The topic of sexuality intersects directly with the most contested historical, theological, and ethical questions of our day. In this edgy yet profound volume, noted scholars and theologians assay the Christian tradition's classic and contemporary understandings of sex, sexuality, and sexual identity. The project unfolds in three phases: contemporary assessments of the Christian tradition, new thinking about eros and being human religiously, and new perspectives on classic mysteries in light of eros and embodiment.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time A book about romantic love, Eros the Bittersweet is Anne Carson's exploration of the concept of "eros" in both classical philosophy and literature. Beginning with, "It was Sappho who first called eros 'bittersweet.' No one who has been in love disputes her," Carson examines her subject from numerous points of view, creating a lyrical meditation in the tradition of William Carlos Williams's Spring and All and William H. Gass's On Being Blue. Epigrammatic, witty, ironic, and endlessly entertaining, Eros is an utterly original book.

Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.

Life without myth, the vital force of archetypal experiences, is life filled with maladies, neuroses, addictions, and disease. Alchemy of the Soul retells the myth of Eros and Psyche to help readers reconnect mind and relatedness to find wholeness and deep meaning. Author Martin Lowenthal describes how the story of Eros and Psyche illustrates the alchemical process of marrying soul and matter so that life can be lived with more joy, meaning, and a tangible sense of divine love. The book is divided into three parts: • Part 1 is a beautiful retelling of the myth of Eros and Psyche. • Part 2 examines the power of myth and alchemy and shows how spiritual alchemy can restore and transform the soul. • Part 3 is an initiation into the alchemical mysteries using myth as mentor. Lowenthal writes, "The story assails the defenses of our mind and our reactive habits and seeks to wrest a victory for life and growth from the inertia of daily habits and confusion. It initiates us into a world far more vibrant, rich, and nourishing than the one we knew in childhood and naively, yet regressively, settle for. In this sense, story reveals what happens as we attempt to spread our emotional wings in the developmentally confining domain of our childhood home and community and what it takes to make something significant of ourselves in ways that feed the future. As guests of the story, we discover the larger sacred garden in which we emerge as a unique and beautiful flower in a bed of exquisite blossoms, each one unique and essential." Alchemy of the Soul takes alchemy from the realm of the esoteric and places it in practical terms of story—terms that anyone can understand, value, and use as a guide to life.

This collection aims to examine the relationship between American fiction and innovations that marked the first decades of the 21st century: the Internet, social media, smart objects and environments, artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, transhumanism. These technological innovations redefine the way we live in and imagine our world, interact with each other and understand the human being in his or her ever closer relationship to the machine a human being no longer, as in the past, cared for or repaired, but now enhanced or replaced. What about our artistic and cultural practices? Are these recent advances changing language and literature? How is fiction transformed by technological progress and what representations of progress can it oppose? Can fiction offer a critique of the new media and the upheavals they precipitate? How does the temporality of literature respond to a technical time subjected to the imperative of efficiency, where the present is a slave to the future? Do virtual worlds challenge the primacy of literary fiction as a privileged mode of escape from daily life? In a context where software can generate literary works, can the force of poetical advent still oppose algorithmic logics? What becomes of the body in a world in which its technical extensions increase the externalization of its cognitive functions in media artifacts and digital networks? In order to explore these questions, scholars here investigate the American fiction of Russell Banks, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Tao Lin, Richard Powers, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jennifer Egan or Jonathan Franzen as well as the Cyberpunk genre and the Neuronovel.

Analyzes the feelings and problems involved in different types of human love, including familial affection, friendship, passion, and charity.

Julie, an eleven-year-old Irish Catholic, had no inkling that the mysterious yet undeniable bond formed in a fleeting encounter with a priest would later transform her life. This memoir, in part told through actual letters, is the inspiring story of how two souls, grounded in faith and destined to be together, escape violence to move confidently from darkness to light and from fear to love.