Wading In Water

At a time when people are increasingly considering themselves "spiritual but not religious," Wading in Water speaks of spirituality as an individual's connection to a greater whole. Hence, the process of coming to know what we call God is also the process of knowing oneself. Thinking comprehensively, spirituality involves what is, what can be, and what ought to be. When activity, rationality, and morality are infused with creativity and imagination, meaning that when body, mind, and soul are inspirited or harmonious with Spirit, spirituality is authentic, healthy, and vital. Healthy spirituality is integrative, both individually and corporately, in that it emerges from wholeness and yearns for wholeness. How do we know if we are on a path to increased wholeness? When we experience not only individual well-being, but help generate the same well-being toward others. In other words, wholesome self-love leads to greater love for others and for all of life. While Wading may be seen as a text on spirituality, its uniqueness is its connection of spirituality with creative arts such as poetry, literary allegory, film, music, theatre, drama, and dance. Wading is not a comprehensive study, for the purpose is to promote the enrichment of life through beauty, creativity, diversity, risk-taking, newness, serendipity, and synchronicity, joint features of spirituality and the arts. Like its companion text, Walking on Water, this volume is useful for individual or group study. Each chapter concludes with questions suitable for discussion or reflection.

The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat? We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean. Love: naked almost in the everlasting street, Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze. —from “Unrest in Baton Rouge” In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.

"A staple for paddlers.... [The Packraft Handbook has] now become the bible for outdoor recreators taking their inflatable rafts into the backcountry." ― Anchorage Daily News 2021 National Outdoor Book Award Winner in Outdoor Adventure Guides 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition Guidebook Winner Alaska-based author is a leading expert on wilderness travel Emphasis on skill progression and safety applies to wide range of outdoor water recreation Vibrant illustrations and photos inform and inspire The Packraft Handbook is a comprehensive guide to packrafting, with a strong emphasis on skill progression and safety. Readers will learn to maneuver through river features and open water, mitigate risk with trip planning and boat control, and how to react when things go wrong. Beginners will find everything they need to know to get started--from packraft care to proper paddling position as well as what to wear and how to communicate. Illustrated for visual learners and featuring stunning photography, The Packraft Handbook has something to offer all packrafters and other whitewater sports enthusiasts.

Where can you find mosses that change landscapes, salamanders with algae in their skin, and carnivorous plants containing whole ecosystems in their furled leaves? Where can you find swamp-trompers, wildlife watchers, marsh managers, and mud-mad scientists? In wetlands, those complex habitats that play such vital ecological roles. In Wading Right In, Catherine Owen Koning and Sharon M. Ashworth take us on a journey into wetlands through stories from the people who wade in the muck. Traveling alongside scientists, explorers, and kids with waders and nets, the authors uncover the inextricably entwined relationships between the water flows, natural chemistry, soils, flora, and fauna of our floodplain forests, fens, bogs, marshes, and mires. Tales of mighty efforts to protect rare orchids, restore salt marshes, and preserve sedge meadows become portals through which we visit major wetland types and discover their secrets, while also learning critical ecological lessons. The United States still loses wetlands at a rate of 13,800 acres per year. Such loss diminishes the water quality of our rivers and lakes, depletes our capacity for flood control, reduces our ability to mitigate climate change, and further impoverishes our biodiversity. Koning and Ashworth’s stories captivate the imagination and inspire the emotional and intellectual connections we need to commit to protecting these magical and mysterious places.

In Wading the Stream of Awareness, Jeff Brunson invites us to discover the connection between the inner self and the leadership we exercise. Understanding and using our richest resources-ourselves-frees us for more authentic and hence more effective leadership. -Gordon Turnbull