In the Bible the desert is a place of punishment and discipline, but also of blessing and love's reawakening. Both Jesus and the people of Israel before him spent time in the desert, learning what it meant to be chosen and loved and holy. Yet while the people of the Exodus frequently got it wrong, providing some cautionary tales for us to learn from, Jesus himself constantly got it right, offering a perfect model for us to follow. In The Way of the Desert Andrew Watson takes us on a Lenten journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day, from the parting of the Red Sea to Israel's entry into the promised land. Combining these Old Testament scriptures with insight from the Gospels, he reveals the continuing relevance of the exodus story to all who would seek to follow Christ. The author writes: 'It became the must-have accessory among Christian young people in the 1990s: a rubber wristband cryptically inscribed with the letters WWJD. A hundred years earlier, Charles Sheldon, American pastor and Christian Socialist, had written a book entitled What Would Jesus Do? and the initials on the wristbands picked up just the same question. Whatever situations we face in life - whatever decisions we are called upon to make - the issue of WWJD is vital for the Christian disciple. Jesus' call, after all, is to "follow me."' 'As a church leader at the time when WWJD wristbands were selling by the truckload, I was therefore positive about this simple summons to Christian thinking and discipleship. My only reservation was that WWJD seemed to beg a prior question, and one on which our young people appeared increasingly hazy, namely "What Did Jesus Do?" Short of marketing my own range of WDJD wristbands there were limited means to get my message across, though I mentioned it in the odd sermon at the time. But the danger of asking speculative questions about Jesus without rooting them clearly in the Jesus of the Gospels is a real one. How easy to construct a Jesus of my own making, a pocket Jesus (or idol, to use the Bible's own term), who conveniently seems to share my views on politics, religion, money and relationships, without making me feel uncomfortable or challenged at all!' 'As we approach Lent, the question "What did Jesus do?" yields some interesting answers, for the 40 days of Lent reflect the period that Jesus spent in the wilderness following his baptism and before the start of his public ministry. It's a period briefly mentioned by the Gospel writer Mark (1:12 - 13) and described in greater detail by fellow evangelists Matthew (4:1 - 11) and Luke (4:1 - 13). So what did Jesus do in what we could call the first Lent?'

Discover how negative experiences such as loneliness, depression, and anxiety can be opportunities for personal growth!Ways of the Desert: Becoming Holy Through Difficult Times analyzes the similarities and differences between spiritual and psychological experiences. This book shows religious professionals and others interested in spiritual development how suffering can foster growth. You will explore the so-called “negative” desert experiences--depression, anxiety, loneliness, guilt, and anger--and learn how they can be opportunities for spiritual growth. This book explains why opposites are necessary and related parts of healthy and holy development, and that, especially in a spiritual life, the positive and negative are related. Ways of the Desert will take you on a journey through the “deserts” and “promised lands” of adolescence, adulthood, and the elderly years. In most Western cultures the acceptance of opposites as a necessary and related part of healthy and holy growth is not common, and its rejection can engender spiritual stagnation. Ways of the Desert offers suggestions on creating lifelong spirituality including: understanding the need for both “clock” time for functional order and “sacred” time to redeem us from the boredom of our daily challenges understanding the languages of the desert, or the messages that are primarily nonverbal, ambiguous, or ambivalent using effective communication when expressing feelings such as shame, frustration, anger, or anguish examining the similarities and differences between psychological and spiritual activity comparing psychological twelve-step help programs to spiritual growth journeysThis extraordinary book works to help you make sense of your life when you feel lost, trapped, depressed, or lonely. You will attain spiritual guidance to assist you on your journey through life and help you understand that the deserts of negative experiences that we sometimes wander into can be illuminating opportunities for spiritual progress. Ways of the Desert will guide you through difficult and challenging times and help you achieve spiritual satisfaction and happiness in life.

The Ways of the Desert, translated from the French, offers an introduction to the North African Arab nomads—their way of life, customs, dress, and religion. The companion to this volume, The Horses of the Sahara, provides a detailed description and history of the great breeds of Arab horses. While part of this book is devoted to descriptions of the various animals that are both hunted and used for hunting, its appeal goes well beyond its attraction for those with a special interest in the lore of desert hunt and chase. General Daumas and his major collaborator-informant, the Emir Abd-el-Kader, together provide sensitive insights into the total culture of the North African desert people of the nineteenth century. Both spiritual and material aspects of desert life are encompassed in this work, which ranges from translations of Arab poetry to descriptions of the uses of the fat and remains of the ostrich. The patterns of conviction and conduct described form an important part of the rich cultural heritage of the modern Maghreb nations. The way of life described in this book is often presented from what comes very close to being an inside point of view. Occasionally Daumas feels obliged to disapprove of certain practices or beliefs or to criticize his Arab friends, but in large part his underlying sympathy for the Arab people permits his informants to speak clearly through his pen. General Melchior Joseph Eugene Daumas took part in the conquest of Algeria by France and, for his distinguished service, was named Director of the Bureau of Algerian Affairs in the French Ministry of War. During the campaigns and the occupation that followed, he studied and attempted to understand the native peoples with an objectivity and sympathy unusual among the colonialists of the period. He recorded a way of life that has changed much since the nineteenth century, and much of what he recorded has since been lost. His account, as well as being an important source for the historian and ethnographer, provides for the general reader a fascinating record of the vanishing ways of the desert.

Aidan explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity, and the desert in literature ranging from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo; from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.

Naturalist Craig Childs's "utterly memorable and fantastic" study of the desert's dangerous beauty is based on years of adventures in the deserts of the American West (Washington Post). Like the highest mountain peaks, deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to the most seasoned explorers. Craig Childs, who has spent years in the deserts of the American West as an adventurer, a river guide, and a field instructor in natural history, has developed a keen appreciation for these forbidding landscapes: their beauty, their wonder, and especially their paradoxes. His extraordinary treks through arid lands in search of water are an astonishing revelation of the natural world at its most extreme. "Utterly memorable and fantastic...Certainly no reader will ever see the desert in the same way again." —Suzannah Lessard, Washington Post

In this refreshing collection, one of our best writers on desert places, Gary Paul Nabhan, challenges traditional notions of the desert. Beautiful, reflective, and at times humorous, Nabhan’s extended essay also called “The Nature of Desert Nature” reveals the complexity of what a desert is and can be. He passionately writes about what it is like to visit a desert and what living in a desert looks like when viewed through a new frame, turning age-old notions of the desert on their heads. Nabhan invites a prism of voices—friends, colleagues, and advisors from his more than four decades of study of deserts—to bring their own perspectives. Scientists, artists, desert contemplatives, poets, and writers bring the desert into view and investigate why these places compel us to walk through their sands and beneath their cacti and acacia. We observe the spines and spears, stings and songs of the desert anew. Unexpected. Surprising. Enchanting. Like the desert itself, each essay offers renewed vocabulary and thoughtful perceptions. The desert inspires wonder. Attending to history, culture, science, and spirit, The Nature of Desert Nature celebrates the bounty and the significance of desert places. Contributors Thomas M. Antonio Homero Aridjis James Aronson Tessa Bielecki Alberto Búrquez Montijo Francisco Cantú Douglas Christie Paul Dayton Alison Hawthorne Deming Father David Denny Exequiel Ezcurra Thomas Lowe Fleischner Jack Loeffler Ellen McMahon Rubén Martínez Curt Meine Alberto Mellado Moreno Paul Mirocha Gary Paul Nabhan Ray Perotti Larry Stevens Stephen Trimble Octaviana V. Trujillo Benjamin T. Wilder Andy Wilkinson Ofelia Zepeda

Layering climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, this New York Times Notable Book presents a stunning reckoning with our current moment and with the literal and figurative end of time. Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. As inhabitants of the Anthropocene, what might some of our own histories tell us about how to confront apocalypse? And how might the geologies and ecologies of desert spaces inform how we see and act toward time—the pasts we have erased and paved over, this anxious present, the future we have no choice but to build? Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask how we might reckon with the uncertainty that surrounds us and fight off the crises that have already begun. In the canyons and oases of the Mojave and in Las Vegas’s neon apocalypse, Ehrenreich finds beauty, and even hope, surging up in the most unlikely places, from the most barren rocks, and the apparent emptiness of the sky. Desert Notebooks is a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present—unflinching, urgent—yet timeless and profound.

A digital solution for your classroom with features created with teachers and students in mind: * Perpetual license * 24 hour, 7 days a week access * No limit to the number of students accessing one title at a time * Provides a School to Home connection wherever internet is available * Easy to use * Ability to turn audio on and off * Words highlighted to match audio

"A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.

• DUNE: PART TWO • THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE COMING NOVEMBER 3rd, 2023 Directed by Denis Villeneuve, screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert • Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Léa Seydoux, with Stellan Skarsgård, with Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides−who would become known as Maud'Dib—and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.