Rohr's meditations on the daily readings of Lent are not for the sake of mere information, or even for academia (although the author hopes it will satisfy both), but for the sake of our transformation into our original "image and likeness," which is the very image of God. What always and finally matters for all of us is encounter! Father Rohr begins each meditation with a single title or phrase that sums up the point. Then he offers the meditation followed by key passages from the readings. He ends each meditation with a Starter Prayer that invites you to self-disclosure and to enter the wondrous divine dialogue with clarity, insight—and holy desire! "There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless and empty. You need both of them to keep you going in the right direction. Lent is about both. The first such moment gives you energy and joy by connecting you with your ultimate Source and Ground. The second gives you limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, so you keep seeking the Source and Ground and not just your small self."—From the Introduction

The extraterrestrials have arrived! Wondrous contains 25 all new original cases of people who have had extensive UFO encounters. Published here for the first time, these true firsthand accounts cover the gamut of the UFO phenomenon: sightings, USOs, landings, face-to-face meetings with ETs, onboard UFO encounters, and whistleblower stories revealing shocking secrets the government doesn't want you to know. Longtime UFO researcher Preston Dennett takes you on a fascinating journey deep into the heart of the unknown. These 25 startling and wondrous UFO encounters will change the way you view UFOs and these strange visitors to our planet. --A schoolteacher encounters a 15-foot-tall mantis alien during a morning jog outside her home. --A young couple expecting their first child discover that extraterrestrials have taken their baby. --A dental assistant awakens to find bug-like aliens surrounding her bed. --When weird alien symbols appear on her body, a therapist begins a journey that leads her to a shocking discovery. --Silver-suited ETs appear in the bedroom of an office-worker, and her life will never be the same. --A series of bizarre events culminate in an incredible healing encounter. --A young artist is visited by short blue humanoids intent on recording all her memories. --After being visited by grays, a couple learn that they both have a history of encounters reaching back to childhood. --A business man encounters a humanoid in his hotel room, sparking memories of other unexplained events in his life. --A woman's encounter with friendly grays leads to a spiritual awakening and dire warnings for all humankind. --A young child is greeted by a UFO with a telepathic message meant only for her. --A married couple flying in a commercial jet are shocked to see a silver disc flying right outside their window. --Three teen-agers are accosted by a UFO, which sends down a beam of light, trying to abduct them. --A family discover they are living in a UFO hotspot and are amazed to see a giant saucer land in their front yard. --A group of teenagers come upon a landed saucer and humanoids who are not happy to see them. --Three people see a UFO rises from the ocean and hover over the factory smokestacks near their home. --A construction worker takes an assignment at Edwards AFB where he makes the mistake of looking into a secret hangar and views something he was not supposed to see. --A military officer is invited into the inner sanctum of the government UFO cover-up, and learns secrets that shake him to the core of his being. --A man working at Malmstrom AFB in South Dakota becomes embroiled in one of the most famous encounters in UFO history. --A young boy starts having nightmares of being chased by a giant grasshopper, leading him to the realization that he might be a UFO abductee. --Two brothers encounter a UFO in a public place, then one of the brothers is approached on the street by someone who is clearly not human. --A trip to the beach with a group of friends leads to a terrifying encounter with ten-foot-tall strange humanoids. --The life of a conservative religious man is turned upside down when grays appear in his home and take him and his infant son onboard a UFO. --A mother and her teen-age son are baffled to see that his dental x-rays show what appears to be an implant in his jaw, but how did it get there? --A writer with a history of alien encounters finds herself having a telepathic conversation with a gray alien named Sen, who has something important to tell her. Why are ETs here? Are they hostile or benevolent? What is their agenda on this planet? These 25 incredible accounts represent the cutting edge of UFO research and answer many of the mysteries surrounding the UFO phenomenon.

Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

A masterwork of history and cultural studies, Marvelous Possessions is a brilliant meditation on the interconnected ways in which Europeans of the Age of Discovery represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, particularly in the New World. In a series of innovative readings of travel narratives, judicial documents, and official reports, Stephen Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was manipulated by Columbus and others in the service of colonial appropriation. Much more than simply a collection of the odd and exotic, Marvelous Possessions is both a highly original extension of Greenblatt’s thinking on a subject that has permeated his career and a thrilling tale of wandering, kidnapping, and go-betweens—of daring improvisation, betrayal, and violence. Reaching back to the ancient Greeks, forward to the present, and, in his new preface, even to fantastical meetings between humans and aliens in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greenblatt would have us ask: How is it possible, in a time of disorientation, hatred of the other, and possessiveness, to keep the capacity for wonder—for tolerant recognition of cultural difference—from being poisoned?

Overcome with mental anguish, Monica A. Coleman's great-grandfather had his two young sons pull the chair out from beneath him when he hanged himself. That noose remained tied to a rafter in the shed, where it hung above the heads of his eight children who played there for years to come. As it had for generations before her, a heaviness hung over Monica throughout her young life. As an adult, this rising star in the academy saw career successes often fueled by the modulated highs of undiagnosed Bipolar II Disorder, as she hid deep depression that even her doctors skimmed past in disbelief. Serendipitous encounters with Black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Angela Davis, and Renita Weems were countered by long nights of stark loneliness. Only as Coleman began to face her illness was she able to live honestly and faithfully in the world. And in the process, she discovered a new and liberating vision of God. Written in crackling prose, Monica's spiritual autobiography examines her long dance with trauma, depression, and the threat of death in light of the legacies of slavery, war, sharecropping, poverty, and alcoholism that masked her family history of mental illness for generations.

"Glasses" by Henry James An anonymous narrator visits Folkestone and sees a young woman with an astonishingly beautiful face. From a friend, the widowed Mrs. Meldrum who has to wear disfiguring glasses, he learns that she is Flora Saunt, an orphan. She has an admirer in Lord Iffield, heir to a country estate but not very bright. Another admirer, also well off, is Geoffrey Dawling, who is intelligent and sympathetic but not good-looking. Flora is about to make a society marriage. That is, until her fiancé discovers that, being virtually blind, she needs thick glasses which ruin her looks.