Six New Things – Week of July 21, 2025

Historical truth-telling – even in the guise of fiction – helps us identify the ills of our past so we can imagine and build a more life-giving future. All ages can explore dystopian realities and find sustenance for resistance and reorienting in the present.

ONE

The Knowing: How the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Continues to Echo Today (Hanover Square), unravels historical injustices to reveal ongoing harms – that affect us all.

Discover more in our Anti-Racism: Indigenous Voices and Past & Present lib guides.

TWO

Don’t leave history to the past: I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays (Ecco), ‘is… for anyone who wishes they could go back in time to give their younger selves the real truth about the fractured country they have inherited—and the encouragement to rebuild something better in its place’.

Tyger (Penguin Young Reader), is a ‘thought-provoking alternate history’, a ‘thrilling fantasy’, and ‘a treasure for all ages’ in which ‘two kids and a mystical tyger must save a divided world on the brink of destruction’.

Find more in our Social Justice Engagement: Politics & Social Structure and our Tweens & Teens: Coming-of-Age: True Self/Power lib guides.

THREE

From the past to the future, division routinely hinders forward progress.

‘Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds – Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down (Redwood) – shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, …strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others.’

Invite Youth to embrace their own radial visions with greater clarity and confidence by sharing, Nobody’s Perfect: Redefining Sin and Mistakes in Adolescent Christian Education (Fortress Press). Folx may want to read an intro article, “Nobody’s Perfect”: A Resource for Talking to Youth about Sin (Building Faith, June 30, 2025) which may prepare the way – or be a conversation starter all on its own.

Find more in our Anti-Racism: Tweens & Teens – Mindfulness, Compassion, & Healing; and Tweens & Teens: Youth Ministry.

FOUR

Division – aka, sin – manifests in all sorts of ways – including the drive behind our busy, busy lives.

BUT –

‘Busy isn’t always the enemy, and a chaotic calendar isn’t always a failure. Sometimes a full schedule is simply the result of investing in what matters and doing the right thing.’ We can learn How to Be Busy: Unhurried Living Even When Your Calendar Is Chaotic (Broadleaf).

Settle in and bring Baby for the read… and, ‘enjoy the benefits of yoga with your little one.’! 5 Poses for Your Yoga Baby (Beaming) assures readers that ‘Yoga is all about exploring your body through a variety of movements’ – and all you need is a floor, a baby, and a parent!

Find more in our Spiritual Practices lib guides: Intentionality – Simplicity/Minimalism and Embodied/Movement.

FIVE

If it’s your Middles who are struggling to stretch, read, On Guard!: A Marshall Middle School Graphic Novel (Random), in which 7th grader, Grace, ‘is trying to find her footing’ amidst her best friend break-up and rocky mom-relationship, until the middle school fencing club helps her find her people and herself.

Support your Middles and Youth in finding their people through Peer Ministry Training. This Relational Skills Training has recently been revamped to meet today’s Youth where they are and empower community-building across generations.

Find more in our Tweens & Tees True Self/Personal Power and Youth Ministry lib guides.

SIX

As climate change continues to wreak havoc on our collective present – and dominates ideation about the future for many (especially in the Tweens and Teens generations) – make space for lament in worship with two reworking of classic tunes: O God, Our God (Manley Olson) has been updated following the Texas Hill Country flooding and O God, As Troubles Here Increase (The Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette), ‘encourages the work for peace and justice’.

Dig into present-tense creation care with historical perspectives on human diets with Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food (New Society), which explores our historical ‘vital environmental role as one of Earth’s keystone species’ in a ‘hopeful manifesto about a brighter, more abundant world – and a critical look at the long-held stories we’ll need to rewrite to built it’.

Find more in our Worship: Justice & Lament / Music and Creation Care and Spiritual Practices: Food / Cooking lib guides.