When Death Falls Apart

Through an ethnographic study inside Japan’s Buddhist goods industry, this book establishes a method for understanding change in death ritual through attention to the dynamic lifecourse of necromaterials. Deep in the Fukuyama mountainside, “the grave of the graves” (o-haka no haka) houses acres of unwanted headstones—the material remains of Japan’s discarded death rites. In the past, the Japanese dead became venerated ancestors through sustained ritual offerings at graves and at butsudan, Buddhist altars installed inside the home. But in twenty-first-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing. In noisy carpentry studios, flashy funeral-goods showrooms, neglected cemeteries, and cramped kitchens where women prepare memorial feasts, Hannah Gould analyzes the lifecycle of butsudan, illuminating how they are made, circulate through religious and funerary economies, mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, and—as the population ages, families disperse, and fewer homes have space for large lacquer cabinets—eventually fall into disuse. What happens, she asks, when a funerary technology becomes obsolete? And what will take its place? Gould examines new products better suited to urban apartments: miniature urns and sleek altars inspired by Scandinavian design, even reliquary jewelry. She visits an automated columbarium and considers new ritual practices that embrace impermanence. At an industry expo, she takes on the role of “demonstration corpse.” Throughout, Gould invites us to rethink memorialization and describes a distinct form of Japanese necrosociality, one based on material exchanges that seek to both nurture the dead and disentangle them from the world of the living.

Describes a traditional Buddhist approach to suffering and how embracing the painful situation and using communication, negative habits, and challenging experiences leads to emotional growth and happiness.

Add layoffs, foreclosures, and skyrocketing health-care costs to the inevitable crises of every life, and you have today’s landscape. Amid these challenges, even those who thought they had solid coping skills feel that their center cannot hold as things fall apart. In her first book in many years, bestselling author Daphne Rose Kingma takes us on a path of emotional and spiritual healing, with particular attention to the complex and frequently overwhelming circumstances of our lives right now. The perfect combination of empathic friend, sage counselor, savvy problem solver, and even gallows humorist, Kingma looks straight into the predicaments so many of us face. She then offers ten deceptively simple yet profoundly effective strategies for coping on practical, emotional, and spiritual levels. The devastating events cannot be changed, but after reading this book, you will be, having recovered a sense of equanimity, spirit, and strength. Whether you’re struggling with money issues, job loss, relationship problems, an unexpected health crisis, or all of the above, this book will light your path and heal your heart.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

With a moving account of her own story, Tims shows readers how to face life's most difficult problems and come through in victory. "When It All Falls Apart" is a valuable resource that provides specific and effective strategies to address life's difficult challenges by giving readers a road map to a better tomorrow.

DIV Whether you are dealing with the unexpected death of a loved one, betrayal by someone close to you, sudden divorce, loss of a home, failure of a business or relationship, or any other serious issue, with God’s help you can turn your trial into triumph./div

Pema Chödrön reveals the vast potential for happiness, wisdom and courage even in the most painful circumstances.