Keisha has a dream about changing the vacant lots where she lives into beautiful flower and vegetable gardens, and donating the money from the proceeds to help recent tornado victims in Oklahoma.

When God created man, He did so with the intention that man would live in perfect harmony with his Creator and with the rest of natural creation; however, mans disobedience fractured the relationship and opened the door for pain, heartache, disaster, and even death to enter the world. Gods original intention has not changedHe still desires that His children enjoy the fullness of all He has to offer. The Garden and the Ghetto is a collection of stories that illustrate the continued effects of obedience and disobedience, as well as essays that teach us how to return to a garden existence with the One who made us. Just as disobedience pushed mankind out of the perfect environment Father created for him, obedience is the key to once again living in a spiritual place where the abundance of His blessings are real every day. The stories are based on the lives of men and women with whom we have shared victories and defeats at City of Refuge through the years. Some have decided to live in a pattern of long obedience and continue to thrive. Some are still in the process of deciding which way to go, and others chose their own way. The results of the decisions made by Russell, Roxy, Shawn, Vanessa, Harold, Greg, and Dennis are representative of all of humanity. Some choose to rely on the words and pictures of God; others choose to believe they can make their own way. The results speak for themselves

A history of wartime gardens documents how they humanize landscapes and experience, even under the direst conditions

Humans have long turned to gardens - both real and imaginary - for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their very conception and the marks they bear of human care and cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary havens. With Gardens, Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients, explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt - all come into play as this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and power. Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, Gardens is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's earlier classics, Forests and The Dominion of the Dead. Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the nature of that responsibility - and its enduring importance to humanity.

When God created man, He did so with the intention that man would live in perfect harmony with his Creator and with the rest of natural creation; however, man’s disobedience fractured the relationship and opened the door for pain, heartache, disaster, and even death to enter the world. God’s original intention has not changed—He still desires that His children enjoy the fullness of all He has to offer. The Garden and the Ghetto is a collection of stories that illustrate the continued effects of obedience and disobedience, as well as essays that teach us how to return to a garden existence with the One who made us. Just as disobedience pushed mankind out of the perfect environment Father created for him, obedience is the key to once again living in a spiritual place where the abundance of His blessings are real every day. The stories are based on the lives of men and women with whom we have shared victories and defeats at City of Refuge through the years. Some have decided to live in a pattern of “long obedience” and continue to thrive. Some are still in the process of deciding which way to go, and others chose their own way. The results of the decisions made by Russell, Roxy, Shawn, Vanessa, Harold, Greg, and Dennis are representative of all of humanity. Some choose to rely on the words and pictures of God; others choose to believe they can make their own way. The results speak for themselves