A feast for passionate tree-lovers. Gospel of the Living Tree is a treasure trove of tree-related material, drawn from a wide range of sources, not to be found in any other work. It includes insights and accounts of experiences by artists, poets, mystics, musicians, philosophers, presidents and generals, scientists, economists and wisdom-teachers, with glistening gems of wisdom from diverse disciplines and ages, from Homer to Jung, Buddha to Beethoven, Goethe to Gandhi, Nietzsche to Chopra, legendary botanist George Washington Carver to Nobel quantum physicist Max Planck. Gospel of the Living Tree is a celebration of the sacredness of trees and their role in human consciousness and culture, narrated mostly by the trees themselves. It is also a moving call to action on their behalf, containing visionary yet thoroughly realistic proposals for the setting up of a new type of university wholly devoted to Living Trees. A creative and scholarly work, mythologically rich, lyrically playful, philosophically and spiritually profound, warrior-inspiring and, in the critical ecological context of our times, stirringly relevant.

This groundbreaking walk through Scripture by former physician and carpenter Dr. Matthew Sleeth makes the convincing case that trees reveal more about God and faith than you ever imagined. “Christians looking to reconnect to the natural world will relish Sleeth’s passionate call to Christian stewardship of the Earth.”—Publishers Weekly Fifteen years ago, Matthew Sleeth believed that science and logic held the answers to everything. But when tragedy struck, he opened the Bible for the first time and was surprised to find that God chose to tell the gospel story through a trail of trees. There’s a tree on the first page of Genesis, in the first psalm, on the first page of the New Testament, and on the last page of Revelation. The Bible’s wisdom is referred to as a tree of life. Every major biblical character and every major theological event has a tree marking the spot. A tree was the only thing that could kill Jesus—and the only thing Jesus ever harmed. Reforesting Faith is the rare book that builds bridges by connecting those who love the Creator with creation and those who love creation with the Creator. Join Dr. Sleeth as he explores the wonders of life, death, and rebirth through the trail of trees in Scripture. Once you discover the hidden language of trees, your walk through the woods—and through Scripture—will never be the same.

In an “eye-opening memoir” (People) “as beautiful as it is discomfiting” (The New Yorker), award-winning writer Apricot Irving untangles her youth on a missionary compound in Haiti. Apricot Irving grew up as a missionary’s daughter in Haiti. Her father was an agronomist, a man who hiked alone into the deforested hills to preach the gospel of trees. Her mother and sisters spent their days in the confines of the hospital compound they called home. As a child, this felt like paradise to Irving; as a teenager, it became a prison. Outside of the walls of the missionary enclave, Haiti was a tumult of bugle-call bus horns and bicycles that jangled over hard-packed dirt, road blocks and burning tires triggered by political upheaval, the clatter of rain across tin roofs, and the swell of voices running ahead of the storm. Poignant and explosive, Irving weaves a portrait of a missionary family that is unflinchingly honest: her father’s unswerving commitment to his mission, her mother’s misgivings about his loyalty, the brutal history of colonization. Drawing from research, interviews, and journals—her parents’ as well as her own—this memoir in many voices evokes a fractured family finding their way to kindness through honesty. Told against the backdrop of Haiti’s long history of intervention, it grapples with the complicated legacy of those who wish to improve the world, while bearing witness to the defiant beauty of an undefeated country. A lyrical meditation on trees and why they matter, loss and privilege, love and failure. The Gospel of Trees is a “lush, emotional debut...A beautiful memoir that shows how a family altered by its own ambitious philanthropy might ultimately find hope in their faith and love for each other, and for Haiti.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Imagine that you could really understand the Bible...that you could read, analyze, and discuss the book of Genesis not as a compositional mystery, a cultural relic, or a linguistic puzzle palace, or even as religious doctrine, but as a philosophical classic, precisely in the same way that a truth-seeking reader would study Plato or Nietzsche. Imagine that you could be led in your study by one of America's preeminent intellectuals and that he would help you to an understanding of the book that is deeper than you'd ever dreamed possible, that he would reveal line by line, verse by verse the incredible riches of this illuminating text -- one of the very few that actually deserve to be called seminal. Imagine that you could get, from Genesis, the beginning of wisdom. The Beginning of Wisdom is a hugely learned book that, like Genesis itself, falls naturally into two sections. The first shows how the universal history described in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, from creation to the tower of Babel, conveys, in the words of Leon Kass, "a coherent anthropology" -- a general teaching about human nature -- that "rivals anything produced by the great philosophers." Serving also as a mirror for the reader's self-discovery, these stories offer profound insights into the problematic character of human reason, speech, freedom, sexual desire, the love of the beautiful, pride, shame, anger, guilt, and death. Something as seemingly innocuous as the monotonous recounting of the ten generations from Adam to Noah yields a powerful lesson in the way in which humanity encounters its own mortality. In the story of the tower of Babel are deep understandings of the ambiguous power of speech, reason, and the arts; the hazards of unity and aloneness; the meaning of the city and its quest for self-sufficiency; and man's desire for fame, immortality, and apotheosis -- and the disasters these necessarily cause. Against this background of human failure, Part Two of The Beginning of Wisdom explores the struggles to launch a new human way, informed by the special Abrahamic covenant with the divine, that might address the problems and avoid the disasters of humankind's natural propensities. Close, eloquent, and brilliant readings of the lives and educations of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons reveal eternal wisdom about marriage, parenting, brotherhood, education, justice, political and moral leadership, and of course the ultimate question: How to live a good life? Connecting the two "parts" is the book's overarching philosophical and pedagogical structure: how understanding the dangers and accepting the limits of human powers can open the door to a superior way of life, not only for a solitary man of virtue but for an entire community -- a life devoted to righteousness and holiness. This extraordinary book finally shows Genesis as a coherent whole, beginning with the creation of the natural world and ending with the creation of a nation that hearkens to the awe-inspiring summons to godliness. A unique and ambitious commentary, a remarkably readable literary exegesis and philosophical companion, The Beginning of Wisdom is one of the most important books in decades on perhaps the most important -- and surely the most frequently read -- book of all time.

Have you ever looked at a tree? In The Gospel According to a Tree you will discover the science of the Tree. Dive into the Tree's function and anatomy. Witness the revealing of our Creator in His creation and how the Tree is today's Tree of life. See how God maintains our life through the ministry of a Tree. You will never look at a tree again without thinking of its designer.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

An uplifting study of Jesus, his times and his teaching