Six New Things – Week of April 21, 2025

This year, Easter is followed by the death of Pope Francis, Earth Day, and Arbor Day. The ancient Triduum lead us from betrayal to death to lostness to resurrection. Perhaps this new Triduum is calling the church to become a tower of faith that shares New Life with ‘the least, the lost, and the left behind’ – including our planet.

ONE

Pope Francis’ final sermon, began with the words, “Mary Magdalene”.*

Diana Butler Bass affirms that Pope Francis understood the importance of his role ‘in these days of authoritarian cruelty’ while lifting up Mary Magdalene ‘as a model for the entire church’ and of ‘discipleship and transformation for a “new world”‘.

Katharine Hayhoe urges clergy and congregations to live into our ‘Mary’ power, by ending the silence about climate change, and rising up for healing. Find a summary and link to her post in our 90% Agree – So Talk about It! Great Idea.

  • Rev. Martha Schwehn Bardwell’s Easter Vigil Sermon, Mary the Tower (watch from 1:54:15), embodies all of this beautifully.
  • Ground in spiritual strength with Rev. Cameron Trimble’s Meditation: Manufactured Chaos – especially her Reflection Questions, Prayer of the Day, and Spiritual Practice: Finding Steadiness in the Body.
  • *See Bass’s Mary the Tower for a deeper dive – and why those first words mean so much.

TWO

Make your presence felt and heard by joining Rise & Repair at the Capitol – or support them with phone calls, letters, or donations – and make this a regular part of congregational life.

AND/OR

Do your part in your own context with an outdoor presence making climate care a clear and urgent mission of your congregation.

We support congregations with long-standing commitments and those just getting started with our From Fear to Fire: Easter People Emerge! Toolkit, based on Building a Moral Economy (for adults), The Hunger Games (for tweens & teens) and bi-weekly themed children’s books, and including sermon and worship suggestions, discussion questions, spiritual practices, and action prompts. Start today (or tomorrow)!

THREE

Strengthen resilience for climate action with A Cup of Quiet (Bloomsbury Children’s), which invites us to slow down and ‘appreciate the gentler sounds of nature’, or When I Talk to God, I Talk about Feelings (Penguin), ‘a perfect introduction to prayer that allows little ones to learn about emotions through gentle and affirming reflection’ – voiced by bear and wolf cubs, raccoons and squirrels.

Adults are invited to ground in creation awareness throughout the year with Field Guide to Church of the Wild (Broadleaf), which invites us to ‘rewild our spirituality’ by joining ‘an emerging yet ancient spiritual practice; remembering our place in an alive and holy web of interconnection’.

Find more in our Spiritual Practice: Celtic & Creation-Oriented and our Worship: Earth Day & Creationtide and Rethinking Worship lib guides.

FOUR

Arbor Day is a perfect opportunity for Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees (Broadleaf) as we ‘connect intimately with them… deepen our spiritual lives and grow in the understanding that all beings are part of the fabric of the holy’.

Expand awareness, depth, and growth with Mother, Creature, Kin: What We Learn from Nature’s Mothers in a Time of Unraveling (Broadleaf) – Mother’s Day implications notwithstanding – Natures mothers teach us ‘about centering, belonging, entanglement, edgework, homemaking, and how to imagine the future.’

Find more in our Creation Care lib guide.

FIVE

From the expansive to the immediate, Food Fight: How What We Eat Is Weaponized (Pilgrim) offers ‘global perspectives’ that ‘unveil the intersections of food, environmental injustice, and social disenfranchisement’ by ‘washing away the objectification of food-as-convenience, restoring food-as-story to our senses’.

Balance this stark realism with, Happy Land (Berkeley), which ‘sheds light on the often deceitful ways developers took property from Black landowners during the 20th century’ through the story of three generations of women who, ‘are tenacious and industrious, thoughtful and curious’ with a compelling ‘desire to preserve where they came from’.

Find more in our Agriculture & Food and Truth-Telling & Story Telling lib guides.

SIX

Meeting the Enemy: The Fossil Fuel Industry and the Power of Christian Climate Resistance (Fortress) paints ‘the structural evils of the fossil fuel industry‘ by ‘helping readers understand that a Christian climate ethic must move beyond individualistic blame and individualistic solutions’ to ‘bear witness to evil and address the roots of this system of powers that bind us’.

The antidote can be found in Abundance (Avid Reader), whose authors ‘trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.’

Find more in our Politics & Social Structure lib guide.

~~~

What if a powerful Church rose up and declared every day Earth Day?

What if the voices of the least, the lost, and the left behind were centered every day?

What might our world be if Christians followed Jesus through death to God’s New Life?