Six New Things – Week of September 30, 2024

As the nation and the world prepare for Election Day, 2024, tensions are high, division is deep, and personal resilience might be at a low ebb. Step back, reground in wonder and love, refresh a sense of hope, renew intentions of reconciliation and peace, and embrace civic action. They’re all possible in God’s preferred future – and present.

ONE

Littles can inspire reconciliation by practicing peace in their own lives, in their own spirits, and in their/your community. Slug and Snail Search for Peace (Pilgrim) as they lead young readers through the animal world, inviting them to identify peace in action and sharing creative activities and simple practices to focus on peace within and right where they are.

Cultivating Care: How & Why Young People Participate in Civic Life (Springtide Institute), ‘shows how adults can exemplify and foster the care young people crave to raise the next generation of civic-minded citizens’.

And A Bowl of Perfect Light: Stories of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Repairing the World (Orbis), acknowledges our shared ‘hope for God’s presence and abiding justice, forgiveness, and peace… as we stand facing a difficult, even fearful, future’, and provides particular, ‘steps and practices for the journey that can help us’ live into the peace and hope that bind us together as God’s beloved children.

Find more to inspire all ages in Peace-Making in our lib guide.

TWO

A first step in healing is identifying the cause of the pain. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message takes us from a mythic kingdom of the author’s creation and rooted in his experience of Dakar, Senegal to the capital of the Confederacy, Columbia, South Carolina, where his book is banned and segregationist statues testify to a deeply rooted American mythology, and finally to Palestine, where he witnesses how ‘misleading nationalist narratives’ become the tragedy of war.

Find more like this in our Faith Formation: Truth Telling & Storytelling lib guide.

THREE

The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that Is Threatening Our Democracy (Broadleaf) reveals ‘when people long to conquer a nation for God, democracy can be brought to the brink’.

For those confronting nationalist and Christian supremacy in their immediate relationships, Do You Still Talk to Grandma? When the Problematic People in Our Lives Are the Ones We Love (Penguin), ‘offers a path to holding on to our deepest convictions without losing relationships with the people we love’.

We can help with this, too: Check out our Graceful Conversations: Building Arcs across Divided Perspectives for a five-part video-based series that supports congregational, communal, and interpersonal dialogues on difficult topics.

FOUR

Essential to the work of healing, reconciliation, and reparations is personal and communal resilience. Ground your self and your people in wonder, awe, love, and forgiveness – for self and others – with spiritual practices…

[Find more in our Spiritual Memoirs & Devotionals & Prayers lib guides.]

FIVE

…and liturgies designed to uplift, inspire, and develop community.

Beloved children’s book author, Glenys Nellist has created, Come, Come to the Table: A Simple Liturgy for World Communion Sunday (first Sunday in October), a child-friendly, all-ages litany based on her new book, Gathered at the Table: Celebrating Communion (ZonderKidz).

Meta Herrick Carlson & Carol Meier were commissioned by Shalom Hill Farms to create a series of new liturgies. The Prairie Liturgies include, Peace of the Prairie: A Liturgy for Here and Now; Shalom Daily Prayers; Feast of Shalom: A Setting of Holy Communion; and The Way of the Manger: An Advent Liturgy. Here’s Carlson’s post introducing them.

[Find liturgies for all seasons in our Liturgical Arts: Written Elements and our Communion Sunday & World Food Day lib guides.]

SIX

Advent devotionals – which are coming out in droves – are focusing on community and hope, as well:

Find more in our frequently updated Advent & Christmas: Devotionals and our Intergenerational Activities lib guides.