Shiny Gods

What happens when we truly put God first in all aspects of our lives? In a culture guided chiefly by shiny, life-promising distractions, “enough” seems elusive and keeps us indebted to that next source of satisfaction. What if the Giver of Life offered freedom from this downward spiral—would you take it? In shiny gods, pastor and author Mike Slaughter, lead pastor of Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church and popular author of Christmas Is Not Your Birthday, helps readers reassess priorities and create a culture and a lifestyle of giving with a special emphasis on missions.

Help your church create a culture and a lifestyle of giving.

Help your church create a culture and a lifestyle of giving!

Preview the introduction and entire first chapter of shiny gods . Pastor and author Mike Slaughter helps readers reassess priorities andcreate a culture and a lifestyle of faithful living and giving and make a meaningful contribution to the world. What happens when we truly put God first in all aspects of our lives? In a culture guided chiefly by shiny, life-promising distractions, "enough" seems elusive and keeps us indebted to that next source of satisfaction. What if the Giver of Life offered freedom from this downward spiral-would you take it?

What happens when we truly put God first in all aspects of our lives? In a culture guided chiefly by shiny, life-promising distractions, “enough” seems elusive and keeps us indebted to that next source of satisfaction. What if the Giver of Life offered freedom from this downward spiral—would you take it? In First: Putting God First in Living and Giving, pastor and author Mike Slaughter conducts a four-week all-church stewardship program to help participants reassess priorities and create a culture and a lifestyle of faithful living and giving and make a meaningful contribution to the world. Sessions include: Naming Our Idols; Money, Work, and Debt; Earn—Save—Give; and Heart Giving. The Youth Study Edition help teens understand and experience generosity and includes group session materials for leaders.

Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech. In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers. With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1586) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection. If you enjoyed The Complete Essays, you might like Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Screech's fine version ... must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne' A.C. Grayling, Financial Times 'A superb edition' Nicholas Wollaston, Observer

All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed a coherent approach to the human body that we can recover and understand today. The authors open with a cartography of the Maya body, its parts and their meanings, as depicted in imagery and texts. They go on to explore such issues as how the body was replicated in portraiture; how it experienced the world through ingestion, the senses, and the emotions; how the body experienced war and sacrifice and the pain and sexuality that were intimately bound up in these domains; how words, often heaven-sent, could be embodied; and how bodies could be blurred through spirit possession. From these investigations, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the Maya conceptualized the body in varying roles, as a metaphor of time, as a gendered, sexualized being, in distinct stages of life, as an instrument of honor and dishonor, as a vehicle for communication and consumption, as an exemplification of beauty and ugliness, and as a dancer and song-maker. Their findings open a new avenue for empathetically understanding the ancient Maya as living human beings who experienced the world as we do, through the body.

Challenges the idea that Plato is a secular thinker, exploring the interaction of philosophy and Greek religion in the dialogues.