Wrestling With The Angel

"It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn't tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a 'disturbance.' Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion." So begins Greg Lucas' captivating account of life as a husband, a police officer, and Jake's dad. Jake Lucas, the first of four children, lives with severe physical and mental challenges. Caring for him each day is an ordeal few of us can imagine, and this story of Jake's first 17 years is not one you will soon forget. But the remarkable thing is how the whole narrative is saturated with wonder at the grace and goodness of God, who brings hope and promise through his Son into the darkest of circumstances. In this book, we see that Jake's problems are our problems, only bigger, and the challenges of caring for him carry profound lessons about God's care for us. Wrestling with an Angel is about tragedy and laughter and pain and joy. It is about faith and grace and endurance and God's unfailing, loving wisdom daily being worked out in each of our lives, whatever the nature or extent of our difficulties. Here is a book that may explain faith to you in ways you never quite grasped, through a life few of us can relate to. When it is all done, we come away better able to live as Christ calls us to live.

Wrestling with the Angel is a meditation on contemporary political, legal, and social theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. It argues for the enabling function of formal and symbolic constraints in sustaining desire as a source of creativity, innovation, and social change. The book begins by calling for a richer understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of the symbolic and the resources it might offer for an examination of the social link and the political sphere. The symbolic is a crucial dimension of social coexistence but cannot be reduced to the social norms, rules, and practices with which it is so often collapsed. As a dimension of human life that is introduced by language—and thus inescapably "other" with respect to the laws of nature—the symbolic is an undeniable fact of human existence. Yet the same cannot be said of the forms and practices that represent and sustain it. In designating these laws, structures, and practices as "fictions," Jacques Lacan makes clear that the symbolic is a dimension of social life that has to be created and maintained and that can also be displaced, eradicated, or rendered dysfunctional. The symbolic fictions that structure and support the social tie are therefore historicizable, emerging at specific times and in particular contexts and losing their efficacy when circumstances change. They are also fragile and ephemeral, needing to be renewed and reinvented if they are not to become outmoded or ridiculous. Therefore the aim of this study is not to call for a return to traditional symbolic laws but to reflect on the relationship between the symbolic in its most elementary or structural form and the function of constraints and limits. McNulty analyzes examples of "experimental" (as opposed to "normative") articulations of the symbolic and their creative use of formal limits and constraints not as mere prohibitions or rules but as "enabling constraints" that favor the exercise of freedom. The first part examines practices that conceive of subjective freedom as enabled by the struggle with constraints or limits, from the transference that structures the "minimal social link" of psychoanalysis to constrained relationships between two or more people in the context of political and social movements. Examples discussed range from the spiritual practices and social legacies of Moses, Jesus, and Teresa of Avila to the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière. The second part is devoted to legal and political debates surrounding the function of the written law. It isolates the law's function as a symbolic limit or constraint as distinct from its content and representational character. The analysis draws on Mosaic law traditions, the political theology of Paul, and twentieth-century treatments of written law in the work of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Legendre, and Alain Badiou. In conclusion, the study considers the relationship between will and constraint in Kant's aesthetic philosophy and in the experimental literary works of the collective Oulipo.

Wrestling with Angels For over twenty years, psychotherapist, lecturer, and Bible teacher Naomi H. Rosenblatt has been leading some of the nation's best and brightest minds through the Bible, from Wall Street boardrooms to weekly sessions in the U.S. Congress, in what William Safire has called "the best Bible class for the layman." Drawing upon insights into human nature gleaned from decades of private practice and a lifelong study of the Bible, she sifts through the Bible's epic stories, filled with vivid characters in dramatic circumstances, to show how the lessons of their lives empower us today as parents, spouses, businesspeople, citizens, and lovers. In Wrestling with Angels, she and her co-author Joshua Horwitz retell and interpret the multigenerational saga of the first family of the Bible, showing how their all-too-human struggles are decidedly relevant to the issues confronting us today. The Bible? Relevant today? Many readers will be surprised by how truly relevant the Book of Genesis is. It discusses, among other things, the first recorded case of sexual harassment; surrogate parenting and the problems it raises; siblings battling over the love of a parent; rape and its consequences; and vigilante justice. The issues faced by Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and their descendants are remarkably similar to those that arise in all of our lives, including: The strenuous demands of adulthood The challenges of faith The joys of sexuality The nature of leadership and heroism The responsibilities of parenting The role of values in building character The empowerment of a spiritual identity In this extraordinary book of timeless and profound wisdom, Naomi Rosenblatt invites both Christians and Jews to revisit our common spiritual heritage: "For the humanist, the religious, the agnostic, or the merely inquisitive, Wrestling with Angels is an open invitation to probe the mystery, the miracle, and the drama of adult life in an imperfect world." A book to be read again and again, Wrestling with Angels is a poignant and pragmatic guide to the bestselling self-help book of all time.

Janet Frame, born in 1924, is New Zealand's most celebrated and least public author. Her early life in small South Island towns seemed, at times, engulfed in a tide of doom: one brother still-born, another epileptic; two sisters dead of heart failure while swimming; Frame herself committed to mental hospitals for the best part of a decade. Later, her surviving sister was temporarily felled in adulthood by a stroke, an uncle cut his throat and a cousin shot his lover, his lover's parents and then himself. This, then, is an inspiring biography of a woman who climbed out of an abyss of unhappiness to take control of her life and become one of the great writers of her time. And to enable her biographer to write this book scrupulously and honestly, Janet Frame spoke for the first time about her whole life. She also made available her personal papers and directed her family and friends to be equally communicative. The result is a biography of astonishing intimacy and frankness, written by multi-award-winning author, Dr Michael King.

Since the publication of the bestselling Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite has repeatedly been asked for more sonnets. This new collection offers a sequence of 50 sonnets that focus on many passages in the Gospels: the Beatitudes, parables and miracles, teachings on the Kingdom, and the ‘hard sayings’ - Jesus’ challenging demands with which we wrestle. In addition this collection includes: •A sequence of seven sonnets on 'The Wilderness', exploring mysterious stories of divine encounter such as Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. •Poetic reflections on music, hospitality and ecology. •Seven short poems celebrating the days of creation. •A biblical index pairing the poems with scripture readings for use in worship.

By regaining for the Jewish people the capacity to deploy force, Zionism posed moral dilemmas for the Jews that for many generations, living in exile, they had not had to confront. The return to full political life and the use of military force involved a profound revolution in the Jewish identity and aroused deep and painful misgivings. This thought-provoking book examines how the forging of a new moral stance on the use of force has affected Jewish identity in the Land of Israel and throughout the world. Drawing on historiography, philosophy, social commentary, ideological tracts, and belles lettres, Ehud Luz explores the ways that Zionist attitudes toward sovereignty were shaped by their Judaic heritage, in particular the prophetic literature and the halakhic (legal) tradition, which stressed the sanctity of human life and the strict prohibition against the shedding of innocent blood. Luz argues that despite secularization, Jewish tradition continues to influence the political life and national ethos of the Jews, and that the Jewish religious tradition is an important, sometimes even decisive factor in the way that political and cultural issues in Israel are resolved.

"Wrestling the Angel, Vol. I is the first in a two part study of the foundations of Mormon thought and practice, situated in the context of an overview of the Christian tradition. The book traces the essential contours of Mormon thought as it developed from Joseph Smith to the present. Terryl L. Givens, one of the nation's foremost Mormon scholars, offers a sweeping account of the history of Mormon belief, revealing that Mormonism is a tradition still very much in the process of formation."--Provided by the publisher.

Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.