Six New Things – Week of April 28, 2025

May Day means a lot this year.* In the midst of crisis, can we see with new eyes? Hear with new ears? Be transformed by traditional wisdom and new understanding?

ONE

Systems, institutions, and social norms are crumbling. Inner fortitude and community bonds are essential for well-being and resilience.

A Light to Share: Stories of Spreading Love and Changing the World (Herald) is timely encouragement to discover ‘our gifts from God’ to ‘flip on the light inside us; a light that can change the world!’

Using God’s gifts to answer God’s call might require the fuel of, Agapic Anger: Influencing Change While Navigating Gender (Fortress).  For ‘community organizers and church leaders who yearn for a liberative, embodied response that attends to the gap between the angering realities of our present world and the vision of God’s kin-dom’, this book, ‘directs anger toward structural issues and nurtures a sustaining participation in systemic change’.

Find more in our Spiritual Gifts and Confronting Misogyny lib guides.

TWO

Systemic change requires us to rethink religion, theology, and church – and our relationships to and within them.

Our Lactating God (Pilgrim), ‘is a memoir that (re)teaches us how to nurture our bodies and spirits in active resistance to dehumanizing forces’.

Don’t Just Give Me That Old Time Religion (Pilgrim), demands we reconsider religion’s role in shaping social norms and justice as we hear ‘the cry of Black women for spiritual and mental wellbeing, knit together wholly, affirmed in communities of faith and clinical practices alike, with goodness and hope against the torrent of injustice’.

Find more in our Exploring God and Anti-Racism: Spirituality, Identity, & Healing lib guides.

TWO-AND-A-HALF

Sacred Wounds (2nd Edition): Finding Your Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma (Chalice) is a guide to healing and transformation from past religious experiences and institutional harm.

Lockdowns and gun violence are traumatizing parts of children’s reality. Sparking Peace (Herald), ‘provides a springboard for those seeking to discuss gun violence and trauma with children in a safe way that highlights help rather than harm’ by ‘carefully addressing gun violence and peacemaking’ and showing kids ‘how conflict can be transformed through acts of peace’ (ages 5-9).

Find more in our Grief & Trauma, Gun Violence & Control, and Peace-Making lib guides.

THREE

Consider traditional theologies that brought us to this point with new eyes and openness with Mere Christianity Deluxe Edition (HarperOne), which ‘brings together Lewis’ legendary broadcast talks during World War II, in which he explored the core beliefs of Christianity… right and wrong, human nature, morality, marriage, sin, forgiveness, faith, hope, generosity, and kindness.’

Thomas Berry: A Book of Hours (Orbis) shares the timeless spirituality of this ‘ecological prophet and self-described “geologian”‘ who ‘described our place in the earth community and defined the ‘great work’ before us: to develop an Ecozoic consciousness capable of sustaining life on this planet’.

Find more for transformational Adult Faith Formation in our Small/Reading Groups and Meditations & Poetry lib guides.

FOUR

While some traditional theology bears revisiting, A Strange and Gracious Light: How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything (Herald), shares, ‘a vivid imagination and winsome tone’ that invites us to ‘rediscover Jesus’ using the ‘movements of the church calendar’ to reveal, ‘how the story of Jesus illumines our life together and changes the way we see everything’.

For a truly purple perspective on theology, dance with Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, and This Thing Called Life (Broadleaf), which, ‘decodes the spiritual and sexual messages behind Prince’s work, from For You to Graffiti Bridge to The Rainbow Children and beyond.’

Discover more in our Adults: Bible Study and Spiritual Growth/Practices lib guide.

FIVE

Discover yet another perspective with Trans Biblical: New Approaches to Interpretation and Embodiment in Scripture (WJK), ‘a collection of wide-ranging essays exploring key issues animating trans biblical interpretation from a variety of angles and emphases… [that also promotes] new ways of thinking about gender variation in the ancient world while more sensitively and critically addressing ongoing debates about gender and embodiment’.

Apply theological vulnerability and sensitivity to lived reality with boy maybe: poems (Beacon), which, ‘explores Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America’.

Find more in our Adult Bible Study: 2SLGBTQIA+ Lenses and Gender Justice lib guides.

SIX

And for one more lens: Accompanying Disability: Caretaking, Family, and Faith (WJK), ‘offers a compassionate, faithful model for nurturing relationships with loved ones with disabilities based on mutual respect, dignity, and affection, rather than patronizing attitudes or pity’. Here’s a Reading Group Guide.

Find more in our Diversity: Special Needs & Neurodiversity lib guide.

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*See Seasonal Offerings for May Day events of note!!