Standing In The Fire

Many experienced facilitators, OD consultants, coaches, and organizational leaders increasingly find themselves standing in the fire - working in situations where group and community members are polarized, angry, fearful, and confused. Facilitator Larry Dressler has come to believe that simply picking up yet another method or technique wont help in situations like these. What has a truly transformational impact is what he calls the "facilitators presence". Cultivating an ability to access a compassionate presence that people experience as open, authentic, and clear in intention during the most difficult situations moves facilitators from being competent professionals to being on a path toward self-mastery.

'Standing in the Fire offers a set of self - directed principles and practices that enable facilitators and human resource personnel to keep their emotional balance no matter how overheated things threaten to become in the workplace....

Not Even ISIS Can Scare Them Off Followers of Christ need to relearn what it means to stand courageously for their faith rather than merely survive in a climate of fear. Instead of motivating believers to action, today’s headlines appear to be paralyzing them. Standing in the Fire demonstrates the church triumphant through the lives of people who stood strong and didn’t run away in the face of overwhelming danger. These Middle Eastern heroes of faith fear God more than terrorist groups like ISIS. Supported by Tom Doyle’s commentary on events, the stories included show how these Christians are not living as victims, but victors in Christ.

From the first shot fired by his grandfather on a jungle trail in 1903 to the day his father captured plans for the Chinese invasion of South Korea, William Crawford Woods’s family has fought in nearly every American war of the twentieth century. Drawing on his family’s letters, journals, official records, and other artifacts found in his grandmother’s attic, Woods has revived their stories—accounts of his grandfather, who served in the Philippine War and World War I; of his uncle, who rose from a West Point cadet to staff command in the 11th Airborne and died in action in the Battle of Manila in World War II; and of his own father, who transformed himself from a sedentary lawyer into a soldier and a spy. To lighten the dramatic and emotional load of his family’s service, Woods occasionally calls on memories of his own time in the army, which he calls “brief, bloodless, and largely comic.” Woods fortifies this work of nonfiction with his skills as a novelist, crafting dramatic scenes and engaging dialog, offering far more than operational battlefield stories. He explores the wider impact of war, as we learn of his grandfather’s struggles with his wife’s patrician parents; his uncle’s involvement with Cy Caldwell, a superstar aviator of the 1930s; and his father’s swift ascent from civilian to counterspy. Stand in the Fire is both an engrossing chronicle of a family who served in every American conflict from the Philippine War to the Cold War and a profoundly personal window into a family’s patriotic inheritance. This intimately documented history vividly conveys successive generations’ personal calls to serve, tells the stories of their paths to selfhood through military experience, and reflects on how they found fulfillment and adventure in their service, as well as evasion of the domestic scene. Woods has skillfully created a memoir about the construction of memory forged in military service and American masculinity. Stand in the Fire is a powerful exploration of the love between fathers and sons and an attempt to honor family valor. “I became aware of a debt to my ancestors I felt I could discharge by writing this book,” Woods writes. “It was a way of keeping faith with those ancestors.”

SLOW BURN It began as an anonymousflirtation. Storm raging, lightsflickering, two stranded travelersdecided to share uninhibitedconversation—but no names—during a stolen encounter. Talking turned intokissing…and the need to know each other's names. Inan instant, Boone Devlin and Erin Frye discoveredthey weren't exactly strangers. And Boone discovered that Erin was a virgin.Only fate could have seen fit to land bachelorhoodlovin'Boone in bed with the marriage-mindedmanager of the Texas ranch he'd inherited andintended to sell. Suddenly, his best-laid plans promisedto be the ultimate betrayal. Because Boone wasstarting to suspect that he and Erin had created a lotmore than sparks….

Describes the experiences of a newcomer to the Yukon when he attempts to hike through the snow to reach a mining claim.