Religious Refugees

Questioning our faith and spiritual beliefs, while leaving the familiarity of our religious homeland, can be excruciatingly painful. Loneliness, isolation, and fear of rejection - from God and others - can give rise to shame, guilt, anger, and sadness. In Religious Refugees, therapist and ordained pastor Mark Karris explores this disorienting faith shift through the lens of cutting-edge psychological research, theology, philosophy, and, most importantly, the real world experiences of those who are going through - and have gone through - this arduous and confusing journey.

How do you cope when facing life-threatening illness, family conflict, faltering relationships, old trauma, obsessive thinking, overwhelming emotion, or inevitable loss? If you're like most people, chances are you react with fear and confusion, falling back on timeworn strategies: anger, self-judgment, and addictive behaviors. Though these old, conditioned attempts to control our life may offer fleeting relief, ultimately they leave us feeling isolated and mired in pain. There is another way.

A place of refuge… or life-changing secrets? When Pastor Charles returns to Bayou Refuge, he expects peace and familiarity. Instead, he finds a strange fog that won’t lift from the grounds, long-time friends avoiding his questions, and a mystery that refuses to stay buried. What if your next conversation was your last? As Charles reconnects with old friends, and is tasked with sharing about the power of God’s love with three individuals, he begins to uncover the startling mystery of what’s actually happening at Bayou Refuge. He must rely on his faith in Christ, draw strength from ...

This Very Short Introduction covers a broad range of issues around the causes and impact of the contemporary refugee crisis for both receiving states and societies, for global order, and for refugees and other forced migrants themselves. Gil Loescher discusses the identity of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons and how they differ from other forced migrants. He also investigates the long history of the refugee phenomenon and how refugees became a central concern of the international community during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Whether dethroned royalty, delusional, or something else—she’s knock-out gorgeous. And I'm way out of my depth. Swapping combat boots for cowboy boots, I'm limping through life at Southern Refuge. Then Ellie storms in—a mix of innocence and arrogance. An icy diva dressed for dumpster diving, barking orders like I'm her servant. Was she stunning? Oh, yeah. And the chemistry? Instant combustion. She lit a fire I thought long dead. I vow to keep my distance to avoid the inevitable heartbreak. But when her mask slips, revealing a wounded heart, I'm smitten. Then Ellie’s secret explodes....

To keep the people she loves safe, Sara left everything she knew behind. She soon learns this new world is nothing like her old one, and she struggles to make a place for herself among the Mohiri. But it soon becomes apparent to Sara and to everyone one around her that she is not your typical warrior. As the weeks pass, Sara builds new relationships, copes with her new trainers, and tries to manage her ever-changing powers while keeping her unique heritage a secret.

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

In 1987, Nathaniel Nyok, tormented by thoughts of missing parents and siblings, fled a bloody scene and a burning village in Sudan. At eight, he had just capitulated to an orphan-like life with a new title, A Lost Boy of Sudan, living in a refugee camp for 14 years. As he battled the loss of home and family, he chose education over revenge as the road to freedom, a road that eventually brought him to America, land of freedom and rules, welcomes and prejudices. This story portrays his transition to American culture as a time of both confusion and hope.

Early one morning in 1929, Mary Seneca Steele spontaneously packs a suitcase, gathers up her son and daughter, and drives away in her abusive and dissolute husband’s brand-new Auburn Phaeton automobile, leaving her privileged life in Charleston behind. It is the beginning of a journey of enlightenment that leads Mary “Sen” to the mountains and mysteries of Appalachia, where she will learn unexpected family secrets, create a new life for herself and her children, and finally experience love and happiness before tragedy will once again test her.

Refuge seeks to restore moral purpose and clarity to refugee policy. Rather than assuming indefinite dependency, Collier - author of The Bottom Billion - and his Oxford colleague Betts propose a humanitarian approach integrated with a new economic agenda that begins with jobs, restores autonomy, and rebuilds people's ability to help themselves and their societies.

With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will.

Ever since she was a child, Audrey wanted her life to be extraordinary. But as the daughter of a viscount born in late 14th-century England, the only thing expected of her was to marry - until an act of malice by her sister, Maris, four years ago damaged her face and her prospects. Though Maris was sent away, 20-year-old Audrey is still suffering the scars of her sister’s cruelty. When her father announces his plans to marry off his damaged daughter and bring Maris home, Audrey decides to flee in search of her true destiny.

There were days when he just wanted to sit by a lake and hear the quiet…maybe have a stiff drink. This was one of those days.Jonas Brownstein learned early in life that some bonds are forged quickly…and never to be broken. He learned as well that other relationships were unable to withstand the slightest test against its fragile endurance. In taking his new job at the request of a long-time friend and trusted mentor, he knows that both lessons will be valuable as he steps into the role thtat he has been asked to fill. He believes in second chances and that everyone deserves them. He ...

Abandoned by each of her children’s fathers, Shelley Tremayne’s having a tough time raising six kids alone. When she sees a TV newscast about five boys committing a horrible crime and recognizes her eleven-year-old son Joey in the surveillance camera footage, her life becomes infinitely worse. Although Joey swears he only witnessed the incident, the other boys point to him as the instigator, a charge supported by the evidence. But Shelley simply can’t accept that her Joey could be responsible for such a heinous act.

In the early 1850s, White American abolitionist Benjamin Drew was commissioned to travel to Canada West (now Ontario) to interview escaped slaves from the United States. At the time the population of Canada West was just short of a million and about 30,000 Black people lived in the colony, most of whom were escaped slaves from south of the border.

In this “jewel of a novel” (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under their wing.

Mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism. Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian-American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian-American Buddhists' own voices.

"I saw many killed. I almost starved. But I escaped to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually made it to the U.S." Thus begins Leth Oun's poignant and vivid memoir. A survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields—having spent a torturous three years, eight months, and ten days imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge—Oun thrived in America, learning English, becoming a citizen, and working as an officer in the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. In A Refugee's American Dream, Oun shares hard memories of Cambodia, where his father was executed, and his family enslaved in labor camps.

The small town of Refuge is the perfect hideaway for Patrick Lahm and the Freys. Miles away from the Kurtain Motel, Refuge promises both tranquility and ease of mind. The mundane routine of working in the local post office and buying groceries is all Patrick could hope for. For the first time in his life, things are finally looking up. But one can only escape from his sins for so long. Occasional nightmares, visions of the dead, and a priest hell-bound on confessions leave the survivors feeling that it is only a matter of time before the darkness catches up.

Days have turned into weeks with no contact from anyone outside of North America, where the power, communication, and transportation grid has been completely destroyed by massive solar flares. In the ensuing chaos, grocery store shelves have been stripped bare and panicked survivors have fled the cities and towns, sweeping across the countryside in a desperate attempt to find sustenance and avoid the violence.