of what life behind bars is, and how inmates experience transformation through Christian faith: People at the crisis points of their life, where they are shattered, and where little is left of what made them, may experience life as fragile and as a transparent filter for the mysterious. Yet they also may experience God's life-giving presence. Love, expressed in forgiveness--against all odds, against all merits and previous experiences--lies at the root of many stories of transformation that emerge from prison. The book guides visitors to approach inmates without condescension, with an awareness of the social dimension of power and inequality, and with sensitivity to the suffering and alienation that individual prisoners experience. The many years of prison ministry in different cultural contexts and with inmates from all nations have taught the author that Christ does not need to be brought to prison through visitors, through evangelistic events, or through Christian outreach. He is already powerfully present in prison.

The present volume analyzes the political project manifested in the narrative poem by Melville 'Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land'. Published in 1876, this work is centered on the necessities, the possibilities and the difficulties of intersubjectivity as a means to transcend the obstacles posed by individualism and traditional communities. Este volumen analiza el proyecto político del poema narrativo de Melville 'Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land', centrado en la necesidad, las posibilidades y las dificultades de la intersubjetividad para la superación de las barreras del individualismo y de comunidades tradicionales.