BOOKS & ARTICLES

This is a course of study prepared by Dr. Bryson for her college students.  It presents various Eastern philosophies and is intended to expose Western students to Eastern philosophical and religious thought.  Dr. Bryson attended the East-West Institute in Honolulu Hawaii in 2004 and uses her experiences from there, as well as an extensive list of other resources.

At the 2005 English Institute for Chinese teachers Dr. Bryson, along with a group of fellow teachers from the United States, demonstrated the use of the English language in a workshop for Chinese teachers.  Dr. Bryson used various art projects and provided Chinese/English conversion.

This excellent site is  recommended for Mandarin-speaking people who are interested in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.  Students of the Chinese language will also find it helpful.  

"Truth indeed came one into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on. But ... a wicked race of deceivers ... took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth ... went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. The troublers ... are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered parts which are yet wanting to the body of Truth. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, not ever shall do, till her Master's second coming. He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. (Milton Areopagitica 742)."

"During the past two centuries, there has been a revived interest in the concept of spiritus (or pneuma or geist), and one can easily recall the notion in the works of Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and others.  Of course, the modern usages are both continuities and differences from the ancient and Neoplatonic accounts of spiritus from which Ficino is drawing his ideas.  Verbeke's 1945 book on pneuma gave new life to the topic of spiritus.  From this revival, scholars began to re-examine the works of earlier philosophers for whom spiritus was an integral part of their overall philosophy ... This dissertation will challenge the traditional view that Ficino's theory of spiritus is incoherent.  Textual evidence will be offered in order to support the claim that the theory is coherent.  Textual analysis, based on a consideration of some of  Ficino's sources, will be offered as a means of also reducing the charge of inconsistency."  (From the introduction) 

"... in the kitchen, suspended above the table by two old ladder-back chairs with worn cane seats was brightness and life. Red, blues, yellows, purples, and greens burst forth as a garden of zinnias in July. Each spot of color was no more than an inch and a half across, but it sang of life. A chorus rang fortissimo from the kitchen. Music jumped from the fabric pulled taut over the chairs.
"You make quilts?" Linda asked the obvious, impressed by the skill of the aging woman.
"Fer presents," Granny nodded and followed the teacher into the kitchen, where the visitor was fingering the delicate craft of the seamstress. "I do my own quiltin." That was a fact she wanted enforced. "It's beautiful!" The teacher admired it with total sincerity."