Merciful

LaHaye explores prophecy from biblical times to the future. Through perceptive study of Scripture and the attentive use of examples from The Book of Daniel to Revelations, the author reveals God's great plan for eternity.

"A poet to watch."—O Magazine "I tell the truth, but I try to be kind about it."—Camille Rankine in 12 Questions Named "a poet to watch" by O Magazine, Camille Rankine's debut collection is a series of provocations and explorations. Rankine's short, lyric poems are sharp, agonized, and exquisite, exploring themes of doubt and identity. The collection's sense of continuity and coherence comes through recurring poem types, including "still lifes," "instructions," and "symptoms." From "Symptoms of Aftermath": …When I am saved, a slim nurse leans out of the white light. I need to hear your voice, sweetheart. I see my escape. I walk into the water. The sky is blue like the ocean, which is blue like the sky. Camille Rankine is the author of the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Prize and a MacDowell fellowship, her poetry appears in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, and other publications. Currently, she is assistant director of the MFA program in creative writing at Manhattanville College and lives in Harlem.

While it may seem that debates over euthanasia began with Jack Kervorkian, the practice of mercy killing extends back to Ancient Greece and beyond. In America, the debate has raged for well over a century. Now, in A Merciful End, Ian Dowbiggin offers the first full-scale historical account of one of the most controversial reform movements in America. Drawing on unprecedented access to the archives of the Euthanasia Society of America, interviews with important figures in the movement today, and flashpoint cases such as the tragic fate of Karen Ann Quinlan, Dowbiggin tells the dramatic story of the men and women who struggled throughout the twentieth century to change the nation's attitude--and its laws--regarding mercy killing. In tracing the history of the euthanasia movement, he documents its intersection with other progressive social causes: women's suffrage, birth control, abortion rights, as well as its uneasy pre-WWII alliance with eugenics. Such links brought euthanasia activists into fierce conflict with Judeo-Christian institutions who worried that "the right to die" might become a "duty to die." Indeed, Dowbiggin argues that by joining a sometimes overzealous quest to maximize human freedom with a desire to "improve" society, the euthanasia movement has been dogged by the fear that mercy killing could be extended to persons with disabilities, handicapped newborns, unconscious geriatric patients, lifelong criminals, and even the poor. Justified or not, such fears have stalled the movement, as more and more Americans now prefer better end-of-life care than wholesale changes in euthanasia laws. For anyone trying to decide whether euthanasia offers a humane alternative to prolonged suffering or violates the "sanctity of life," A Merciful End provides fascinating and much-needed historical context.

The second novel from the best-selling Argentine author of The Anatomist, The Merciful Women is a brilliant retelling of the birth of the Gothic novel. In the summer of 1816, Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary's sister, and Lord Byron hid themselves away in a Swiss villa, whiling away rainy afternoons with the Gothic novel contest that would produce Frankenstein. Andahazi's reimagining focuses on the fifth competitor: John Polidori, Byron's manservant, a talentless hack resentful of the ease of his master's life. Through a Faustian pact with an unseen intercessant, Polidori obtains the most compelling vampire story ever written. But The Vampyre has striking similarities to Polidori's benefactor and to what she asks of him in return. Opium, erotica, and decadence meld into a sly and stylish novel about literary ambition, talent, and inspiration. A hoot ... a Voltaire-like skewering of the myth of genius. Andahazi can remind you of vintage Terry Southern. -- Richard Wallace, The Seattle Times Playful, satiric, erotic, sometimes savage, sometimes slapstick ... something completely different, and well worth reading. -- San Francisco Chronicle As a piece of mock-scholarly, wickedly ironic entertainment, it is an utter delight. -- Publishers Weekly This literary tour de force cum vampire tale will leave the reader gasping-from laughter and horror by turns. -- The Baltimore Sun

Here is a clear, concise and judicious examination of the bedrock Christian moral principles of mercy and meekness that leads the author, a professor of philosophy, to affirm their essential integration if we are to become complete Christians. Dr. Walters redefines and synthesizes the Christian principles: mercy and meekness together are virtues compatible, complementary, and essential to our pathway to union with Christ, convincingly countering the Nietzschean philosophy that rejects their synthesis (one or the other is possible, but not both), as incompatible, inherently contradictory and "morally repugnant." Intended as a reference work for undergraduate students, this spare book, rooted in Scripture and Christian tradition, the thought of Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Nietzsche, including his polemics with the Sermon on the Mount, is also helpful for the general reader in search of spiritual wholeness. It is an effective counterguide to Christianity's naysayers.

The books title is taken from Jesus Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Expounding in detail in this book Rev. Vima stresses the Scriptural fact that at the end of disciples life their merciful acts are the ones that would covet the crown of heavenly blessedness as the Judge would pronounces to them, Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food The author also explains very elaborately the Biblical term CHESED as the remarkable backdrop to the Christian merciful deeds. He continues to augment his contention on CHESED by telling the readers about Jesus longing of his disciples to be perfect as their heavenly Father by performing merciful deeds and by performing those acts perfectly by imitating Gods CHESED of mercy, justice and fidelity. Author writes in his Introduction: This book is nothing but an outcome of my strong belief in an eternal fact of living a CHESED-oriented life: Without Gods CHESED we cannot survive but without our reciprocal CHESED we cannot be what we are designed to become. As the Church celebrates the Jubilee Year of Mercy, author encourages the readers to listen and follow Pope Francis who, referring to the beatitudes, is quoted saying: If the church does not assume the sentiments of Jesus, it is disoriented, it loses its sense. Fr. Vima also dreams that those who read this book will be more inspired and sincere in their works of mercy during this year and the years to come.

The Labour government elected in 1997 pledged to reform the Westminster parliament by modernising the House of Commons and removing the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Events have consequently demonstrated the deep controversy that accompanies such attempts at institutional reconfiguration, and have highlighted the shifting fault lines in executive-legislative relations in the UK, as well as the deep complexities surrounding British constitutional politics. The story of parliamentary reform is about the nature of the British political system, about how the government seeks to expand its control over parliament, and about how parliament discharges its duty to scrutinise the executive and hold it to account. This book, available in paperback for the first time, charts the course of Westminster reform since 1997, but does so by placing it in the context of parliamentary reform pursued in the past, and thus adopts a historical perspective which lends it considerable analytical value. Significantly, the book examines parliamentary reform through the lens of institutional theory, in order not only to describe reform but also to interpret and explain it. It also draws on extensive interviews conducted with MPs and peers involved in the reform of parliament since 1997, thus offering a unique insight into how these political actors perceived the reform process in which they played a part.Parliamentary reform at Westminster, now available in paperback, provides a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the trajectory and outcome of the reform of parliament, along with an incisive interpretation of the implications for our understanding of British politics.

In recent years, the scholarly consensus has emerged that early Judaism should no longer be classified as a religion of legalistic works on righteousness, but rather defined primarily by God's covenant with Israel. In this work, it is argued, instead, that there is actually a tension in early Judaism between God as righteous judge and as merciful. As E. Sj berg maintained in his Gott und S nder im pal stinischen Judentum, in the sources used for a reconstruction of early Judaism, there are two mutually exclusive ways in which God is said to relate to human beings. First, God as righteous judge deals with human beings as they deserve. They are assumed to be morally free and responsible, and God judges and recompenses them in history and eschatologically. Not only are the wicked punished for their sins, but the righteous are also rewarded for their obedience. And second, God as merciful does not deal with human beings as they deserve. Rather, he removes the guilt resulting from disobedience to the Law, sometimes on the simple condition of repentance. This means that a person can escape the consequences of disobedience. The understanding of God in the sources vacillates between God as righteous judge and God as merciful, without coming down definitively on one side to the exclusion of the other.