A Fragile Life

Author : Todd May
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022644001X
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Fragile Life written by Todd May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “His discussion of the ways in which those who try to make themselves invulnerable . . . undermine what makes us most human, is clear and bracing.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In a moving examination of life and the trials that beset it, Todd May shows that our fragility, our ability to suffer, is actually one of the most important aspects of our humanity. May starts with a simple but hard truth: suffering is inevitable. At the most basic level, we suffer physically—a sprained ankle or a bad back. But we also suffer insults and indifference. We suffer from overburdened schedules and unforeseen circumstances, from moral dilemmas and emotional heartaches. Even just thinking about our own mortality—the fact that we only live one life—can lead us to tremendous suffering. No wonder philosophies such as Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism—all of which counsel us to rise above these plights—have had appeal over the centuries. May highlights the tremendous value of these philosophies and the ways they can guide us toward better lives, but he also exposes a major drawback to their tenets: such invulnerability is too emotionally disengaged from the world, leading us to place too great a distance between ourselves and our experience. Rather than seeking absolute immunity, he argues most of us just want to hurt less and learn how to embrace and accept what suffering we do endure in a meaningful way. Offering a guide on how to positively engage suffering, May ultimately lays out a new way of thinking about how we exist in the world.

Author : Charlotte Pierce-Baker
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1613741111
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book This Fragile Life written by Charlotte Pierce-Baker and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlotte Pierce-Baker did everything right when raising her son, providing not only emotional support but the best education possible. At age twenty-five, he was pursuing a postgraduate degree and seemingly in control of his life. She never imagined her high-achieving son would wind up handcuffed, dirty, and in jail. The moving story of an African American family facing the challenge of bipolar disorder, This Fragile Life provides insight into mental disorders as well as family dynamics. Pierce-Baker traces the evolution of her son's illness and, in looking back, realizes she mistook warning signs for typical child and teen behavior. Hospitalizations, calls in the night, alcohol and drug relapses, pleas for money, and continuous disputes, her son's journey was long, arduous, and almost fatal. This Fragile Life weaves a fascinating story of mental illness, race, family, the drive of African Americans to succeed, and a mother's love for her son.

Author : Stephen Westaby
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 0465094848
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Open Heart written by Stephen Westaby and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be. With astonishing compassion, he recounts harrowing and sometimes hopeful stories from his operating room: we meet a pulseless man who lives with an electric heart pump, an expecting mother who refuses surgery unless the doctors let her pregnancy reach full term, and a baby who gets a heart transplant-only to die once it's in place. For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, Open Heart offers a soul-baring account of a life spent in constant confrontation with death.

Author : Michael Card
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 0830874232
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Fragile Stone written by Michael Card and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Chicago Book Clinic Design Award A Fragile Stone explores the dynamic life of the apostle Peter, revisiting well-known passages and revealing unexpected insights. Author Michael Card sketches out Peter's life, showing how the impetuous fisherman of the Gospels was transformed into the pivotal leader of the early church. "The ultimate reason for getting to know Peter," Card explains, "is so together we might better know Jesus. For the story of Peter is the story of Jesus. Perhaps, if you and I do our best, the same will be said of us someday." Peter's life serves as a model for Christian discipleship, offering hope that we likewise can be changed as Jesus calls us to follow him.

Author : Cynthia Ruchti
Publisher : Abingdon Press
ISBN 13 : 1501837443
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Fragile Hope written by Cynthia Ruchti and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josiah Chamberlain's life's work revolves around repairing other people's marriages. When his own is threatened by his wife's unexplained distance, and then threatened further when she's unexpectedly plunged into an unending fog, Josiah finds his expertise, quick wit and clever quips are no match for a relationship that is clearly broken. Feeling betrayed, confused, and ill-equipped for a crisis this crippling, he reexamines everything he knows about the fragility of hope and the strength of his faith and love. Love seems to have failed him. Will what’s left of his faith fail him, too? Or will it be the one thing that holds him together and sears through the impenetrable wall that separates them?

Author : Patricia M. Berg
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781640284043
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Life Is Fragile Handle It with Prayer written by Patricia M. Berg and published by . This book was released on 2017-04-29 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life is a journey filled with many up and downs. By the time I was in my early thirties, I had lost my sister, my father, my three-year-old godson/nephew, my brother-in-law, and my mother--five immediate family members in four years. In the midst of all this, I had dealt with alcoholism and then divorce, having to start over again with two small children, no child support, and making only minimum wage at the time. This was just the beginning of many trials and tribulations. How did I handle it, you ask? Prayer, of course; when life gets fragile, handle it with prayer. This is not just something I say; it is something I live by. I have found that God gives you direction if you just trust him. It may be something as simple as a feeling or as concrete as an eight-foot statue of Jesus on a cloud. It was through these tragedies that I not only survived but actually was strengthened in my faith and spirit. It seems these things that strengthened me actually prepared me for what lay ahead and allowed God to bless and use me to help others. God gives us what we need when we need it; we only have to ask.

Author : Arlette Farge
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674316379
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fragile Lives written by Arlette Farge and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rich and complex texture of working-class neighborhoods in eighteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in this collage of the experiences of ordinary people--men and women, rich and poor, masters and servants, neighbors and colleagues. Exploring three arenas of conflict and solidarity--the home, the workplace, and the street--Arlette Farge offers the reader an intimate social history, bringing long-dead citizens and vanished social groups back to life with sensitivity and perception.

Author : Mari Ruti
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438427190
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A World of Fragile Things written by Mari Ruti and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”

Author : Kate Hewitt
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 1472017102
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Other Mother written by Kate Hewitt and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You love your best friend. You trust her with your life.

Author : Mara B. Adelman
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000149218
Total Pages : 151 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Fragile Community written by Mara B. Adelman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the concept of "community," focusing on how communication practices help manage the tensions of creating and sustaining everyday communal life amidst the crisis of human loss. While acknowledging how the contradictory and inconsistent nature of human relationships inevitably affects community, this intimate and compelling text shows how community is created and sustained in concrete communication practices. The authors explore these ideas at Bonaventure House, an award-winning residential facility for people with AIDS, where the web of social relationships and the demands of a life-threatening illness intersect in complex ways. Facing a life-threatening illness can defy meaningful social connections, but it can also inspire such ties, sometimes in ways that elude us in the course of daily life. By understanding how collective communication practices help residents forge a sense of community out of the fragility and chaos of living together with AIDS, we are able to better understand how communication is inexorably intertwined with the formation of community in other environments. Based on seven years of ethnographic research including participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and questionnaires, this book weaves together narratives and visual images with conceptual analysis to uncover the ongoing oppositional forces of community life, and to show how both mundane and profound communication processes ameliorate these tensions, and thereby sustain this fragile community. Because the average length of stay for a resident is seven months -- in which time he or she moves from being a newcomer to a community member to someone the community remembers -- the text reflects this short, but crystallized life, starting with the day a new resident opens the door to the day he or she passes away. The writing is rich -- intimate, engaging, personal, compelling, and vivid. The stories told discuss such deeply personal topics as the dilemmas of romantic relationships in a context fraught with many perils; issues of power, authority, and control that enable and constrain social life; and communicative practices that help residents cope with bereavement over the loss of others as well as their own impending deaths. The text concludes by examining the lessons learned from Bonaventure House about creating and sustaining a health community, and serves as an inspiration for strengthening interpersonal relationships and communities in other environments.