This rediscovery of the stories of Christ's birth through adult eyes is for use in group and worship situations. The material is drawn from the work of the Wild Goose Worship Group who have an innovative style of worship.

Pardon our French, but in Miss Julia's newest nonstop adventure, "steel magnolias kick butt" (Kirkus Reviews). Don't miss the newest, Miss Julia Raises the Roof, coming April 2018 from Viking. Miss Julia has promised her adoring husband, Sam, to mind her own business. What a relief! Instead of trying to figure out why that dead body was found in Miss Petty's toolshed, Miss Julia can concentrate on taking care of just-in-time newlywed Hazel Marie as she prepares for her impending due date. But then Miss Julia-who has always balanced her checkbook down to the penny-suddenly finds her checks bouncing all over town. Just this once (as she tells herself), Miss Julia starts investigating and so begin the antics that have made her one of the most beloved and irrepressible ladies-of-a-certain-age in today's fiction.

This collection of responsive prayers, dialogues, monologues, extended scripts and other pieces forms the third book in the series started by Cloth for the Cradle and Stages on the Way. While these first two focused on the beginning and ending of Jesus' earthly life, Present on Earth is concerned with the years inbetween - with the encounters and conversations, the rumour and reputation, the moments of deep assurance and equally deep provocation which marked Jesus' three year ministry. As a resouce for worship and group work this material makes us aware ina very immediate way of the vulnerable intimacy which God in becoming human.

Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals. In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government’s abilities to tax and to borrow money, developed in the early years of the republic, were critical to the young nation’s ability to wage war and expand its territory. He traces the growth of this capacity from the time of the founding to the aftermath of the Civil War, including the funding of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Edling maintains that the Founding Fathers clearly understood the connection between public finance and power: a well-managed public debt was a key part of every modern state. Creating a debt would always be a delicate and contentious matter in the American context, however, and statesmen of all persuasions tried to pay down the national debt in times of peace. A Hercules in the Cradle explores the origin and evolution of American public finance and shows how the nation’s rise to great-power status in the nineteenth century rested on its ability to go into debt.

A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective; hence, "waste equals food" is the first principle the book sets forth. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new-either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). Elaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make an exciting and viable case for change.

A completely revised and expanded edition of this collection of liturgies for morning, day, evening, Holy Communion and healing services and there are revised liturgies from the original edition. Aimed primarily at participative worship with shared leadership, it includes optional methods of scriptural reflection and prayer with symbolic acction. There is also a preface of comments on leading worship, dealing with all the issues which ordained clergy never tell lay people but presume they should know.

Diagrams and text illustrate the steps involved in creating over one hundred string figures while providing information on their origin and cultural background