Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay.Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts.Written with wit, candor, and compassion, Rock Needs River is, ultimately, Vanessa’s love letter to her daughter, one that illuminates the universal need for connection and the heroine’s journey to find her tribe.

    She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they provided hospitality to students and activists that were looking to make a difference in the world. There, her partner rehabilitated abandoned and abused dogs. In the community, Rosaria was involved in volunteer work. At the university, she was a respected advisor of students and her department’s curriculum. And then, in her late 30s, Rosaria encountered something that turned her world upside down—the idea that Christianity, a religion that she had regarded as problematic and sometimes downright damaging, might be right about who God was, an idea that flew in the face of the people and causes that she most loved. What follows is a story of what she describes as a “train wreck” at the hand of the supernatural. These are her secret thoughts about those events, written as only a reflective English professor could."Conversion put me in a complicated and comprehensive chaos. I sometimes wonder, when I hear other Christians pray for the salvation of the “lost,” if they realize that this comprehensive chaos is the desired end of such prayers. Often, people asked me to describe the “lessons” that I learned from this experience. I can’t. It was too traumatic. Sometimes in crisis, we don’t really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed." —Rosaria Butterfield

    Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an examination of how we live, a meditation on how to live better set around the narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father & his young son.

    In 1994, he lay on the floor of an Atlanta crack house. His father had put together a search party. His worried family waited at home where Moyers had left them when he embarked on yet another binge. From that lowly, drug-hazed night, Moyers went on to become an executive at the Hazelden Foundation and travels far and wide to talk about addiction and treatment. Broken tells the story of what happened between then and now—from growing up the privileged son of Bill Moyers to his descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, his numerous stabs at getting clean, his many relapses, and how he managed to survive. Harrowing and wrenching, Broken paints a picture of a man with every advantage who nonetheless found himself spiraling into a dark and life-threatening abyss. But unlike other memoirs of its kind, Broken emerges into the clear light of Moyers’s recovery as he dedicates his life to changing the politics of addiction. Beautifully written with a deep underlying spirituality, this is a missive of hope for the scores of Americans struggling with addiction—and an honest and inspiring account that proves the spiritual insight that we are strongest at the broken places.

    In his tongue-in-cheek memoir, he lifts the lid on the industry and the traditions and trends associated with the modern wedding. Sometimes controversial, often insightful, but always amusing, George Mahood offers some practical advice to those planning their own wedding, sharing stories of the weddings he photographed as well as his own marriage, while shedding some light on the role of the wedding photographer and what it is like to document the most important day in these couples' lives.

    Finding Freedom is a collection of prison stories -- sometimes shocking, sometimes sad, often funny, always immediate -- told against a background of extreme violence and aggression. Masters' commitment to nonviolence leads him more and more into the role of peacemaker as he tries to put compassion into action. We see Masters meditating amid chaos and squalor, touching the hearts and minds of those around him.

    Includes the teachings and a structural analysis.

    In this book she explores the abduction experience and shares with you the three important things they insisted she learn."This is my story. I cannot prove any of it. For years I was encouraged to write about these experiences, but I resisted. This is not an easy story for me to write, and it might not be easy for you to read or believe. I understand that. . . This book is not only a recounting of my experiences but also the story of how I discovered that, like most things, it is possible to turn the worst thing in your life into something positive just by choosing to look at it from a different perspective." -from the author

    How can you stay true to who God has uniquely created you to be in the face of the script you've been given? What's more, how can you stand your ground with grace?The classy confidence you know and love--whether it's on set at Full House or Fuller House, Dancing with the Stars, The View, or Candace's Hallmark movies--is no act. But it hasn't come easy. The secret, she has learned, is kindness: it's classy, unexpected, even countercultural, and ultimately wins the day.In Kind Is the New Classy, Candace reveals the thought patterns and practices that have empowered her to stay centered in who she is while practicing radical graciousness toward others. Whether you're navigating major life choices, questions of calling and career, relationships, or personal goals, this book will show you how to:Keep your cool under pressureRespond to criticism with graceStay grounded yet go places in lifeStay true to who you are despite the expectations of othersStay centered in what ultimately matters the most

    There are other ancestors, too: the writers—“most of them dead, and quite a few of them French"—who are his daily companions, supplemented by composers and theologians and scientists whose similar explorations are woven into this account with an exhilarating breadth of intellect and felicity of spirit.Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.

    The autobiography of Seb Coe.

    A scathingly funny reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments from the larger, louder half of world-famous magic duo Penn and Teller reveals an atheist's experience in the world: from performing on the Vegas strip with Siegfried and Roy to children and fatherhood to his ongoing dialogue with proselytizers of the Christian Right and the joys of sex while scuba-diving, Penn has an outrageous sense of humor and a brilliantly entertaining opinion on, well, anything you care to think of.

    She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true.As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an "escape hatch," Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness.Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.

    A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

    Regardless of who you are, where you come from or what you are doing, this book contains Universal principles that will redefine your spiritual life. Every single Chapter introduces and explores a powerful spiritual concept. The book is filled with Enlightening meditations, Ancient wisdom and uplifting stories of ethereal encounters with the other side. Whether you are a beginner in this field or an old soul wiser than the day, World of Archangels will help you achieve the next level of your spiritual journey.Throughout history we have been led to believe that there were only 7 primary Chakras within the human body. There are in fact 12 Chakras that act as representatives for the 12 Dimensions that make up our Universal learning environment. World of Archangels delves quite heavily into each of the Dimensions that collectively became known as Creator School. We are each of us developing souls that will one day achieve the 12th Dimension and leave Creation as powerful Creators ourselves. The fundamentals of achieving such a feat revolves around Unconditional Love and expressing ourselves within the extremely heightened existence of Enlightenment. The Archangels are the Beings who convey these teachings down in order to complete the cycle of learning. World of Archangels was written to simply orchestrate such a Divine meeting; the rest is entirely up to Destiny.The book follows a self-realization process that Archangel Uriel hand-crafted for the sole purpose of awakening souls. Each chapter continues this powerful journey, where by the end of the book, descriptive meditations upon activating and cleansing the Chakras, raising the vibration of the human body, communing with ethereal Beings, psychic self defense, healing and the ability to understand Life beyond normal human perception becomes available. With self-realization in mind, World of Archangels aims to excel the spiritual aspirant onto a pathway of Enlightenment with dedicated meditations to empower the human energetic body beyond the normal limitations.Here on Earth we may sometimes become bogged down with all manner of disharmonies that cause us to be shackled into a physical life that was effectively set up for us to fail at some point in time. Sometimes we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel and many times we may even feel burnt by Life itself for no other reason than for the justification of karmic debt. It may be one of the greatest answers to know the meaning of your life and to understand why you are even alive. To genuinely approach an Archangel; these answers may very well be given to you. To live a fulfilling Life, to be free of limitations, to recognize the nature of who you are and where you have come from; this is the result of becoming an awakened soul.