Six New Things – Week of August 23, 2021
Peace and conflict; love and faith; travel and place: six resources to deepen, broaden, and grow in our spiritual journey.
ONE
Spiritual growth comes through humility, openness, and exploration. The Peacemaker’s Path: Multifaith Reflections to Deepen Your Spirituality (Broadleaf) brings together wisdom from the world’s major religious traditions, revealing common threads that bind us more than they divide us.
TWO
If division is on the horizon or in the air, The Space Between Us: Conversations about Transforming Conflict (MennoMedia) offers tools to transform our perception of conflict as problematic or in need of fixing into opportunities for positive personal change and a way to build resilience, relationships, and community.
THREE
Travels – whether internal or external – can also change our perspective and our heart. Let love be your guide as your congregation looks inward with Dutiful Love: Empowering Individuals and Families Affected by Mental Illness (Fortress).
Mental Illness is one of the needs included in the Accessible Altar podcast’s focus on creating congregations that are more open to and supportive of differently-abled individuals and their families.
FOUR
Encourage this deepening love by inspiring deepening faith. Read Secrets of Our Faith: What the Pastor Has Been Taught, What Is Preached from the Pulpit, and …Why the Difference! (Progressive Christianity): leaders may find challenge and/or empowerment; congregations might find it fascinating!
FIVE
The past 18 months have likely altered our relationship to “place” significantly. The UUA’s annual anthology of poems, prayers, and reflections, Shelter in This Place: Meditations on 2020 (InSpirit), promises to give voice to these changing perceptions and encounters with our surroundings.
SIX
For those whose sense of place demands a change of pace, Just Travel: God, Leaving Home, and a Spirituality for the Road (Fortress), promises a new perspective on physical and spiritual journeys by encouraging travel – whether around the corner or across the country/world – that
“contributes to human flourishing”.
Find other perspectives on travel in our Contemplative Practices: Hermitages, Pilgrimage, & Retreat Center lib guide.
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Speaking of travels and changing places: The Ministry Lab will be off-line in recognition of Labor Day. Six New Things will post either the Friday before or the Tuesday following (we’ll know more next week!).
