“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.” John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent,” and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease, but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers. What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system, quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune. A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating—a story that will make readers see their own lives anew.

This book is about surrendering to life as it is ... all of our out-of-control circumstances, challenging relationships, wavering faith, fluctuating self-image-and finding the awesomeness in it all, rather than being frustrated that things aren't the way we think they should be. Resting in the mess.This doesn't come easy for me. I want to fix everything. And everyone. Because, when everything is fixed, then my life will be smooth sailing. I won't have anything to worry about or manage. And, probably because I'm not absolutely perfect at fixing myself, most days I find it easier to try to fix other people. This isn't about giving up on goals and dreams or rolling over and playing dead until the game is over. It's also not about being weak, letting life bowl us over. It's actually the opposite. It's about moving through life with an intentional grace, surrendering to life as it is, accepting people and circumstances as they are, not as we want them to be. And then finding ways to use our passions and energy to insert love and truth into the world, unattached to expectations of how it should all turn out. We do this in order to see more clearly the marvelous in the mystery. To draw closer to other people, not further away. To live from our heart, rather than from our head. To not run from that which is messy or complicated, but to see the beauty in it. My hope is that this book will help you say farewell to fear, insecurity, ego-driven decision making, self-pity, and regret. After we've thrown those ugly bits in the trash, let's aim for the warm pools of joy and peace, which include greater acceptance of ourselves, others, our circumstances, and maybe even God. We will learn how to live with wide open hands of grace and love. That's when the magic and beauty of life will truly come alive.It all starts by letting things be a little out of control.

The incredible story of a lead singer's rise to fame and his crushing fall when he lost his singing voice, his career, and his marriage--and then found a new calling more in tune with God than he ever thought possible. Mark Stuart was the front man of popular Christian rock band, Audio Adrenaline, at a time when the Christian music scene exploded. Advancing from garage band to global success, the group sold out stadiums all over the world, won Grammy Awards, and even celebrated an album going certified Gold. But after almost twenty years, Mark's voice began to give out. When doctors diagnosed him with a debilitating disease, the career with the band he'd founded and dedicated his life to building was gone. Then to his shock, his wife ended their marriage, and Mark believed he'd lost everything. Unsure of his future, Mark traveled to Haiti to help with the band's ministry, the Hands and Feet Project. When the devastating 2010 earthquake hit, media learned he was present and sought him out for interviews. Ironically, Mark became the scratchy voice for the struggling Haitians, drawing the world's attention to their dire circumstances. In the process, Mark found a greater purpose than he'd ever known before. In this gripping, compelling new book, Mark Stuart overlays his story with passages from the gospel of John, urging his readers to listen for God's voice and to embrace his big love that calls us into a big life.

A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of 2021 “Thompson is a master showman . . . [Beeswing is] everything you’d hope a Richard Thompson autobiography would be . . . It’s both major and minor, dirge and ditty, light on its feet but packing a punch.” —The Wall Street Journal Now Featuring an Interview with Elvis Costello In this moving, immersive, and long-awaited memoir, beloved international music legend Richard Thompson recreates the spirit of his early years, where he found, and then lost, and then found his way again. Considered one of the top twenty guitarists of all time, Thompson also belongs in the songwriting pantheon alongside Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman. Here the British folk musician takes us back to the late 1960s, a period of great change and creativity for both him and the world at large. During the pivotal years of 1967 to 1975, just as he was discovering his passion for music, he formed the band Fairport Convention with some schoolmates and helped establish the genre of British folk rock. It was a thrilling period of massive tours, where Thompson was on the road in both the UK and the US, crossing paths with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix, as well as a time of heady and explosive creativity for Thompson, who wrote some of his most famous songs during this time. But as Thompson reveals, those eight years were also marked by upheaval and tragedy. Honest, moving, and compelling, Beeswing vividly captures the life of a remarkable man and musician during a period of artistic intensity, in a world on the cusp of change. “An absorbing, witty, often deliciously biting read, as all rock memoirs should be.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Secular society coupled with religious culture has inadvertently created a climate in America that blindly praises political correctness and the legislation of questionable laws. Religious traditionalists must now contend with how to remain spiritually relevant in perilous and polarizing times without compromising age-old biblical practices and principles. A glorified biblical commentary, you might say this book addresses almost everything you wanted to ask your local traditional religious leader but was afraid to. If I cant share my wisdom and experiences and exercise my talents, gifts, and skills at the slight chance I may inspire and help others, what good is my life?

This guidebook addresses the concerns of young designers who want to earn a living by doing expressive and meaningful work, but want to avoid becoming a hired drone working on soulless projects. It offers straight-talking advice on how to establish your design career and practical suggestions for running a successful business.

Former Southern Baptist pastor and Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore calls for repentance and renewal in American evangelicalism American evangelical Christianity has lost its way. While the witness of the church before a watching world is diminished beyond recognition, congregations are torn apart over Donald Trump, Christian nationalism, racial injustice, sexual predation, disgraced leaders, and covered-up scandals. Left behind are millions of believers who counted on the church to be a place of belonging and hope. As greater and greater numbers of younger Americans bleed out from the church, even the most rooted evangelicals are wondering, “Can American Christianity survive?” In Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore calls his fellow evangelical Christians to conversion over culture wars, to truth over tribalism, to the gospel over politics, to integrity over influence, and to renewal over nostalgia. With both prophetic honesty and pastoral love, Moore offers a word of counsel for how a new generation of disillusioned and exhausted believers can find a path forward after the crisis and confusion of the last several years. Believing the gospel is too important to leave it to hucksters and grifters, he shows how a Christian can avoid both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church. The altar call of the old evangelical revivals was both a call to repentance and the offer of a new start. In the same way, this book invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step out into an uncertain future, first by letting go of the kind of cultural, politicized, status quo Christianity that led us to this moment of reckoning. Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what’s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.

Losing me, Finding Me is an adventure that will change you, your size, your health, and much more to the degree that you are willing to change habits. During this course, you will be recognizing habits you have and learning and deciding which habits to retain, which to let loose, and what new ones you’d like to include in your life. It is a three-month class to help you lose layers of excess fat as well as lists of shoulds and big concrete blocks of “I can’t.” Topics covered are nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress, emotions, mind, relationships, spirit, visioning, and mindfulness—all working together under your own guidance to create a balanced, integrated, and happy you.

“Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.” So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as “rage,” and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls “mad methodology.” Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.

Music games are relaxing and playful. They encourage creativity both in children's imagination and expression. All players need is a willingness to have fun and to experience the joys of interacting with others. The games include rhythm games, dance and movement games, card and board games, and musical projects. All of the games stress humor, challenge, surprise and cooperation rather than competition.