How safe is your marriage? The answer may surprise you. The biggest threat to any marriage isn’t infidelity or miscommunication. The greatest enemy is ordinary. Ordinary marriages lose hope. Ordinary marriages lack vision. Ordinary marriages give in to compromise. Ordinary is the belief that this is as good as it will ever get. And when we begin to settle for ordinary, it’s easy to move from “I do” to “I’m done.” Justin and Trisha Davis know just how dangerous ordinary can be. In this beautifully written book, Justin and Trisha take us inside the slow fade that occurred in their own marriage—each telling the story from their own perspective. Together, they reveal the mistakes they made, the work they avoided, the thoughts and feelings that led to an affair and near divorce, and finally, the heart-change that had to occur in both of them before they could experience the hope, healing, and restoration of a truly extraordinary marriage.

Taking an intricate look at vitality and health in congregations based on information gathered from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey, the authors conclude that congregations have ten strengths, and that by building upon these strengths, congregations can transform their futures.

“What a gripping story of a modern-day Nehemiah dramatically called to rebuild the broken people of Orlando, my hometown. . . . If you want to be inspired to do something beyond ordinary, this is the book for you!” —Pat Morley Author, Founder of Man in the Mirror “Pastor Scott George is somewhat of a hero in our community—a man who acted out of faith and loved out of compassion. This book will not only inspire you, it will make you want to help someone . . . even accomplish your own God-given dreams.” —Dr. Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor Northland, A Church Distributed “Scott’s vision has motivated many people in our community to help thousands of families obtain a better quality of life. I admire and appreciate his vision and insight.” —Mayor Buddy Dyer City of Orlando “Living Beyond Ordinary is the inspirational account of how an ordinary life, fueled by an extraordinary vision, can help to change a community one life at a time.” —Congressman Daniel Webster When you were young, did you dream of being ordinary—of living an average life? Of course not. You didn’t settle for ordinary or average then . . . refuse to do so now. You Were Born to Be Extraordinary In Living Beyond Ordinary: Discovering Authentic Significance and Purpose, leadership authority Scott George unpacks in inspiring detail the principles and practices of those who live beyond ordinary lives. Energized by a compelling combination of the enthralling story and vision behind Orlando’s Community Food and Outreach Center (CFOC), and heartwarming, inspiring, real-life accounts of those given a hand up through the center, these pages will embolden and equip you to live out your own dream. In Living Beyond Ordinary, discover the key habits, words, thoughts, attitudes, and actions of those who refuse to live ordinary lives, choosing instead to achieve a beyond ordinary destiny and leave behind a beyond ordinary legacy. Living Beyond Ordinary: Discovering Authentic Significance and Purpose will get you started on your journey to living a beyond ordinary life. [email protected] [email protected] www.livingbeyondordinary.org www.communityfoodoutreach.org Twitter: @RevJScottGeorge Facebook: J scott george Video: http://www.jscottgeorge.com

What exactly is happening on Planet Earth? What is the truth behind the various prophecies and predictions? For the first time, we now have a concise explanation carefully prepared and received by telepathic contactee Sal Rachele from a vast collective intelligence called the Founders. This book answers the who, what, where, when and even why of the Earth Changes, and includes information relating to biology, psychology, technology, metaphysics, religion, spirituality and even economics and politics. This is the most significant time in all of human history. For the first time, millions of us will have an opportunity to evolve beyond the limitations of material form into a new world of untold beauty and magnificence. The doorway into the next step of human evolution is right in front of us. The Founders are your guides into this amazing journey of soul evolution, ascension and freedom from limitation. They teach us that we are vast beings of infinite capacity and love, created in the image and likeness of our Creator. Welcome to the new world!

Dreams Beyond Time: On Sacred Encounter and Spiritual Transformation offers readers an overview of dreams research as applied to non-ordinary dreams. Lee Irwin describes four basic types of dreaming: normative, mythic, psychic, and transpersonal, and he illustrates each type with specific dream examples. These types of dreaming are then used as a lens to look more closely at additional dream types that indicate dreaming as a process of creative discovery. Through virtual dreaming encounters, latent human potentials are revealed and suggest aspects for spiritual development based on dream recording, interpretation, and analysis. In turn this leads to a metaphysical description that is pan-sentient, illustrating a vivid, living universe of process-becoming in which certain dream types reveal mythic, psychic, and transpersonal capacities as intrinsic to a deeper more awakened sense of intersubjective self-awareness. While dream theories from many diverse authors are explored, the author uses an existential and phenomenological method to analyze dreaming contents in relationship to altered states of mind, trance, out of body and near-death experience, meditation, imagination, and stages of lucid self-awareness. Transpersonal dreams are given considerable attention in relationship to mystical traditions, paranormal research, and the comparative anthropology of self.

Beyond the Breath is one of the first books to give a complete overview and description of sensation based vipassana meditation, the form of mediation thought of as the original method of meditation as used by the Buddha 2,500 years ago. This form of meditation, brought to the West by S.N. Geoneka, provides a means to experience emotions directly and nonverbally--accessing the mind through the body. One of the main principles of this school of meditation is that meditation alone is not sufficient practice, but that it must be combined with a whole-life and ethical commitment. M.Glickman's approach is unique--he takes a mediation practice deeply rooted within a historic Buddhist framework, and gives it a modern-day, scientific spin--he presents sensation based viapassana meditaiton and Buddhist principles in 20th-century language, secularizing ideas that may sound exotic, off-putting, or out-dated. Glickman's passion for the topic, as well as his great understanding of Buddhist concepts, make this an inspiring read.

Taking as its point of departure the complex question about whether Surrealist theatre exists, this book re-examines the much misunderstood artistic medium of theatre within Surrealism, especially when compared to poetry and painting. This study reconsiders Surrealist theatre specifically from the perspective of ludics-a poetics of play and games-an ideal approach to the Surrealists, whose games blur the boundaries between the 'playful' and the 'serious.' Vassiliki Rapti's aims are threefold: first, to demystify André Breton's controversial attitude toward theatre; second, to do justice to Surrealist theatre, by highlighting the unique character that derives from its inherent element of play; and finally, to trace the impact of Surrealist theatre in areas far beyond its generally acknowledged influence on the Theatre of the Absurd-an impact being felt even on the contemporary world stage. Beginning with the Surrealists' 'one-into-another' game and its illustration of Breton's ludic dramatic theory, Rapti then examines the traces of this kind of game in the works of a wide variety of Surrealist and Post-Surrealist playwrights and stage directors, from several different countries, and from the 1920s to the present: Roger Vitrac, Antonin Artaud, Günter Berghaus, Nanos Valaoritis, Robert Wilson, and Megan Terry.

The world is in an era of great transformations. Globalization, transnational capitalism, September 11, the 2008 global financial crises, and the emergence of the ’second world’ in general and the BRICS in particular are characterized by a diffusion of power away from the traditional North Western powers and towards the global South. Such great transformations have reshaped the terrain and parameters of social, economic and political relations both at the national and the global levels and have exerted pressure on the exiting international order in terms of both opportunities and constraints. This new era also urges the need for re-conceptualizing the changing world order especially with regard to one of the core conceptual categories and analytical apparatus in the studies of IR and IPE - hegemony. The world will witness a new era of interdependent hegemony, in which both the existing ’First World’ and the emerging ’Second World’ are intertwined in a constant process of shaping and reshaping the international order in the nexus of national interest, regional orientation, common economic and political agenda, political alliance and potential conflicts. This collection juxtaposes, from different perspectives and approaches, the discussion on the political economy of the emerging world order with a focus on the rising powers.

This work charts new territory in Islamic scholarship by attempting to address the field of public policy from a maqasid (higher objectives of the Shariah) perspective. Public Policy is an independent discipline from both law and politics. Thus, Public Policy in Islam is introduced here as a qualitatively different enterprise from both fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and siyasah shar’iyyah (Shariah-oriented politics). The book deals with a number of critical topics that include methodology, governance, human rights, ethics, political power, and reform and renewal. It highlights how the maqasid approach is indispensable to the theory and practice of public policy in Islam, how it could resolve some of the most persistent governance dilemmas throughout Muslim history, but more significantly, how it forces a re-conceptualisation of the wealth of knowledge available in Islam’s primary sources to introduce Public Policy in Islam to mainstream policy studies.

The essays in this volume, written by specialists working in the field of tantric studies, attempt to trace processes of transformation and transfer that occurred in the history of tantra from around the seventh century and up to the present. The volume gathers contributions on South Asia, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan, North America, and Western Europe by scholars from various academic disciplines, who present ongoing research and encourage discussion on significant themes in the growing field of tantric studies. In addition to the extensive geographical and temporal range, the chapters of the volume cover a wide thematic area, which includes modern Bengali tantric practitioners, tantric ritual in medieval China, the South Asian cults of the mother goddesses, the way of Buddhism into Mongolia, and countercultural echoes of contemporary tantric studies.