African societies are gifted with a rich creativity, often expressed in intimate corporeal terms. For the Yaka people of southwestern Congo, such manifestations can have individual, social, or even cosmic significance. The Law of the Lifegivers investigates the importance among the Yaka of body and space in their daily life, exercise of power, and initiatic traditions. Through this analysis, Devisch and Brodeur show that body, desire, and symbol are intertwined, so that bodily expression can act as sensuous and powerful symbol. The domestication of passion and the institutionalizing of a subject are all expressed in bodily terms, particularly during initiations; the ethical order of law rests on many bodily symbols, including the importance of maternal and paternal lifegivers. The authors vividly describe the different life-giving or life-threatening roles which function in this society, such as sorcerer, diviner, therapist, and chief, as well as the funeral drama which shapes the passage to the afterlife with the ancestors, as experienced by the dying subject and his community. Through their dialogue and correspondence, Devisch and Brodeur (an anthropologist and a psychoanalyst, respectively) bring together two, sometimes conflicting, intellectual approaches. They aim to unravel a truth which is freed, as much as possible, from the presumption that only the West possesses the knowledge of objective discourse and science. Through the interaction, the authors reveal the semantic threads, located at the very heart of the most vital, life-giving processes, which weave the fabric of the practice and thought of a riveting, passionate Africa.

Why are we here? What is our place in the universe? What is the purpose of life? The questions have been asked for centuries. But they all revolve around what is perhaps the most fundamental question of all: Does God exist? -- Inside this booklet: -- Asking the Crucial Questions -- Evidence All Around Us -- The Beginning of the Universe -- Our Awesome Universe: How Big is Big? -- Science and Discomfiting Discoveries -- Our Amazing Spaceship Earth -- The Importance of Life-Sustaining Water -- The Giver of Life -- The Tiny Miracle That's Toppling Evolution -- A Deeper Look at the Evidence -- Scientists' Thundering Silence -- Life's Purpose and the Consequences of Ideas -- Groping for Meaning and Morality -- Why Were You Born? -- Man's Natural Hostility Toward God -- Meet God -- How Does God Reveal Himself? -- A God Not Bound by Space and Time -- Our Window of Opportunity

With a scholar's mind and a pastor's heart, N. T. Wright guides you through James to help you understand what it means to have the kind of faith that translates belief into action. That kind of faith, he explains, is the faith that matters, the faith that justifies, the faith that saves. Includes nine sessions for group or personal study.