Bøger af Duke Robinson

When the author was in the fourth grade, a Philadelphia Inquirer photographer caught his grammar school tumbling team's premier performance at a PTA meeting. As a result, Duke Robinson claims to be the only Presbyterian minister in the history of Western civilization to have had his picture in a major metropolitan newspaper standing on his head with his fly open. The fact his fly was open, he says, reflects the innocence typical of an eight-year-old boy reared in a very religious family in the first half of the Twentieth Century. That's who he says he was. That's what he did. And he says, "I wanted never to do it again. "Robinson's intimate memoir takes you through a life marked by weird coincidences, surprise twists and turns, and life-or-death close calls that impacted him dramatically. His curious mind kept him asking and trying to answer, with some measure of intellectual integrity, why life works the way it does. How come the smallest incident or choice, either by yourself or someone else, can turn your life in a direction you never dreamed of? The mythology on which Robinson was reared gave him an answer to this question. It emerged, however, from an ancient people who thought the flat world had recently been created for them, didn't know where the sun went at night, and believed demons caused illness. He says that he came to see that he could not be whole living in both that world and the scientific cause-and-effect world we all know today. The author's story of his own personal change has to do with discarding a lot of superstition, sentimentality, and wishful thinking in religion, in order to be grounded in, integrated with, and liberated by relating honestly to the real world. Looking back, he says, "I never wanted to be caught standing on my theological head with my fly open." This book gets you inside the head of a Presbyterian minister who early on found that he also could not go through the motions or play so many of the games that the Church generally asks of its clergy. He has wrestled with traditional religion for well over a half-century. Of the last congregation he served for twenty-eight years, he began by asking its members to lighten up and get real. And they did. And he tells some remarkable stories about them. Robinson's five other books bear witness to his changed and changing worldview. Here, in more personal terms he weaves together stories about his Christian fundamentalist upbringing, the wonderful loves of his life, hilarious adventures in the pulpit (on stage), his reputation for humor, reflections on sexual repression, parenting four strong children, and some hilarious, embarrassing professional mistakes, and fascinating projects in retirement. He also talks about being a fervent fan of the Philadelphia, Kansas City, and, since 1968, Oakland A's baseball teams for eighty-five years. He asks, "How much more theological can you get than that?"

This book offers hope for today's dark world. It does so by identifying the self-debilitating illness of churches and prescribes robust medicine for their health, survival, and positive impact on our lives.If you are part of a church, wouldn't you like it to stop living in the past? Wouldn't you like it to think and talk so you didn't have to check your brain at the door on Sunday morning? And wouldn't you like to know what it will take for your church to have intellectual integrity? And even if your church looks successful on the outside, wouldn't you like it to stop dying on the inside?As a church person, along with everyone else, the modern, natural world of science shapes your thinking and living during the week. Then on Sundays, you enter the biblical and medieval world of the weird, enchanted forest with ghosts, demons, angels, and other supernatural creatures. To date, you have not acknowledged this deadly contradiction. Either you have not been consciously aware of it or, you have been, but you have not known what to do about it and are afraid that facing it could cost you friends, emotional security, and grief. At the same time, you suspect your church is failing in its witness to Jesus' profound good news and dying internally. If you are an aware non-church person, whether you were raised in a church and left it, or as an outsider you have tried to find one that is real and been unsuccessful, you know that churches impact you, your family, your friends, and the worlds around you. This book assumes your life would be better if churches were more authentic and made more positive contributions to your community. It also describes the radical shakeup it will take for them to do both.While the book generally addresses how all churches can stop killing themselves, the last of four sections deals directly with the history, bizarre beliefs, shallow gospel, and transparent contradictions of the dangerous movement known as Evangelicalism.Some clergy and churches will use this book for study groups. Others may faint, throw up, even toss it away screaming, and then try to ban it. These folks are not to be blamed. They are to be understood, supported, and challenged to set aside their sentimental, childhood fantasies and begin to think as adults.

The author of this book assumes you love life and don't like the idea of dying. He suspects, too, that were you to die today, you are not sure you could do so at peace and be able to say, "I have lived my best possible life." He also takes for granted you have retained fanciful notions you were taught as a child about living, dying, and death, including nonsense about the grim reaper. This book relentlessly pursues truth and life. In the Introduction, Robinson calls you to update your worldview so it's coherent and to be true to your self in behalf of being your best self and living your best life. In Part One, he introduces ten steps that will help you let go of childhood thinking and connect you with realistic understandings of life. He explains how to integrate three basic models of life, adopt a positive view of life that's also realistic, affirm your personal freedom, identify and choose worthy life purposes, engage life with both passion and good sense, be an authentic world citizen, defeat toxic powers and let positive ones nourish you, live creatively in the present, and open yourself to joy as well as happiness. He caps this section helping you understand what it means to trust and practice perfect love. Part Two is also about living robustly. The author distinguishes between the ongoing process of dying and death as a state of being (or non-being), and quickly rejects denial, morbidity and escapist fantasies as adequate ways to deal with them. He then elaborates on 6 creative approaches to dying and death that are honest, liberating and edifying. Along the way, he explains what to kill the grim reaper means, and how to do it. His penetrating point is that until you get real about living, dying and death, you cannot be your best self or live your best possible life. In the first of the book's two postscripts, the author tells the poignant story of his wife's suddenly discovered illness in July of 2008, and of her dying in October. In the second, he tells what was going on in him the next summer, when a life-threatening illness forces him to face his own possible dying. PRAISE for CREATE YOUR BEST LIFE, KILL THE GRIM REAPER "This book should be read by anyone expecting to die some day. Young people live as if it can't happen to them, and a lot of us older folks try not to think about our imminent departure, but the author thinks we should and makes a strong case for doing so. It 's an easy and fun read, and makes more sense than anything I've seen on death and dying. I'm buying copies for all of my children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. It's a good road map for their remaining years as it is for mine." Robert F. Hanson, Professor-Emeritus, San Diego State University "Here is a very frank, practical and personal book about living and dying well that will greatly benefit not only professionals but also the general reader." Sherellen Gerhart, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Hospice of the East Bay, Pleasant Hill, CA "Robinson's book is magic. It teaches us step by step to transform the fear of dying into a design for creative living." Milton Matz Playwright, Psychologist, Rabbi. Author: Plays in Search of an Ending "Duke Robinson, a very wise pastor, has poured himself into an insightful discussion of living a good life and dying a good death. A thoughtful reading of this book will benefit one greatly." Clifford J. Straehley, M.D. Retired Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, Stanford Medical School; retired Chief of Surgery, Hawaii Foundation Hospital, Honolulu "Living in a large, active retirement community, Duke Robinson knows how seniors as well as the young fail to prepare for their dying; this book addresses that problem directly...and helpfully." Dr. John Hadsell, Professor-Emeritus, San Francisco Theological Seminary, autho

Family circumstances force Joshua, a nine-year old Jewish boy from Brooklyn to embark on a preposterous, often hilarious journey half way around the world. What happens to him and his twelve, adult traveling companions, as they find themselves immersed in a strange political crises in Israel, drives the plot toward its inevitable yet unpredictable, shocking conclusion. The story belongs to Joshua. Other key figures are his mother, his widowed grandfather Grumper, his grandfather's woman friend, members of the ragtag, eclectic travel group that surrounds Joshua, and Israel's prime minister, Solomon Steckler.

With the poignant honesty of Robert Fulghum and the good sense of "Dear Abby", this practical guide shows effective ways to avoid being "too" nice and reclaim a satisfying and fulfilling life.Most people are raised to be "nice". But some just overdo it. They want to be perfect: always helpful, always available, never distinguishing between their own needs and those of others. Inside they're frustrated and unhappy. By analyzing the nine most common pitfalls, "Good Intentions" shows how the afflicted can liberate themselves from this damaging behavior, assert their own needs, and still remain the "good person" they've always wanted to be.