Transformational Encounters

What would it mean for Christian counseling and pastoral care to take seriously the idea that God intervenes in the world? In this volume more than twenty of the best pastoral counselors, clinicians, and counselor educators introduce us to the models that they use to integrate the Scriptures and the work of the Holy Spirit into their daily practice.

Luke-Acts is an impressive two-volume narrative seeking to convince and engage readers regarding the spiritual impact of Jesus of Nazareth on the Jewish people and other nations. To this end, Luke employs an impressive arsenal of literary and narrative techniques. This book focuses on a motif and its performance, the thoroughfare motif, which includes those figurative and concrete expressions involving ways, roads, city streets, and country paths. This study traces this motif's performance within the unfolding plot asking what difference the motif makes--progressively and cumulatively--to the reader's encounter with the story's emphasis on salvation. For example, why does Luke take pleasure in describing transformational events on or in relation to thoroughfares? What are the connections between expressions like "the way of peace," "the way of salvation," and "the way of God/Lord"? Why does Luke use such an unusual expression like "the Way" to describe Jesus' followers? How do such expressions contribute to the spiritual landscape of Luke-Acts, the intermingling of concrete and figurative uses of physical imagery? Like an instrument in an orchestra, the thoroughfare motif works together with other motifs and themes to create a captivating exploration of spiritual transformation, received and opposed.

The most vital and significant moments in life are moments of encounter. Whether we encounter ourselves, others, or God, these moments let us know that life is meaningful. And presence is what makes encounter possible. When we are truly present, everything that has being becomes potentially present to us. In this unique resource, David Benner invites us to live with more presence so we can know the presence of God more deeply in our lives. Drawing on over thirty-five years of experience integrating psychology and spirituality, Benner examines the transformational possibilities of spiritual presence and encounter in fresh, exciting, and practical ways. He helps readers understand the personal and interpersonal dimensions of presence and encounter, revealing how they mediate Divine Presence and serve as sacraments of everyday life. His rich meditations are presented in a voice that is intelligent, compassionate, and engaging. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection exercises for individual or group use and a foreword by Richard Rohr.

Encountering the City provides a new and sustained engagement with the concept of encounter. Drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work, classic writings on the city and rich empirical examples, this volume demonstrates why encounters are significant to urban studies, politically, philosophically and analytically. Bringing together a range of interests, from urban multiculture, systems of economic regulation, security and suspicion, to more-than-human geographies, soundscapes and spiritual experience, Encountering the City argues for a more nuanced understanding of how the concept of 'encounter' is used. This interdisciplinary collection thus provides an insight into how scholars' writing on and in the city mobilise, theorise and challenge the concept of encounter through empirical cases taken from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. These cases go beyond conventional accounts of urban conviviality, to demonstrate how encounters destabilise, rework and produce difference, fold together complex temporalities, materialise power and transform political relations. In doing so, the collection retains a critical eye on the forms of regulation, containment and inequality that shape the taking place of urban encounter. Encountering the City is a valuable resource for students and researchers alike.

Insurgent Encounters illuminates the dynamics of contemporary transnational social movements, including those advocating for women and indigenous groups, environmental justice, and alternative—cooperative rather than exploitative—forms of globalization. The contributors are politically engaged scholars working within the social movements they analyze. Their essays are both models of and arguments for activist ethnography. They demonstrate that such a methodology has the potential to reveal empirical issues and generate theoretical insights beyond the reach of traditional social-movement research methods. Activist ethnographers not only produce new understandings of contemporary forms of collective action, but also seek to contribute to struggles for social change. The editors suggest networks and spaces of encounter as the most useful conceptual rubrics for understanding shape-shifting social movements using digital and online technologies to produce innovative forms of political organization across local, regional, national, and transnational scales. A major rethinking of the practice and purpose of ethnography, Insurgent Encounters challenges dominant understandings of social transformation, political possibility, knowledge production, and the relation between intellectual labor and sociopolitical activism. Contributors. Giuseppe Caruso, Maribel Casas-Cortés, Janet Conway, Stéphane Couture, Vinci Daro, Manisha Desai, Sylvia Escárcega, David Hess, Jeffrey S. Juris, Alex Khasnabish, Lorenzo Mosca, Michal Osterweil, Geoffrey Pleyers, Dana E. Powell, Paul Routledge, M. K. Sterpka, Tish Stringer

Transformational Tourism deals with the important issue of how travel and tourism can change human behaviour and have a positive impact on the world. The book focuses on human development in a world dominated by post-9/11 security and political challenges, economic and financial collapses, as well as environmental threats; it identifies various types of tourism that can transform human beings, such as educational, volunteer, survival, community-based, eco, farm, extreme, religious, spiritual, wellness, and mission tourism.