Six New Things – Week of September 14, 2026

‘Let those with eyes to see, see.’ – Jesus

We are called to be awake. It’s time.

ONE: CLIMATE

  • World Set to Cross 1.5*C Global Warming, but Can Still Limit, Adapt to and Return from Higher Temperatures – United Nations Environmental Programme – THIS IS ESSENTIAL READING FOR ALL
  • Climate: Who Dies, Who Fights, Who Surrenders, Who Sabotages – Rebecca Solnit (Meditations in an Emergency; Substack, 09.10.26)
    • Solnit reflects on the UNEP’s report with a clarion call to ‘pay attention’, act, and – if our eyes are open, glimpse hope
  • Knowing, and Still Refusing to Know (Rev. Cameron Trimble, Piloting Faith/Substack; 09.15.26)
    • ‘To know what we are doing, and to know that what we are doing is destroying our life, and still to go on doing it: can this be called anything but madness?’ – Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
    • ‘Many wisdom traditions warn about a spiritual danger: seeing the truth clearly, but then living in a way that lets us avoid responding to it.’
    • ‘Maybe this is the deeper question behind climate change: It’s not about having enough information, but about whether we’re willing to let what we know change us.’
  • End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
    • ‘“End Times Fascism” is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout… The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable… their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics—rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.’
  • Counter overwhelm, injustice, and scarcity by falling in love with all of creation with Mouse’s Wood: Story Puzzle (Thames & Hudson).
    • ‘Experience a year in nature’
    • double-sided 12-piece story puzzle
    • a perfect introduction to the whole Mouse’s Adventures Series.

TWO: DEMOCRACY – CONTEXT

THREE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

  • Anthropic Researcher Resigns with Warning about the Dangers of AI Development (AP, MPR News; 09.09.26)
  • St Thomas AI Ethics Expert: Independent Body Needed to Regulate Fast-Growing Technology (Nina Moini, Aleesa Kuznetsov, MPR News; 09.14.26)
  • A deeper dive for adults: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (Liveright)
    • a ‘clarion call’ that ‘traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data’
    • ‘demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government’
    • ‘the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity’
    • ‘deliberately alarming’ but ‘not a funeral dirge; rather it’s a wake-up call’, asserting that the Artificial State ‘can be dismantled… but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the source… telling a new history’
  • A humanizing dive for tweens (ages 10+): The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze (paperback) (Viking Books for Young Readers)
    • one teen’s struggle for voice, autonomy, and justice
    • ‘a compelling story of America’s obsession with relegating Black people to labor or entertainment’

FOUR: SELF- AND CONGREGATIONAL-AWARENESS

FIVE: STEWARDSHIP & AGING

  • A Lot of Zeroes (Rev. Cameron Trimble, Piloting Faith/Substack; 08.21.26)
    • ‘A budget is really a moral document. It shows whose lives we choose to support and whose lives we are willing to burden.’
  • Aging Congregations – Problem or Opportunity? (Rev. Dr. Anna Hall, Convergence; 08.27.26) introduces:
    • Wisdom Church: Abundant Life for Aging Congregations (Cane Mill)
      • `[F]ull of good news: If you can see your aging congregation as beloved, with ample gifts to share, you can move your congregation away from anxiety and toward wisdom.’
      • ‘Helpful tools and data-driven strategies provide everything you need to move your aging congregation toward abundant life.’
      • a six-session small group curriculum, daily devotionals for Advent, annotated resource lists for a deeper dive into aging spirituality

SIX: INTENTIONAL ADVENT