How God Moved My Ashtray

Up until his mid-40's, John, "Little John" Paladino's life was spent stealing, robbing, cheating and pursuing illegal activity. A notorious and feared enforcer for the mafia, John prided himself on inflicting others with terror and ensuring devastation. Having been in and out of prison and other correctional facilities most of his life, his peace was void and pain plagued and pierced everything and everyone around him. In between prison bids, John was also involved in several near-fatal accidents, including one which killed his own friend. There was no explanation to John's continued survival other than the beginning of his recognition, that God just wasn't done with him yet. It was on Memorial Day 2011, that his life changed radically after a foolish challenge to God, just the night before. This is the story of how God moved John Paladino's "ashtray," a feat no man could do for himself, and the subsequent steps John took to walk out a new life, redeemed, as a new man.

Overview coming soon

The "Red Zone." The last 20 yards from the opponent's goal line. It's difficult to score there because the defending team can concentrate its efforts. Likewise, the offensive team has less area in which to maneuver. It takes the focused and precise execution of all players doing their assigned tasks to advance the ball in the Red Zone and score. In business and in every other area of life, we encounter many Red Zones-situations where the pressure is on and our "wiggle room" is limited. It's there where we have to draw on preparation, experience, and strength of character if we hope to reach our objective. We need a solid game plan -- and that's exactly what Scoring in the Red Zone provides. Through personal anecdotes, illustrations from sports, and timeless wisdom, Spencer Tillman challenges you and your team to win when the pressure is on.

Her alter ego was wounded by uncertainties of life that held her captive. Plagued by hurts unseen by others, struggles and tears unnoticed as her faith was being tested. She would pivot into a journey through a path that would lead her to her destination while seeking freedom. Take a glimpse into the future of a woman and her alter ego (Ave), who carries her passion in a purple box. It’s a riveting true story of a family of six living the Psalm 23, walking through the valley of the shadows of death, yet seeking life. Ave and Eva side by side takes a journey through a path that leads to their passion. Come experience My Journey, My Path, My Passion as you become compelled, enlightened, intrigued, and inspired!

A book on addiction and the recovery process

Life is a journey. Some good moments and some not so good moments. This book comes to bring comfort in showing us that we are not traveling alone. We have the inaudible voice of God navigating our lives daily and His invisible hands providing for our daily needs. This book will help you detect when God is speaking and the unlimited ways God speaks to you. You will begin to confidently recognize the invisible hands of God blessing and moving mountains on your behalf. This eye opening journey will guide and empower everyone and bring encouragement to the hearts of caregivers everywhere.

One of the enduring claims in the Christian tradition is that creation is good. Given the diversity of experience and the abundance of suffering in the world, however, such an affirmation is not always straightforward. The Play of Goodness provides a phenomenology of creation’s goodness that clarifies the ongoing relevance of the doctrine today. It argues that what is “good” about creation is not synonymous with a confession of faith and does not require an overly optimistic disposition, but instead appears within diverse and often surprising circumstances. Alongside original contributions to French phenomenology and creation theology, The Play of Goodness counterbalances a tendency in continental philosophy to focus on negative phenomena. By developing the philosophical concept of a prelinguistic experience of goodness, the book identifies a quality of goodness that is integral to the place in which we find ourselves. It also articulates shared points of contact among people in an increasingly polarized world, while demonstrating that distinctly theological concepts do not need to be presented in opposition to secular, agnostic, or atheist perspectives in order to be relevant. Benjamins develops an account of creation’s goodness that has the potential to animate an abiding affection for one’s place, accentuate our reasons to care for it, and confirm that what happens in our lives is of genuine significance.

Fr. Robert Griffin, C.S.C. (1925–1999), was a beloved member of the Notre Dame community. With his cocker spaniel, Darby O’Gill, he was instantly recognizable on campus. He was well known for his priestly work counseling students as university chaplain for thirty years, his summer ministry to the homeless and parishioners in New York City, and his weekly columns in the student newspaper, The Observer, in which he invited the campus community to reflect with him on the challenges and joys of being Catholic in a time of enormous social and religious change. This collection draws together essays that Griffin wrote for Notre Dame Magazine between 1972 and 1994. In them, he considers many of the challenges that beset church and campus, such as the laicization of priests, premarital sex, the erosion of institutional authority, intolerance toward gay people, and failure of fidelity to the teachings of the church. Griffin also ruminates on the distress that human beings experience in the ordinariness of their lives—the difficulty of communication in families, grief over the loss of family and friends, the agonies of isolation, and the need for forgiveness. Griffin’s shrewd insights still ring true for people today. His efforts to temper the winds of institutional rules, cultural change, and personal suffering reveal a mind keenly attuned to the need for understanding human limitations and to the presence of grace in times of change. Griffin quotes from the works of literary modernists, such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, whose novels and short stories he loved; in these allusions and in his own reflections and experiences, Griffin bridges the spiritual and the secular and offers hope for reconciliation and comfort.

A former African American minister reveals his unusual journey from faith to atheism. Anthony Pinn preached his first sermon at age twelve. At eighteen he became one of the youngest ordained ministers in his denomination. He then quickly moved up the ministerial ranks. Eventually he graduated from Columbia University and then received a Master of Divinity in theology and a PhD in religion from Harvard University. All the while, Pinn was wrestling with a growing skepticism. As his intellectual horizons expanded, he became less and less confident in the theism of his upbringing. At the same time, he became aware that his church could offer only anemic responses to the acute social needs of the community. In his mid-twenties, he finally decided to leave the ministry and committed the rest of his life to academia. He went on to become a distinguished scholar of African American humanism and religious history. The once fully committed believer evolved into an equally committed nonbeliever convinced that a secular approach to life offers the best hope of solving humanity’s problems.

Jesus Christ is not a human man, Jesus Christ is a deity. He can transform himself into anything. Jesus Christ and his angels can make human beings experience ectoplasm and can possess you in broad daylight and at night. Any spirit or deity that can shift-shape himself into anything like a fog, smoke, fire, clouds, insects, people or animals is considered not human, suspicious, unknown, scary, sneaky, secretive, and evil.