Remade For Happiness

When asked, "What's wrong with the world?" G.K. Chesterton famously replied simply, "I am." We want to be happy and yet we often seem to be the source of our own unhappiness, as well as that of others. Even when that is not the case, our lives — as blessed as they may be — have their share of sadness and disappointment. How do we respond? Do we become cynical and try, at all costs, to get as much pleasure as we can? Or do we recognize we were made for more? In this classic work, Fulton Sheen explains the secret of authentic happiness: being spiritually remade. A genuinely spiritual life, Sheen contends, consists in more than obeying a set of commands, reading the Bible, or even following the example of Jesus. Before all else, it consists in being recreated and incorporated into a new, higher kind of life—the supernatural life of grace — and in being brought into a new kind of spiritual relationship, as a child of God through Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be a Christian? Christianity is not a system of ethics; it is a life. It is not good advice; it is divine adoption. Being a Christian does not consist in just being kind to the poor, going to church, singing hymns, or serving on parish committees, though it includes all of these. It is first and foremost a love relationship with Jesus Christ.

Someone once told me that groupings of objects should be displayed in threes. Three provides both tension and balance among items of varying size and heft. My sister’s accident made me an only child; my husband’s accident made me a widow. Part of me will always believe that Angel was the third, the one that left me with hope. After her husband’s unexpected death at the age of thirty-six, Gina Melrose becomes a “live-aboard” on his boat, docked at a marina in coastal South Carolina, near the home she and Ben once shared. In this temporary, borrowed existence on the water, she settles into numb survival. But Gina finds her life taking yet another dramatic turn late one night when a woman named Reese disrupts her quiet world. With Reese comes a daughter: a charming girl named Angel. After a rough start, Gina realizes that, strange as it may seem, she’s drawn to both Reese and Angel. Their sudden appearance shatters the stillness–and Gina is remade. She is fascinated by Reese, who seems both invincible and vulnerable–and whose past may hold the key to Gina’s future. Gina begins to realize that for the first time since Ben’s death, she’s getting her senses back. As both pain and joy reenter her world, Gina discovers that she is able to accept feeling in order to live fully once more. But the biggest surprise for Gina is her relationship with Angel. After the painful loss of her sister during childhood, Gina had decided that she would never have children of her own. Struggling through conflicted emotions, Gina’s finds her life unexpectedly transformed by the precocious little girl who may be Ben’s daughter. This tender, poignant novel movingly explores the bonds of family and the resilience of hope. In the accomplished tradition of the novels of Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve, Jean Reynolds Page’s Accidental Happiness is a lyrical, enthralling drama unafraid to examine complex relationships with a clear eye and an honest heart.

Well-known author, psychologist ; and priest Fr. Benedict ; Groeschel draws on his own years of personal experiences in ; dealing with people's problems, tragedies and "darkness" as ; he offers help and guidance for any Christian troubled or ; burdened by life. If you are struggling with fear, anxiety, ; grief, loss of loved ones, hurt, anger or anything that ; makes life difficult or the road through it dark, then this ; book was written for you. Fr. Benedict offers practical ; suggestions on how to keep going and even grow with the ; help of God's grace, even when this help seems remote. ; The Christian response to the problem of evil and ; suffering began with the cross of Christ. Our answer is ; inseparable from the cross-from Jesus' own encounter with ; evil and his triumph over it. In this light, Fr. Benedict ; recalls some of our most frequently encountered sorrows and ; griefs: the failure of friends, financial and personal ; insecurity, the failure of some in the Church, our own ; inconsistent behaviors and weaknesses, and the death of ; loved ones. As we examine these painful experiences, he ; shows that we can find solutions in the Gospel and in the ; lives of saints, heroes, and very brave ordinary people. ; "Many guides have been written for people struggling with ; the mystery of evil. But each generation, each age has its ; own dark background in front of which the struggle to keep ; going must be worked out. In every age, men ask 'how am I ; going to go on to arise from darkness?' It is that which my ; book will address." Fr. Benedict Groeschel, ; CFR

Recent popes have challenged all Catholics to participate in the New Evangelization. But most Catholics feel ill-equipped to take up the challenge. Terry Barber, founder of St. Joseph Communications, has written a practical guide that takes much of the pain and uncertainty out of sharing one's faith. Based on Barber's decades of personal experience as an effective evangelist and masterful communicator, and drawing on the perceptions, examples, and lessons of other great evangelists and apologists, How to Share Your Faith with Anyone informs, entertains, and inspires would-be, as well as, seasoned evangelists and teachers. Barber uses clear examples and insightful stories to explain such topics as: What evangelization isWhy Catholics often don't evangelizePreparing to be an evangelistThe eight laws of effectively sharing the faith with anyoneJesus the perfect EvangelizerThe heart of evangelizationHow to share your personal testimony Barber explains how to bring people to Christ and to his Church without compromise or conflict. This is a superb, easy-to-follow playbook for the New Evangelization.

"Queer, dirty, insightful, and so funny" (Andrea Lawlor), this coyly revolutionary debut story collection imagines new origins and futures for its cast of unforgettable protagonists--almost all of whom are named Sarah. NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2021 BY THE MILLIONS * OPRAH MAGAZINE * LAMBDA LITERARY * ELECTRIC LITERATURE * REFINERY29 * COSMO * THE ADVOCATE * ALMA * PAPERBACK PARIS * WRITE OR DIE TRIBE * READS RAINBOW In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingly providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college Sarah passively consents to a form-life in pursuit of an MRS degree and is swept into a culture of normalized sexual violence. Another reveals a version of Sarah finding pleasure--and a new set of problems--by playing dead for a wealthy necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah uses fan fiction to work through romantic obsession. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narratives. Readers witness as the ever-evolving "Sarah" gets recast: as a bible-era trans woman, an aging lesbian literally growing roots, a being who transcends the earth as we know it. While Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, "Sarah" will continue. In each Sarah's refusal to adhere to a single narrative, she potentially builds a better home for us all, a place to live that demands no fixity of self, no plague of consumerism, no bodily compromise, a place called Sarahland.

A cultural history of modern lifestyle viewed through film and multimedia experiments of midcentury designers Charles and Ray Eames For the designers Charles and Ray Eames, happiness was both a technical and ideological problem central to the future of liberal democracy. Being happy demanded new things but also a vanguard life in media that the Eameses modeled as they brought film into their design practice. Midcentury modernism is often considered institutionalized, but Happiness by Design casts Eames-era designers as innovative media artists, technophilic humanists, change managers, and neglected film theorists. Happiness by Design offers a fresh cultural history of midcentury modernism through the film and multimedia experiments of Charles and Ray Eames and their peers—Will Burtin, László Moholy-Nagy, and György Kepes, among others—at a moment when designers enjoyed a new cultural prestige. Justus Nieland traces how, as representatives of the American Century’s exuberant material culture, Cold War designers engaged in creative activities that spanned disciplines and blended art and technoscience while reckoning with the environmental reach of media at the dawn of the information age. Eames-era modernism, Nieland shows, fueled novel techniques of culture administration, spawning new partnerships between cultural and educational institutions, corporations, and the state. From the studio, showroom floor, or classroom to the stages of world fairs and international conferences, the midcentury multimedia experiments of Charles and Ray Eames and their circle became key to a liberal democratic lifestyle—and also anticipated the look and feel of our networked present.

One of the hottest topics in contemporary culture is happiness so much so that the United Nations declared an International Happiness Day in response to the immense popularity of Pharrell Williamsಙ song ಜHappyಝ. The explanation for this current fixation seems to lie in the contrary phenomenon unhappiness. Despite the fact that we have tremendous access to every imaginable form of entertainment, we experience a pervading sense of insecurity, emptiness, and malaise amid sporadic peak experiences. The problem seems to lie less in the external environment than in the internal one. We seem, in the words of Viktor Frankl, to be suffering from an absence of meaning that pervades both individuals and societies, giving rise to a collective emptiness, loneliness, and alienation. Finding True Happiness attempts to provide a way out of this personal and cultural vacuum by helping people to identify and then reach for happiness. As Aristotle noted 2,400 years ago, happiness is the one thing we can choose for its own sake everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness. After an exhaustive investigation of philosophical, psychological, and theological systems of happiness, author Fr. Spitzer developed the ಜFour Levels of Happinessಝ, which he based on the classical thinkers Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas; the contemporary philosophers Marcel, Scheler, Buber, Ricoeur, and Jaspers; and the modern psychologists Maslow, Frankl, Erikson, Seligman, Kohlberg and Gilligan. Finding True Happiness is both a philosophical itinerary and a practical guidebook for lifeಙs most important journey from the mundane and the meaningless to transcendent fulfillment. No other book currently available combines such breadth of practical advice and such depth of philosophical, psychological, and spiritual wisdom.