A poet’s story of healing herself, working with wounded veterans, and learning that silence does not equal strength, written “with self-lacerating honesty” (Kirkus Reviews). In this poignant and unabashed self-examination, Seema Reza uncovers the lessons she learned through motherhood and a dysfunctional and abusive marriage, and how she used her discoveries to make a meaningful difference in the world. This lyrical, non-linear narrative memoir traces Reza’s journey from repressed suburban housewife to coordinator of a unique creative-expression military hospital program. Through observing her own experiences from the darkest moments of her life and investigating societal attitudes towards loss, love, motherhood, and community, Reza exposes her triumphs, weaknesses, fears, and regrets, and undermines the idea that strength requires silence. “Lyrical . . . powerful . . . It is her self-reflection which empowers this memoir; her responsibility to take action for herself and not to languish as she was.” —Entropy Literature Review

In this groundbreaking book, Pastor Jason Adam Miller re-examines the Beatitudes—eight paradoxes found in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount—and points to a whole new way to find hope in the midst of suffering. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that the world is broken. The world we thought we knew vanished, and so many of us are now struggling to make sense of a world that’s not what we thought it was. This book is about what happens when the fundamental picture we had relied on – our sense of how everything holds together - falls apart. For some, this moment comes when a global pandemic upends our security. For others, it’s a partner leaving, or a terrible diagnosis, or the death of a loved one. Many of us have felt our worlds breaking when long-held beliefs about God or faith slipped through our hands. Whether the details are global or personal, the experience is the same: you discover that the framing reality you were living in has fractured. But here’s the good news: The world has been breaking for as long as we can remember. We've been here before, which means we can turn to ancient, perennial wisdom to help us sort through these urgent problems. In When the World Breaks, Jason Adam Miller explores the possibilities for hope hidden in the paradoxes Jesus spoke when he taught the eight blessings – often called the Beatitudes - recorded in the beginning of Matthew chapter 5. These strange blessings name our experiences of suffering and are built on a particular kind of hope. This book is a meditation on those teachings as a transformative way forward when we suffer. Lyrically written, theologically rich, and supremely accessible, When the World Breaks reveals an unexpected way to look at these familiar verses, giving readers hope that God is with them in their suffering, and helping them become the kind of people who can put things back together.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This inspiring guide to healing and growth illuminates the richness and potential of every life, even in the face of loss and adversity—now updated with additional toolbox materials and a new preface by the author In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute—now the world’s largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth—Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one—stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world’s great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.

When United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, 112 people died, and 184 people survived. In this book Gregory S. Clapper, both a college professor and a chaplain in the National Guard, reflects on his ministry in the aftermath of this tragic event. Processing his chaplain experiences through the lens of his theological training, he reflects on six different resources from the Christian tradition that he saw transform people's lives during and after this tragedy.

We’ve always lived on a dangerous planet, but its disasters aren’t what they used to be. How the World Breaks gives us a breathtaking new view of crisis and recovery on the unstable landscapes of the Earth’s hazard zones. Father and son authors Stan and Paul Cox take us to the explosive fire fronts of overheated Australia, the future lost city of Miami, the fights over whether and how to fortify New York City in the wake of Sandy, the Indonesian mud volcano triggered by natural gas drilling, and other communities that are reimagining their lives after quakes, superstorms, tornadoes, and landslides. In the very decade when we should be rushing to heal the atmosphere and address the enormous inequalities of risk, a strange idea has taken hold of global disaster policy: resilience. Its proponents say that threatened communities must simply learn the art of resilience, adapt to risk, and thereby survive. This doctrine obscures the human hand in creating disasters and requires the planet’s most beleaguered people to absorb the rush of floodwaters and the crush of landslides, freeing the world economy to go on undisturbed. The Coxes’ great contribution is to pull the disaster debate out of the realm of theory and into the muck and ash of the world’s broken places. There we learn that change is more than mere adaptation and life is more than mere survival. Ultimately, How the World Breaks reveals why—unless we address the social, ecological, and economic roots of disaster—millions more people every year will find themselves spiraling into misery. It is essential reading for our time.

Every day, I wake up certain of only three things: I am responsible for my mother’s death. My father has vanished. Someone wants me dead. I’m on the run. It’s me against the world. I cannot let it break me. When sixteen-year-old Olivia Jacobs and her celebrity chef father are brutally attacked after his French Quarter restaurant opening, the shell-shocked Olivia finds herself on the run on the streets of New Orleans. Who wants her dead? And why?

A racially fueled incident exposes the fissures that sit beneath the surface of friendships and families, causing even more damage than the massive earthquake that separates them, The Earth Breaks in Colors is a powerful story of race and redemption. Whisper and Odelia are eleven-year-old girls who find refuge in the quiet corner of innocent friendship. Their Southern California homes each play host to an undercurrent of secrets. For Whisper that means a fractured mother returning from rehab, for Odelia a brother whose absence is laced with mystery. Race had no real place in the playful friendship of the white Whisper and the black Odelia, until a terrifying encounter brings prejudice to the forefront of their lives, opening their young hearts to ill begotten emotion. A violent earthquake further tears the world as they know it apart. Can hope and innocence be restored? An heirloom timepiece, a curious old woman and an unlikely hero join the girls as they search for their families and understanding among the rubble.