Six New Things – Week of May 15, 2023

Collaboration – working together – is energizing and renewing for individuals, our relationships, communities, and eventually, whole societies. Start with the immediate and see if expanding partnerships won’t transform the world.

ONE

Raccoon’s home burns down and his friends don’t know what to say or do. Then they learn that One Small Thing (Beaming) builds on others so that even little gestures of kindness aren’t so small after all. Download the accompanying free activity guide here.

Find more children’s books on Faith, Love, Compassion and Forgiveness in our lib guide.

TWO

Seven Secrets of the Spirit-Filled Life: Daily Renewal, Purpose and Joy when You Partner with the Holy Spirit (Baker) promises a ‘fuller, deeper, and more powerful relationship with the Holy Spirit – who fills you up, pours you out, and transforms the world through you’. Watch the author’s trailer here.

Find additional Pentecost ideas for Faith Formation and Worship in our lib guides.

THREE

Let all relationships grow from a stronger sense of self-love – free of of the restrictive molds built by ‘patriarchy, colonization, and white supremacy’: Your Body Is a Revolution: Healing Our Relationships with Our Bodies, Each Other, and the Earth (Broadleaf) might be your ticket home.

FOUR

Break out of those molds as a community by cracking open the most divided hour/day of the week: Sunday mornings. Prepare your sermons with an eye to current issues with Preaching the Word: Contemporary Approaches to the Bible for the Pulpit (WJK) and prep the whole congregation with Worship at a Crossroads: Racism and Segregated Sundays (Cascade).

Cultivate a community of openness and understanding with resources for Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We’ve found some wonderful reading lists:

FIVE

Invite adults into the challenging conversation of Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy (Cascade), a biblical study of evil and its contemporary embodiment in particular individuals – written ‘for the health of democracy’.

Balance that discussion with recent posts on good and evil from the CAC (particularly Evil Is a Social Reality and Principalities and Powers), and others in this week’s Daily Breath listings for Wednesday and Thursday.

SIX

Go international with the relationship-building: Ukraine Diary (Orbis) contains reflections of Henri Nouwen’s time leading retreats and connecting with local communities working with handicapped adults in Ukraine which ‘offers scope and perspective to current realities’.

Bring your youth into similar life-changing relationships through mission trips, pilgrimages, and work camps. Building Faith wrote up an extensive Youth Trip Toolkit, which we included in our Mission Trips and Hermitages, Pilgrimages, and Retreats lib guides.

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Start with yourself and the Divine within you – and watch loving relationships change you, your community, and the world!