Six New Things – Week of November 14, 2022
Learn from nature. Love nature. Love your self. Love the world. Heal self. Heal nature. Heal the planet. It’s a beautiful circle of love, leading by letting our light shine, and the joy of creation care.
ONE
Braiding Sweetgrass has been revised!! Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Zest) includes sidebars, reflection questions, and illustrations that bring this well of wisdom, knowledge, and teaching to a new generation (13+).
If adults have already read Braiding Sweetgrass, pair a YA reading with Unsettling: Surviving Extinction Together (Broadleaf), which ‘explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, and heteronormativity’ and proposes ‘a new way of thinking about climate change – one that is rooted in queerness and antiracism’.
TWO
Encourage your Littles to engage the climate change discussion with Maybe I Might (Lantana), an inspiring poem ‘bursting with hope for a greener world… a love letter to our ailing planet.’
THREE
Help young ones learn to love themselves through observations of nature with Brown Is Beautiful: A Poem of Self-Love (Macmillan).
Our Brown Is Beautiful Great Idea pairs the book with Jesus Learns to Glow (Process Century) and turns them into an intergenerational outdoor contemplative practice – learn from nature to develop self-love and empower young ones to let their light shine!
FOUR
Inspire adults to join in the exploration and awe with, God and Wonder: Theology, Imagination, and the Arts (Cascade), a ‘conversation about how cultivating wonder and the gift of imagination can revitalize our understanding of the world’.
Find additional resources for wonder and Exploring God in our lib guide.
FIVE
Inspire youth, young adult, and adult leaders to embrace their strength and liberate themselves ‘from the bondage of the patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonization that exists’ in their own bodies, and ‘begin to see [a] way toward a more joyful future’, with Chingona: Owning Your Inner Badass for Healing and Justice (Broadleaf).
SIX
Invite everyone to spread that joy around with the Dalai Lama’s and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Little Book of Joy (Crown) – probably no need to expound too much on that; you can feel the smile spreading already, can’t you!?!
