Winner of a 2016 Association of Catholic Publishers 2016 Excellence in Publishing Award: Inspirational Books (Second Place). Our Lady, Undoer of Knots: A Living Novena is a unique guided meditation from veteran Catholic journalist Marge Fenelon, who has created a new devotional practice from this classic novena that is a favorite of Pope Francis. Since the seventeenth century, Catholics facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles have turned to Our Lady, Undoer of Knots through a special novena--nine days of prayer for divine intervention. Catholic columnist Marge Fenelon resurrects this ancient tradition, also known as the Unfailing Novena, by reflecting on nine sacred sites associated with Pope Francis's 2014 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Reflecting on such holy places as Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, and the Temple Mount, Fenelon helps readers explore the "knots" or impossible situations in their own lives in order to find peace.

From his first appearance on a Vatican balcony Pope Francis proved himself a Pope of Surprises. With a series of potent gestures, history's first Jesuit pope declared a mission to restore authenticity and integrity to a Catholic Church bedevilled by sex abuse and secrecy, intrigue and in-fighting, ambition and arrogance. He declared it should be 'a poor Church, for the poor'. But there is a hidden past to this modest man with the winning smile. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was previously a bitterly divisive figure. His decade as leader of Argentina's Jesuits left the religious order deeply split. And his behaviour during Argentina's Dirty War, when military death squads snatched innocent people from the streets, raised serious questions – on which this book casts new light. Yet something dramatic then happened to Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He underwent an extraordinary transformation. After a time of exile he re-emerged having turned from a conservative authoritarian into a humble friend of the poor – and became Bishop of the Slums, making enemies among Argentina's political classes in the process. For Pope Francis – Untying the Knots, Paul Vallely travelled to Argentina and Rome to meet Bergoglio's intimates over the last four decades. His book charts a remarkable journey. It reveals what changed the man who was to become Pope Francis – from a reactionary into the revolutionary who is unnerving Rome's clerical careerists with the extent of his behind-the-scenes changes. In this perceptive portrait Paul Vallely offers both new evidence and penetrating insights into the kind of pope Francis could become.

Do you desire deeper freedom? Do you feel restricted by the knots of sin and shame that conceal the true beauty of your feminine heart? Through this collection of raw and redemptive testimonies from real Catholic women, punctuated with guided reflection and contemplative prayer, Carrie Schuchts Daunt of the John Paul II Healing Center offers you an encounter with truth and healing tailored to your specific identities as daughter, sister, bride and mother. Undone ushers you through a vulnerable search for truth through essential spiritual exercises, prayer guides, and reflection material. Sharing personal testimonies of illness, loss of faith, rejection, promiscuity, abortion, broken marriage, infertility, miscarriage, addiction, betrayal, bulimia, and depression, the fifteen women in Undone identify shame and fear as major barriers to their relationships. In their stories, they share how their shame was untangled and their identity restored. This chorus of bold women—including Lisa Brenninkmeyer, founder of Walking with Purpose; Jen Settle, managing director of the Theology of the Body Institute; Debra Herbeck, founder of Be Love Revolution; Judy Bailey, executive director of John Paul II Healing Center; and Jeannie Hannemann, founder and executive director of Elizabeth Ministry International—will encourage you to explore and undo the knots in your own life as well. Daunt shares the same prayer exercises and spiritual reflection material used at the John Paul II Healing Center’s Undone women’s conferences, including inner healing prayers spiritual exercises for identifying core wounds spiritual exercises for renouncing false belief systems reflection questions In Undone, readers find an essential guide to distinctly feminine healing that will leave them willingly and eagerly stripping away the bondage of sin and shame allowing them to become the women God calls them to be.

An acclaimed artist celebrates the creative possibilities of macramé and knots in this memoir and guide featuring projects and tutorials. Every day for a year, artist Windy Chien learned to tie a new kind of knot and then shared the results on Instagram—a project that both reinvented her life and revolutionized knot art. In The Year of Knots, Chien describes how knot-making led her on a path of discovery. She shares projects, tutorials, and transformative personal stories, all aimed at inspiring readers to make knotting—and creativity in general—part of a meditative daily practice. The knots in this book are gorgeously documented step-by-step. Knotted projects abound—from wall hangings to a necklace, a dog leash, a hanging light, and more. At the heart of the story is the simple, empowering idea that a single year is all the time you need to make a life-changing creative leap.

Knots are familiar objects. Yet the mathematical theory of knots quickly leads to deep results in topology and geometry. This work offers an introduction to this theory, starting with our understanding of knots. It presents the applications of knot theory to modern chemistry, biology and physics.

This book is about everyday life and not just boating, as the writer Miki Anagrius shows how a basic understanding of knots is a useful, fun and attractive tool that enables us to hang and carry items, store, organise and link various objects. This book also informs on the different types of rope, knots and string, how to stop bits of rope from fraying, and how to connect different lengths of rope and make practical loops.

Philadelphia's community muralism movement is transforming the City of Brotherly Love into the Mural Capital of the World. This remarkable groundswell of public art includes some 3,500 wall-sized canvases: On warehouses and on schools, on mosques and in jails, in courthouses and along overpasses. In If These Walls Could Talk, Maureen O'Connell explores the theological and social significance of the movement. She calls attention to some of the most startling and powerful works it has produced and describes the narratives behind them. In doing so, O'Connell illustrates the ways that the arts can help us think about and work through the seemingly inescapable problems of urban poverty and arrive at responses that are both creative and effective. This is a book on American religion. It incorporates ethnography to explore faith communities that have used larger-than-life religious imagery to proclaim in unprecedented public ways their self-understandings, memories of the past, and visions of the future. It also examines the way this art functions in larger public discourse about problems facing every city in America. But If These Walls Could Talk is also theological text. It considers the theological implications of this most democratic expression of public art, mindful of the three components of every mural: the pieces themselves, those who create them, and those who interpret them. It illuminates a kind of beauty that seeks after social change or, in other words, the largely unexplored relationship between theological aesthetics and ethics.

From camping to rock climbing, your safety depends on choosing and tying knots correctly. With this handy guide, you can tackle every task from DIY to tying fishing or sailing lines with complete confidence. Knots Step by Step presents the 100 most useful knots for sailing, fishing, camping, climbing, and decorative uses. It explains how to tie highwayman hitches, monkey fists, bowlines, and many other key knots. Its clear uncluttered images show you exactly what to do, taking you from the easiest overhand knot to the decorative Turk's head five-lead four-bight knot. This indispensable book identifies the knot you need. Are you climbing and depend on a failsafe knot? The figure-of-eight's distinctive shape makes it easy to check it has been tied correctly. A slipped-release is useful when you need to untie your knot quickly. And if you ever want to know if a knot has been untied, try the quirky "thief" knot - so-called because a thief will betray their presence by retying it incorrectly. You'll also learn the history behind the different types of knots and the fascinating stories behind how many of them came about. Knots Step by Step comes with a practice rope attached to the book, so you can practice the knots as many times as you want until you are completely confident. Without doubt, this is the ideal book to have to hand for whenever a knot is needed.

Explains the uses of various knots for aboricultural work and demonstrates how they are tied.

A personal and historical examination of white Catholic anti-Blackness in the US told through 5 generations of one family, and a call for meaningful racial healing and justice within Catholicism Excavating her Catholic family’s entanglements with race and racism from the time they immigrated to America to the present, Maureen O’Connell traces, by implication, how the larger Catholic population became white and why, despite the tenets of their faith, so many white Catholics have lukewarm commitments to racial justice. O’Connell was raised by devoutly Catholic parents with a clear moral and civic guiding principle: those to whom much is given, much is expected. She became a theologian steeped in social ethics, engaged in critical race theory, and trained in the fundamentals of anti-racism. And still she found herself failing to see how her well-meaning actions affected the Black members of her congregations. It seemed that whenever she tried to undo the knots of racism, she only ended up getting more tangled in them. Undoing the Knots weaves together narrative history, theology, and critical race theory to begin undoing these knots: to move away from doing good and giving back and toward dismantling the white Catholic identity and the economic and social structures it has erected and maintained.