Coming Back to Life or Beyond Chutzpah

Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World

Author: Joanna R Macy

Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust.

Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. Coming Back to Life provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, Coming Back to Life is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects". The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mathew Fox
1. To Choose Life
2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart
3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature & Power
4. The Workthat Reconnects
5. Guiding Group Work
6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude
7. Despair Work: Owning & Honoring Our Pain for the World
8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes
9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past & Future Generations
10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World
11. Going Forth
12. Meditations for Coming Back to Life


Joanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement

What People Are Saying

Brian Swimme
The significance of this book is truly immense.

Table of Contents:

	Permissions
	Message from the Dalai Lama
	Foreword	1
	Preface	5
	Preface	9
1	To Choose Life	15
2	The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart	25
3	The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature and Power	39
4	The Work That Reconnects	57
5	Guiding Group Work	63
6	Affirmation: Coming From Gratitude	81
7	Despair Work: Owning And Honoring Our Pain For The World	91
8	The Shift: Seeing With New Eyes	113
9	Deep Time: Reconnecting With Past And Future Generations	135
10	The Council Of All Beings: Rejoining The Natural World	149
11	Going Forth	167
12	Meditations For Coming Back To Life	183
App. A	Chief Seattle's Message	197
App. B	The Bestiary	203
App. C	A Council of All Beings: The Site Speaks	207
	Reference Notes	211
	Resources	215

Interesting book: Six Sigma Distribution Modeling or How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Infopath 2003

Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History

Author: Norman Finkelstein

In this long-awaited sequel to his international bestseller The Holocaust Industry, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an iconoclastic interrogation of the new anti-Semitism to a meticulously researched exposé of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.
Finkelstein also scrutinizes the proliferation of distortion masquerading as history. Recalling Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial, published to great fanfare in 1984 but subsequently exposed as an academic hoax, he asks deeply troubling questions here about the periodic reappearance of spurious scholarship and the uncritical acclaim it receives. The most recent addition to this genre, Finkelstein argues, is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz's bestseller, The Case for Israel.
The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein argues that Dershowitz has misrepresented the facts.
Thoroughly researched and tightly argued, Beyond Chutzpah lifts the veil of controversyshrouding the Israel-Palestine conflict.