I know last week’s big book list about living as “resurrectionaries” had enough good stuff to keep our bookworms busy for months there is one more aspect of a resurrectionary life that I want to highlight and that is nurturing a redeemed and lively imagination. I’ll name a good handful that will be very helpful here (including a few on poetry) which will lead into our reader’s guide to the work of poet-priest-literary scholar, the Reverend Malcolm Guite. We’ve been a fan and promoter of his poetry for maybe fifteen years; I think the first collection we discovered was Sounding the Seasons (and one of our very first buyers may have been the late Leslie Bustard of Square Halo Books.) Guite’s brand new first volume of his Merlin’s Isle four part “Arthuriad” is called Galahad and the Grail and it is getting rave reviews. We have autographed copies. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

You see, to live in the power of the resurrection surely means more than ginning up enthusiasm for dedicated discipleship; sure we need commitment and zeal but it seems that if Jesus’s defeat of Death means anything, it means that we are in a whole new world or “new creation” as 2 Corinthians 5:17 puts it. We need to be able to imagine what it looks like for Christ’s regime to break into human history. I’m convinced we need to learn to see through Godly lenses which means we need to reboot our imaginations. They need “baptized” as C.S. Lewis famously put it. Hence, the practice of reading, including fiction and poetry and literary memoir.

(And this really is the premise of all of Guite’s remarkable books, that we must “lift the veil” to discover a sacramental world being renewed by and in and for the Risen Christ.)

I have highlighted here before a stunning book called Discipling the Diseased Imagination: Spiritual Formation and the Healing of Our Hearts by Dordt College professor Justin Ariel Bailey (Baker Academic; $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99.) I wish it had explored a bit more of the essentially aesthetic aspect of this, but, nonetheless, is is a rich and deep study of praying well, deeply, for the transformation of the “eyes of our heart.” As Alex Sosler puts it on the back cover, “the imagination is the center of our discipleship” and this book helps us reimagine in a way that offers “the moral imperative of possibility.”  Highly recommended.

Discipling the Diseased Imagination will help readers understand just how powerful and formative the imagination is to mind, heart, and spirit. This book will inspire readers to refill and reform the imagination in everyday ways that will restore it to its glorious, God-given purpose. — Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

The modern sickness of the soul runs deeper than most diagnoses are able to reach. Discipling the Diseased Imagination is the treatment plan the church sorely needs. With a rare blend of intellectual depth, pastoral care, and elegant prose, Bailey prescribes a vision for the Christian life that is honest, humane, and hopeful. — Joshua Chatraw, Beeson Divinity School and Samford University, author of Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age   

Another book that might be in a similar wheelhouse is the wonderful Becoming By Beholding: The Power of Imagination in Spiritual Formation by Lana Davis (Baker Academic; $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39.) Davis got her PhD from Baylor and teaches at Indiana Wesleyan University. This is a very rich and deeply thoughtful book.

Listen up:

Becoming by Beholding is a work to behold. Not only is this book a study in beauty, imagination, and spiritual formation; it also models the very practices it preaches. To read it is to witness beauty and imagination at work and thus to leave its pages better formed and more ready to be formed by all the goodness the world has to offer. — Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

Becoming by Beholding ushers us into a rich, strange, and beautiful art gallery that unveils our own hearts and minds. Davis’s engaging tour draws deeply from the Christian tradition of spiritual masters to show how the architecture of Chartres Cathedral, iconic imagery of Jesus, Station Island’s stations of the cross, and the literary genius of Dante teem with spiritual insights that reveal Christ and his life in us. — Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Calvin University; author of Glittering Vices

Do you think nonfiction is more serious, grown-up, and useful than moving stories, beautiful buildings, and pretty pictures? Let Davis guide you through the Christian artists and makers who testify across the centuries that the stories and images we behold indelibly shape our souls. — Jeffrey Bilbro, Grove City College; editor-in-chief, Front Porch Republic, author of Reading the Times

Beauty and Justice: Creating a Life of Abundance and Courage by Haejin Shim Fujimura and Makoto Fujimura (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99. I have written about this already, inviting folks to pre-order it (and it is one of our personal favorites this season, now out) but it deserves to be named here as we think about how new creation theology brought in by the power of resurrection might play out in our culture. Beauty and Justice: Creating a Life of Abundance and Courage by Haejin and Mako Fujimura  is a perfect book to help us think and be inspired to care not only about aesthetics, the arts, creativity, and our holy imaginations but how that might be informed by the Biblical call to do justice. In a world of tragic hurt and war do we have time for beauty? Give the virtues of beauty, though, can we harness goodness to fight injustice? Written by a thoughtful lawyer /activist and world-class visual artist — both very good writers, too! — this certainly reminds us of the glories of living after the resurrection with “abundance and courage.” Wow. I am in awe.

Maybe my favorite way into thinking about the redemptive role of a redeemed imagination for ordinary Christian resurrectionaries is the lovely, delightful, must-read guide to reading widely, the wonderful World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading by Jeff Crosby (Paraclete; $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.) I named it a favorite book of 2025 and started the new year off with a fun online webinar with Jeff chatting about the book and the nature of the reading life. (You can watch or re-watch that HERE.) I suppose I ought not overstate this but I am sure it is nearly an axiom for many of us: the very best models of faith, the most noble people we know, the prophets and mystics and leaders and quiet servants are all readers. I can hardly imagine growing as a person of faith without books as tools for spiritual formation and the reformation of my  desires. So, yes, buying and reading books matters, especially if we have a wide diet to exercise the mind and widen the heart. World of Wonders will inspire and guide you.

There is a chapter in World of Wonders that is tremendously important, and I suspect one that is under appreciated among us. It is the chapter called “The Power of Paying Attention: Reading Poetry” (with a closing reflection by Luci Shaw.) The previous chapter (“The Power of Story: Reading Fiction”) is really, really good, but my hunch is that nobody skipped that chapter. But the poetry one? Come on, you can admit it…

Re-visit those two chapters and you will better understand what I mean here when I talk about allowing God to give us a renewed mind and a transformed imagination. Deeply rooted in the aesthetic dimension of life — perhaps as discussed so colorfully in the famous Rainbows for the Fallen World by Calvin Seerveld — the art of reading poetry can help.

After that chapter of Jeff Crosby’s in World of Wonders if you want a serious dive into how to appreciate poetry as part of your spiritual formation and Christian life, I highly recommend Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church by Abram Van Engen (Eerdmans; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) Jamie Smith calls it “a master class and love letter.” It really is the best comprehensive argument for why people of faith need to pay attention to poetry. It does inspire church folks to use poetry in worship and such but it really isn’t as much about the church, as such, but just how all of God’s children need the art of poetry.

What to know how some poets describe their work as a way of helping others see and imagine and feel and live differently?

You will love dipping into the many interviews found it the wonderful Rabbit Room project An Axe for the Frozen Sea: Conversations with Poets About What Matters Most by Ben Palpate (Rabbit Room Press; $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40.) I’ve reviewed this before (noting how interestingly it is written, bringing you into the conversations with colorful description of the meetings) but wanted to suggest it again as it would be so good for anyone wanting to deepen their imaginative capacities. And, yes, there is a great interview with Malcolm Guite. This really is a fun book and highly recommended.

Speaking of great conversations with poets, Baylor University Press just released a remarkable work pulled together by two professors and working poets, George David Clark of Washington & Jefferson University in Western Pennsylvania and L.S. Klatt (a good, long-time friend) formerly of Pittsburgh and for many years, now, a beloved prof at Calvin University in Grand Rapids. It is called Playing with Fire: Christian Poets Reflect on Faith and Practice (Baylor University Press; $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE =$26.39.) While I am positive this serious book will be of interest — that’s putting it blandly; it may be very exciting! — for ordinary readers, it is a must for poets and writers and English teachers.  It is so new I haven’t seen it yet, but it is shipping any day now. I trust the many rave reviews it has already gotten. Here are two you can trust that explain this smart work a bit.

These lively reflections on how faith and poetry intersect cover a surprising range. The writers’ deep appreciation of poets who preceded them infuses their essays with edifying gratitude. Poems, personal stories, and threads of theory offer readers rich food for thought, incentives to return to beloved poets, introductions to new ones, and ample reason to rejoice. — Marilyn McEntyre, author of When Poets Pray, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, and Start with a Word

This book is a symphony of words and a chorus of voices from which emerges a song about poetry. Hearing the singular Word echoing in the song of the Muses, these poets reflect on what it means to faithfully answer the call to create. Wonderfully oblique, bringing their poetic verve to prose, these essays are moving testimonies (the first paragraph of George David Clark’s contribution made me weep). Wander in their words and rekindle-or find-a devotion to poetry. — James K.A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin University, author of Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark

Nature Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets More Great Poetry Julian Peters (Plough Publishing) $29.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

Speaking of poetry and the imagination, one of the brand new and nothing-short-of-brilliant examples of a marvelously creative way to exercise our imaginations is to behold the amazing, new collection by Julian Peters who uses a variety of graphic novel / adult comic stylings to illustrate classic and contemporary poems. Like his previous (and equally amazing) Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry, the ever-interesting Plough Publishing invited Peters to re-interpret visually almost 25 poems of nature. In a variety of illustrative styles he does everything from “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” to Hopkin’s “God’s Grandeur” to “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes. From Emily Dickinson to Joy Harjo to Gwendolyn Brooks to Dylan Thomas to Wordsworth and Rossetti  and more — including some Asian writers of haiku, Nature Poems to See By is fabulous beyond words.

THE WORK OF MALCOLM GUITE

For a variety of reasons for this BookNotes column I want to highlight the work of Malcolm Guite. As you know from a previous BookNotes, we have been touting his new Galahad and the Grail which was so very handsomely produced by Rabbit Room Press. It released about a week ago. He’s an important literary figure, an ally and mentor in helping people of faith think deeply and nurture a sanctified imagination; he’s a working poet and writer at the top of his craft. Here are the books of his that you should know.

For what it is worth, my next “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast (which you can watch on YouTube or listen to at Apple Podcasts or at Spotify) is a conversation with yours truly and my always energetic pal from the CCO, Phil Schiavoni, talking this time about Malcolm Guite. Google it in a few days and or watch our Hearts & Minds Facebook page where I always post the links. Enjoy!

Galahad and the Grail: Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad Malcolm Guite, illustrated by Stephen Crotts (Rabbit Room Press) $34.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99

The accolades are building up, from the visionary sense of Guite’s project (the last person to do an large, epic poem of the Arthurian cycles was Tennyson over a century ago) to the sturdy and excellent craftsmanship of the book itself (kudos to Stephen Crotts for the amazing illustrations) to the poetically vivid storytelling. The award winning novelist (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Piranesi) Susanna Clarke writes in the foreword that this is “an astonishing achievement, a ballad that picks you up and sweeps you onward into adventure, solemn magic, and beauty.”

The good folks at Rabbit Room note that Guite is in the epic footsteps of Spenser, Milton, Dante, and Tennyson “and is a story to be enjoyed by young and old alike, a story to be read aloud among friends and family, a story to be cherished for generations to come.” Will you take up the tale?

Our autographed copies are offered while supplies last.

Watch this beautifully filmed trailer for the book to see if it might inspire you. (It has some wonderful footage of a very, very old and exceptionally rare manuscript which you don’t want to miss.)

We are taking pre-orders for volume two in the Merlin’s Isle series, coming early November  2026, The Coming of Arthur, also illustrated by the exceptionally talented Stephen Crotts. (Rabbit Room Press) $34.95 // OUR PRE-ORDER PRICE = $27.99

Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God Malcolm Guite (Square Halo Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I know I described this in my last BookNotes, thinking that reading about imagination would be a key aspect of discipleship informed by resurrection. I wrote that, for resurrectionaries needing a short but weighty reminder or some guidance about a faithful use of our imaginations, the four talks in Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God might be good for you.

The chapters are, “Imagination and the Kingdom of God”, “Christ and the Artistic Imagination”, “Christ and the Moral Imagination”, and “Christ and the Prophetic Imagination.”

In an epilogue Malcolm cites a Blake poem and reminds us that “all prophetic art is intended to arouse us and stir us to action. How do we awake from the deadly sleep?” This is the resurrectionary question — how wake up, how do we lift the veil?  Pondering this book is part of the answer.

The Word Within the Words Malcolm Guite (Fortress Press) $14.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.20

This little volume is in the fascinating “My Theology” series of short, compact-sized testimonials by aa vast array of contemporary thinkers, theologians, and scholars. I love this so much as it is a succinct introduction to the good insight that Christ Himself is the Word and therefore speech and language — words! — matter.  In Guite’s lovely prose he invites us to think how poetry itself (and, more widely, the poetic imagination) can help us (as it helps him) understand and interpret our faith.

There are short chapters on Scripture, liturgy, and sacraments, lots of Bible reflection, some theology and history and all kind of a sort of poetry, which after all, can help us stand in wonder at the Logos that “underlies all things.” As Guite nicely asserts, poetry is “capable of transfiguring our vision and transforming our lives.”

Mariner: A Theological Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge Malcolm Guite (IVP Academic) $42.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $34.39

This is in the great Studies in Theology and the Arts series that IVP Academic does (oh, they are all so good!) This may be Guite’s most academic study, a serious look at Coleridge and his famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Guite shows that Coleridge’s own life paralleled the experience in his famous poem. As the publisher notes, “On this theological voyage, Guite draws out the continuing relevance of this work and the ability of poetry to communicate the truths of humanity’s fallenness, our need for grace, and the possibility of redemption.”

Malcolm Guite has established himself as one of the leading Christian poets of our time. This positions him to offer a distinctive reading of a poetic giant of the past, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As expected, Mariner is exceptionally rich, penetrating, and absorbing. — Jeremy Begbie, professor of theology, director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, Duke Divinity School, Duke University

Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination Malcolm Guides (Routledge) $62.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $50.39

If Mariner is one of the more magisterial gems of Guite’s scholarly work, this is certainly his crowing achievement in this genre. It is his breathtakingly vital poetics, a major contribution to theological reflection on the poetry and more. It is in the prestigious “Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts” line, for which serious students can rejoice.

Malcolm Guite, in this wide-ranging and original study, helps us see how poetry is — if we let ourselves be drawn in and shaped by it — a means of making connections with the fundamental way things are, and so too a way of connecting with a God who is himself a pattern of ‘connection’ as Trinity, open to share the divine reality with created life. Here are materials for a profound theology of the imagination, developed in dialogue with writers both familiar and unfamiliar, beautifully combining close reading with wide horizons. — Rowan Williams, author of A Century of Poetry: 100 Poems for Searching the Heart and Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction.

• In Every Corner Sing: A Poet’s Corner Collection (Canterbury Press) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19
• Heaven in Ordinary: A Poet’s Corner Collection (Canterbury Press) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19
• Sounding Heaven & Earth: A Poet’s Corner Collection (Canterbury Press) $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

These three lovely volumes are each collections of Guite’s beloved back page columns from the UK The Church Times. Most of us here in the States don’t get to see these short essays but they are wonderul. It is said he offers acute observations, drawing together everyday events and encounters, landscape, journeys, poetry, stories, memory and a sense of the sacred.

On summary of one notes that it offers “more than seventy reflections that create momentary pauses in the bustle of life to take soundings, to savor an experience and hold it for a moment to the light before it slips away and ask, ‘Are there some hidden depths here?’”

Some of these “soundings delighting sound itself: in words, in sic, in bells and birdsong.” This is sweet, thoughtful, rich and reflective. No one is better, but each is a lovely collection.

POETRY

Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for Christian Year  Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

One of his most popular this offers lovely, useful poems in the sonnet form for the liturgical calendar. This is a somewhat expanded edition and his best-selling collection. Highly recommended.

The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

This includes some of his earliest published work (from two out of print chap books.) It got a rave review in the importnt New Directions journal and has a blurb by Holly Ordway who says “we need Christian writers who can speak about both the dark and the light.”  Very good.

Parable and Paradox: Sonnets on the Sayings of Jesus and Other Poems Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

In a way, this is a return to the form of Sound the Seasons and while not exactly a sequel, does offer exceptional poems inspired by gospel texts. Hooray.

There are 50 sonnets that focus on many passages in the Gospels: the Beatitudes, parables and miracles, teachings on the Kingdom, and the ‘hard sayings’ – Jesus’ challenging demands with which we wrestle.

And, as it says on the back, “A sequence of five sonnets on ‘The Wilderness’, exploring mysterious stories of divine encounter such as Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, poetic reflections on music, hospitality and ecology.” There are seven short poems celebrating the days of creation. Nicely, there’s a biblical index pairing the poems with scripture readings for use in worship.

Love Remember: 40 Poems of Loss, Lament and Hope Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Reflecting on the Holly Ordway quote, above, we are glad for this blend of works on loss and lament, and a grace-filled, sober hope. I wasn’t sure if I should list this here as it isn’t mostly his work but his selections, curation, and discussion of these forty amazing pieces. Some you will know, some you may not; there are lots of classic poets and some fresh voices.  This is a really, really valuable resource and I do suggest it..

After Prayer: New Sonnets and Other Poems Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is an extraordinary bit of work. Brit-lit geeks (and, well all of us, really) might enjoy knowing that the title sequence (as the book jacket explains) “is written in response to George Herbert’s beautiful and well-loved poem ‘Prayer’,and comprises twenty-seven sonnets which discover behind the poem’s quick succesion of dazzling images for prayer a deeper soul-story and a spiritual journey that reflects the heights and depths of human experience and mirrors the poet’s own journey.”

He’s up to something important here, standing on the shoulders of the elders, entering the conversation within the canon, even, but, at the end one realizes these are just lovely, even inspiring poems. Very nicely done.

David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Oh my, this fairly recent collection is all inspired by the Psalms. It may be the one we’ve sold the most of and is well-loved by both seasoned poetry aficionados and newbies. There are 150 poems each one inspired by one of the Psalms.

As the publisher notes: “A corona is a crown, the pearly glow around the sun in certain astronomical conditions and a poetic form where interlinking lines connect a sequence. It is the perfect name therefore for this new collection of 150 poems by the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite, each one written in response to the Bible’s 150 psalms.”

Some of these are provocative, many are exquiste. The idea of a crown is cool  I’m not a fan of the cover, but the book is truly excellent.

Give it a try — and if it gets you more engaged in reading the Psalter, all the better, eh?

Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

This is, in format, somewhat like the above-listed Love, Loss in that it is a devotional based on poems by others. He chooses a Lenten themed poem and reflects on it. Very good stuff, for sure. From Saint John of the Cross to Dante to Seamus Heaney to Czelaw Milosz to several of his own, this is fabulous.

If you get this now you may not be able to wait until next Lent, as so much of this is so rich and meaningful. Yes!

Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

This, too, is, like the one above for Lent and Eastertide, is a set of reflections inspired by poems, far flung from across time and space, as they say. Most are British but there are others, some are quite contemporary.

As above, there is an expert and often moving poem selected, then reflected upon. I hesitate to say it is “explained” as that isn’t quite it, but he ruminates bringing Advent waiting ad hope showing how these artful poems help us live into this season of the church calandar. There are pieces about Advent, yes, but some are classic Christmasy and on into Epiphany.

Nice choices, thoughtful stuff. I don’t know what I like better, his literary chops as a major critic or his priestly and pastoral work as a caring Christian leader. Bless the Lord, my friends!

Stations of the Resurrection: Encounters with the Risen Christ Malcolm Guite & Guli Francis-Dehqani, illustrated by Iain McKillop (Church House Publications) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Stations of the Resurrection offers reflections on each of the resurrection appearances described in the gospels from the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite and the much admired writer and bishop, Guli Francis-Dehqani, accompanied by color illustrations from the priest-artist Iain McKillop. Bishop Guli draws on her first hand knowledge of Middle Eastern culture to explore these stories and Malcolm Guite offers a sonnet in response to each of them – many published here for the first time – with reflections on the texts that inspired them. This imaginative and inspirational resource also includes the complete Stations of the Resurrection liturgies from Common Worship Times and Seasons that commemorate each of the nineteen events, allowing the book to be used for both personal devotional use and liturgical celebration.

…AND MORE

Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings  Malcolm Guite, Julia Golding, and Simon Horobin (Canterbury Press) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Yes, this is a Lenten reader, a daily devotional with a full third of the pieces written by Guite. The whole book, though, exudes a fabulous familiarity with the Inklings and friends, with short, inspiring reading on Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers, etcetera, etcetera. The title is fabulous, isn’t it? This is a must for fans!

Thank you, Malcolm Guite, for your Inkling-ish willingness to collaborate.

The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad edited by Jennifer Trafton, illustrated by Ned Bustard (Rabbit Room Press) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

There is only one chapter here by Guite but as we now know he has been living in these Arthurian tales for a long time. This is a delightful and actually remarkable book — leather-covered with illustrations by Bustard, cleverly reported as recently found memoranda — with a handful of creative authors each offering an imagined new chapter of the Galahad stories. By turns whimsical and curious, spiritual and exciting, these are from the likes of Jonathan Rogers (a YA fiction wrier and Flannery O’Connor scholar, no less), Junius Johnson, Andrew Peterson, Doug McKelvey (famous for Every Moment Holy), Mark Bertram, Annie Nardone, and, of course, the 400-line ballad by Malcolm Guite. I had to list it here, eh?

Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

There’s a bit of a story here that’s fun and perhaps important. As you may know this is a big collection of inspiring (short) essays about how doing ordinary things can glorify God. Leaning into a spirituality of the mundane (and, I might add, the priesthood of all believers) common but Godly folks write about everything from gardening to making playlists to making love, from raising chickens to working in retail (by yours truly.) Some pieces are a bit serious (grand-parenting, mourning, Calvin Seerveld on knowing, Curt Thompson on being present) but one of the standouts is Malcolm Guite’s entertaining piece on smoking his pipe. In fact he created three poems about it, too (and explains why) so you not only get this rare essay by Guite on glorifying God through this relaxing practice but get three poems not published elsewhere.

And here, then, is the story: designer Ned Bustard used a great piece by Stephen Crotts of Guite smoking a pipe to illustrate that chapter and, or so I’ve heard, Guite liked it so much he ended up asking Stephen to the UK where they hiked around dreaming up the design for Guite’s Galahad. Everybody loves the Crotts’s black and white linocut and wood engraving in Galahad and the Grail (not to mention the cover design) and we might suggest this is where their collaboration began. That linocut first done for Ordinary Saints now graces the back flyleaf of the cover of Galahad the Grail. Hooray.

Every Moment Holy Volume III: The Work of the People compiled and edited by Doug McKelvey & Ned Bustard (Rabbit Room Press) 

standard edition – larger-sized leather-bound hardback $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00 OR personal edition –  smaller-size leather-bound soft, flexible $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

Please remember to tell us which size you want.

Many know and love the four Every Moment Holy editions. The first three volumes are done in two editions or versions, the larger hardback or the smaller flexible compact one. Volumes I and II are both by McKelvey & Bustard but Volume III is a bit different. The art is by various illustrators using their own styles of woodcuts, linocuts and other black & white prints. And the prayers are by a variety of authors, writing out lovely litanies for ordinary life and daily things. What a way to sanctify the mundane, to liturgically offer prayer for real world episodes. Some of the prayers are older, classic, even, and some are crafted by modern writers. And yes, Malcolm Guite has more than one offering here. It’s a big book laden with lovely words and mature praying, but figured we should alert you that Guite is a contributor. So is Stephen Crotts. Thanks be to God.

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BookNotes

RESURRECTIONARY LIVING

Okay, I’ll admit. Maybe it’s hokey word.

I know it hasn’t caught on since I last used it here.

(Look back at some of the archived post-Easter BookNotes columns if you’d like; I’ve done a few on this very theme.)

I do kinda like the contrast with the over-used “revolutionary” word. (With apologies to N.T. Wright, whose book The Day the Revolution Began on the new-creation implications of the cross I truly, truly love.) I’m no political philosopher but I think Abraham Kuyper, the early 20th century pastor turned public theologian who became the Prime Minister of Holland, was on to something when he called his Christian political party the anti-revolutionary party. They were protesting the ugly “throw the baby out with the bathwater” overturning everything zeal of the French Revolutionaries, with their secularizing ideologies and guillotines. So Kuyper wanted reformation, not revolution. One doesn’t need to read Edmund Burke to see the wisdom of that.

But yet there is something pretty dramatic — in a way, revolutionary — about the claim that God came to Earth in a real human body, died, and was risen as a foretaste of the restoration of creation project God is all about. What Jesus called His Kingdom. What Wright calls, in his brand new one, God’s Homecoming. With Christ the crucified as risen King — “you can trust at God with scars” says Jared Ayers in his book by that name — we are, the Bible says, swept up in the movement, participants in the regime change, fueled by the Holy Spirit power that rose Christ out of the grave.

Here are a handful of books that come to mind that would help you double down on this essential truth. I know you’ll be told on Easter Sunday that the resurrection is everything. Maybe these books will help explore more of what that means and help you live it out.

You may know I love the old Rob Bell video simply called Resurrection. It is so spot on. There’s a line part way through when he stops amidst the visual sizzle and dramatic words about all of life being redeemed and he looks at the camera and asks Do. You. Believe. This?

As you’ve entered the story of God’s passion in these weeks we call Lent and especially when you experience the services of Holy Week and feel the horror of it all anew — for some of us it is reassuring that we are not alone in our suffering and the Holy Week church services are so very meaningful — you will then be primed for the mystery of Holy Saturday and the glories of Easter. It’s too early to say it now, but you know what we will shout on Sunday morning.

So if He is risen (indeed) then, so what?

Here are two handfuls of titles that could help connect some dots or inspire you anew. Some are for those who want sophisticated reading and others are a bit more basic; there is something for everyone. I won’t say as much about them as I could. Order them now and you’ll be glad next week to have some hefty help in being a resurrectionary.

ALL BOOKS 20% OFF

12 about the cross and resurrection

Resurrection: 8 Lessons on How God Restores Us Derek Vreeland (NavPress) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

“Never again will death have the last word.” This is large on the back of this “God in the Neighborhood” Bible study, a really fine and creatively done group study perhaps inspired by the Eugene Peterson paraphrase (from The Message) of John 1 where Christ “moves into the neighborhood.” The first excellent study in this series was Incarnation, followed by Crucifixion, and then this recent Resurrection which leads us through the Easter story where — as they put it — “God joins us in life anew.”

Life anew. I like that. Sounds resurrectionary. Or maybe like that line from the old Anglican and Lutheran liturgy (from Romans 8:4) about “walking in newness of life.”

I’m a fan of Vreeland’s books. He has a degree from Asbury and works with Brian Zahn at Word of Life Church in Missouri. I so appreciated his book Centering Jesus which reminds us that Christian discipleship is about conforming our ways to Jesus, becoming Christ-like. Anyway, he’s a good thinker and fine writer and in this 8-session study we explore the Easter story and how it leads to new life. Part of this newness, this study shows, is our own restoration to wholeness, with and in God.

There’s a small bit of reading and a closing prayer so even if you don’t have a group with whom to study this, you can use it devotionally or in your own bit of quiet time. The Message paraphrase of the Biblical texts keeps this fresh and applicable.

Journey into Joy: Stations of the Resurrection Andrew Walker (Paulist Press) $21.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.56

We only have a few of these in stock but it is a wonderful book — full color art on sturdy, glossy paper — that adapts the classic Roman Catholic “Stations of the Cross” with a set of studies that follow Jesus and his disciples after the resurrection. It’s designed for the 40 days between the Resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, highlighting the different places and ways in which Christ appears.

Not only is this richly illustrated with classic art, graphic quotes, and good design, there are Scripture reflections, poetry and prayer to help “lead the reader into an experience of the profound and transforming joy found in our risen Lord.”

Of the many paintings you’ll find pieces from Caravaggio, Fra Angelico, El Greco, Grunewald and more. Walker’s own good words are enhanced with lines from Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, Maya Angelou, and the powerful poem by Latin American poet and activist Julia Esquivel, “Threatened with Resurrection.” Very nice.

The Bedrock of Christianity: The Unalterable Facts of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection Justin W. Bass (Lexham Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I could say a lot about this short (under 225 trim-sized pages) and punchy book, but suffice it to say it is a really solid argument explaining the evidence for and reliability of the historical information about the death and resurrection of Christ, the very bedrock of faith.  Bass is a good scholar (he’s been in friendly debates with everybody from Bart Ehrman to Mufti Hussain Kamani) and teaches New Testament at in Amman, Jordan.

This is an excellent succinct look at the historical data about Jesus, including a clear summary of what we know about the cruxificition, the resurrection, and the eye-witnesses who encountered him in his new body. The last big chapter is called “The Rise of the Nazarenes” and its a fabulous look at the influence of the followers of Jesus, including brief shou-outs to the great art, literature, music, and social reforms created by followers of Jesus or those in the wake of those living as resurrectionaries down through history. This is informative and useful for anyone, believer or not.

Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life Eugene Peterson (NavPress) $9.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

Speaking of brother Eugene. This little book by Peterson has three short chapters opening up the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Resurrection wonder,  resurrection meals, and resurrection friends. There’s a truly memorable introduction by his son Eric Peterson.  Blurbs include lovely comments by Orthodox writer Frederica Matthews-Green, evangelical spiritual director Ruth Haley Barton, Catholic spiritual writer Susan Muto, Methodist preacher William Willimon, and more.

Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus Wesley Hill (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve talked about the Fullness of Time series endlessly but for those who have missed it, they are a set of seven small, compact hardbacks (curated and edited by Esau McCaulley) reflecting on the history of one season of the church calendar. Done by different folks of a generally Anglican bent, they offers insights about Biblical teaching informing the season and how that shapes the liturgy, habits practices, and spirituality for those who enter into those phases of Christian living. They are not daily devotionals but they are concise and really, really inspiriting. From Advent to Christmas to Epiphany, from Lent and now to Easter, they are all fabulous. The Pentecost one — to be read anytime, of course, but we celebrate the “day of power for all people” in May — by Fr. Emilio Alvarez is good and the most recent — Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth by Amy Peeler is fantastic.

Anyway, if you want a reminder of the Biblical, theological, and spiritual basis of a resurrectionary lifestyle inspired by rituals and habits experienced at church — and why Easter is a full season, not just a single day — I can’t say enough about this wise and celebratory reflection by the great Wes Hill. Order it today.

Wes is an Episcopal priest and energetic professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

Living Easter: 50 Days to Practice Resurrection Laura Kelly Fanucci (Ave Maria Press) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

She starts with the words of St. John Paul II, who said, “We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song!”

What a great idea from this beloved Roman Catholic writer, speaker, and blogger (her Substack is The Holy Labor.) She has been on many Catholic media outlets as well as NPR’s Morning Edition, On Being, and The Kelly Clarkson Show. She is upbeat and down to Earth (and funny; her Substack on surviving cancer is called Not a Caring Bridge But a Compassionate Brigade.)

This is her new book which is a simple but clear-headed, wise set of Biblical reflections on the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus, each arranged with a reflection, a invitation to pray, and an (almost always very practical, do-able) action suggestion. There is brightly colored ink in the headlines and nice paper and a few colorful super graphics. Living Easter captures the spirit of living Easter. She has dual degrees from Notre Dame and an advanced MDiv but keeps this plainspoken and inspirational.

This book is not only thoughtful but also profoundly practical, offering ways to make Easter a daily reality. I recommend it to anyone who longs to carry the light of Easter into every corner of life. — Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP, cohost of the Gosdplaining podcast

The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross Brian Zahnd (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I have written a bit about this before, always saying how beautiful it is, how it includes full color art, that it draws in history and literature and Dylan, of course. (Zahnd is a famous preacher and writer and he knows his Dylan.)  He explains that theologians and anyone who speaks about God must do so at the foot of the cross, that in this singular event, all that we need to know about God is present. I’ve suggested this for Lent, of course, but I think it would be wise to visit it any time. The penultimate chapter is about resurrection  — “The Lamb Upon the Throne”— and the final piece is resurrectionary, a reflection on Christ holding all things together as it says so poetically in Colossians 1.

To the apostolic witnesses, the cross of Christ was never a theory to be solved by theologizing, as if the calculative mind could solve its mysteries through abstraction. The cross can only be narrated, beheld, and shared as a transforming testimony–proclaimed in sermons, symbols, and parables, in the poetry and hymns of lives it has rebirthed. For over four decades, Brian Zahnd has been a poet-preacher-prophet of the cross. I daresay he’s an eyewitness theologian who kneels at its foot. This book is his revelation of who he has seen there. — Bradley Jersak, St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick,  author of A More Christlike Word

The Suffering and Victorious Christ: Towards a More Compassionate Christology Richard Mouw & Douglas Sweeney (Baker Academic) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This short, older book is accessible if on a deep topic. It is asking how it is that the Christ who made all things — include his fellow humans — also suffers with them. That is, it is that “you can trust a God with scars” thing, again. Yes, it is about the cross, but it is also about who Christ is (that’s the “Christology” word in the subtitle) and how Christ’s suffering is part of His glory. And it is about his victory.

What are the lived implications (they have a chapter on “application”) of the idea that the victorious Christ is also the Christ who suffers? Shouldn’t any resurrectionary project or missional sort of discipleship be shaped by the very ways in which Christ is victorious?

Here’s the thing: they get at this bit of “divine empathy” by exploring African American images and the spiritual insights of people of color. They look at Japanese Christians and black theology and listen to the pain of the oppressed. There is an excellent afterword by one of the most astute thinkers about race, Willie James Jennings.

Arise: A 50-Day Journey into the Mystery of the Resurrection Laura Bedingfeld (Sophia Institute Press) $18.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

I have not looked at this big volume much but Bedingfeld’s biblical spirituality has been informed by years of Lectio Divina and careful, prayer and study. She is a dedicated Roman Catholic laywoman (in London) who has written widely about contemplative spirituality and living with theological understanding.

Alfred J. Freddoso, Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame says, “This book promises a depth of understanding that we can translate into concrete resolutions for the daily living out of our role as witnesses of the Resurrection.” Gayle Somers (author of Whispers of Mary: What Twelve Old Testament Women Teach Us About Mary) says it is so wonderfully done that “it will fill your heart with joy and exaltation.”

Resurrection and Renewal: Jesus and the Transformation of Creation Murray A. Rae (Baker Academic) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Murray Rae, with a PhD from the University of London, is a professor of theology and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church Aotearoa, New Zealand. He’s written a lot, and this new one on the renewal wrought by the resurrection is (according to Joel Green) “both learned and theologically formative, even edifying.” Lucy Peppiatt of the Westminster Theological Center says it is “beautifully written, biblically-rooted, and theological rich.” It is heady, but insists that the bodily resurrection truly changes everything.

Allan Torrance (emeritus at University of St. Andrews) says it is “the most important and, indeed, exciting book on the resurrection to have emerged in half a century.”  Wow.

Whispers of Revolution: Jesus and the Coming of God as King Michael Bird (Baker Academic) $39.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

There’s that revolutionary word, again, but I trust Bird so very much I’ll give him a pass. He certainly doesn’t imply we are sweeping away all of history; Bird explore’s how Jesus’s work is a fulfillment of ancient prophecy and that He is Israel’s savior. For him, this Kingdom “revolution” will be a restoration of all creation — not a demolishing but a healing. This is not as spicy and applicable as some of the stuff has done with N.T. Wright — think of Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies — but it shows his academic writing as a historical theologian.  It is said he “forges a path through the tangle of” theories and scholarly debates about the historical Christ to propose the compelling idea that “Jesus was driven by the conviction that through his words and work, his mission and message, God was unveiling his kingdom in a way that would rescue Israel and eventually restore the whole world.”

He studies and explains the relevance of archaeology and Judean history and apocalypticism and “scrutinizes the sayings of Jesus” to show how this man, crucified by the Romans, “became the catalyst for a movement that would defy and then consume the Roman Empire.”

Liberated at the Cross: Peace and Reconciliation in God’s Kingdom Kristel Acevedo (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

 I said something like this a while ago when I commended this as a Lenten study. But, just as much, it is ideal for your group to study together to learn to be cross-centered resurrectionaries. Listen:

I am telling you, I have never seen such a rich and thoughtful small group Bible study on the topic of the cross and the social implications of a theology of atonement for peace and public justice. Okay, I’ve never seen any kind of Bible study on this (although there is a huge body of often academic literature showing how the cross brings both personal justification and cosmic reconciliation, how Christ’s death defeats the principalities and powers, how the victory of Christ in resurrection leads to a Kingdom of healing and restoration, etc. etc. etc.)

If you know that vast literature — whether its the teaching about the cross from John Stott or Ron Sider or James Cone or Jorgen Moltmann or Brian Zahnd or Sylvia Keesmaat or NT Wright or others with their unique contributions — you may have longed for their full-orbed visions of the transformative power of the cross to be offered in accessible Bible study formats. This is it and I am excited and grateful to Kristel Acevedo and to IVP for daring to do such a helpful, radical, faithful resource. Get a bunch and spread the word. This helps unpack what we should have known all along (but usually missed) about the resurrectionary implications of this climax of the Biblical story.

Each section is enhanced with bold super-graphics and bright headlines and cool, colorful design and each week has QR codes that have amazing videos to watch; this is not your father or mother’s fill-in-the-blank Bible study booklet. Nope, this is chock-full of ideas and activities and good, good conversation starters to help you be rooted in the cross and dream for a better world. The best part, of course, is the solid Biblical study you’ll do for six or more sessions. There are review pieces, “self-check” notes, closing prayers and more. Kristel, by the way, is discipleship director at Transformation Church a multiethnic community (pastored by Derwin Gray, author most recently of Lit by Love) near Charlotte NC. Highly recommended.

12 that could be useful for resurrectionary living

A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance Diana Butler Bass (St. Martin’s Essentials) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t believe it, but I believe that thinking about time in a truly Biblically way, cultivating a deeply theologically and spiritually-imbued sense of our calendar is a key to living full of resurrectionary vigor. Hope isn’t a thing that is time-less, abstractly future, but something we live into anticipating the new creation that has actually begun. Now but not yet, we say. To think well about time we need philosophers like Jamie Smith (and his 2022 treasure, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully in the Now) or studies of the church calendar like, say, Sr. Joan Chittister’s The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Advent of the Spirit Life. But for the most immediate way into thinking about time in a renewed way, to have your vision of your year shaped by the liturgical seasons, Bass’s A Beautiful Year is a can’t miss, fabulously written, oh-so-relevant set of reflections about just this. Yes, it starts in Advent but you can dip in anywhere, starting now in her excellent session about Holy Week and then Eastertide. These are very good.

This has been one of our biggest selling books of late last year and early this year, and I am very proud to call Diana a friend and supporter of our work here. I’m biased, true, but I think this book of weekly reflections is a great resource for anyone wanting to live wisely and fruitfully in these days.

In a blurb on the back cover, ecologist and activist Bill McKibben notes that in our cultural moment “many can’t summon the energy or hope required.” That’s why this book is important and how it can help. As Mariann Edgar Budde says, Bass is, “at once a teacher and fellow pilgrim” and “a wondrous guide.”

God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal N.T. Wright (HarperOne) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I won’t say much more about this as I’ve highlighted it a few times. It could be seen as a more thorough, deeply Biblical, sequel to his game-changing Surprised By Hope. The vivid and important subtitle of that one explains this new one, too, it seems: “Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.” You see, this bit about God’s offering future renewal — the very good news of a very wonderful second coming — is central. As it says on the back cover of God’s Homecoming: “Everything changes when you begin to believe God’s plan has never been to leave the world secreted and loves, but to dwell with us.”

Of course the cosmic (that is, creation-wide) restoration of all good stuff is shouted at loudly in bodily resurrection. We’re not waiting around until we die to get to heaven, we are living as new creatures now, full of grace with hints of glory.

I jumped ahead to peek at chapter 14 entitled “Life Beyond Death and the Calling of the Church.” What are we waiting for? We’re going to have to switch up the script a bit (as he notes in chapter 8) and learn to re-read texts more faithfully. We need to think about God, the Bible, and the human vocation in fresh ways. His chapter on worship, evangelism and pray gives plenty to chew on. His chapter on sacraments points towards a deeper understanding of a sacramental universe.  What a book!

What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven? A Visual Guide to Experiencing God’s Kingdom Among Us Skye Jethani (Brazos Press) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I’ve described these cartoony, multicolored, cleverly illustrated field guides to Christian living before. He did What If Jesus Was Serious which was about the Sermon on the Mount and follow that up with What if Jesus Was Serious About Church and What If Jesus Was Serious About Prayer, all wonderful little books falloff resurrectionary zip and clever teaching. Teens would even get a kick out of them, I’d think. Eventually  he did one called What If Jesus Was Serious About Justice which, again, is fun and illustrated, a real visual guide, as he puts to what the Bible demands on us.

The one, What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven is brilliant. It is about the theme of the Kingdom of God and how our final destination is not living as disembodied souls in heaven, but in the return of God to create the new city, a restored culture in a renewed world. This “new heavens and new Earth” is straight Bible, but new to many. To live out of the resurrection experience — as resurrectionaries, as I put it — we must embrace a Kingdom vision. We have to admit that we’ve missed much Jesus’s own teaching about His inauguration of the reign of God.

It may not be exactly right to say this, and I have no idea if Jethani would agree, but in a way, this book is N.T. Wright’s eschatology for beginners. Surprised by Hope and now God’s Homecoming are extraordinary books, accessible and yet a bit demanding. What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven — that is, what he really said and meant — could be your quick introduction tooth’s big picture stuff. It exalts Christ and helps us (especially visual learners) with cartoons and arrows and illustrations and charts. So fun! Let’s go!

Return from Exile and the Renewal of God’s People Nicholas G. Piotrowski (Crossway) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This is another in a series which we’ve sometimes highlighted, Crossway’s “Short Studies in Biblical Theology.” This one explores themes of exile and homecoming, the restoring grace shown to God’s people in several instances in Scripture as the plot unfolds towards the fulfillment of the promises of God. Humankind’s separation from God begins with Adam and Eve exiled from Eden and then “echoes in the events throughout the Bible.” From various characters and even the imagery of tabernacle and temple, there is a promise of return and hope of restoration.

As it says on the back cover, “All of this climaxes in Jesus as he restores his people from exile into the joyful exception of the coming renewal of all things.” In fact, one chapters is called “Jesus into and out of the tomb.”

This little gem of meaty thinking can offer at least one big metaphor for living in these resurrectionary times. Maybe we can start thinking of ourselves (as Walsh & Bouma-Predigar suggest in Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement) as stewards of renewed homes in restored places, anticipating cosmic homecoming from our displacement. The themes in Piotrowski’s little book of Biblical scholarship can fund insightful considerations of new ways to live into this central theme of return and renewal and restoration.

The Last Supper: Conversations That Led to the Cross Will Willimon (Abingdon) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

If I’d been more on top of things I would have realized this came out a few months ago, in time for a perfect Lenten read. Some of you (if your preachers follow the lectionary) were hearing sermons about the parables this season.  And if not, if you are a church-goer, or a Bible reader, you know a bit about the parables, right?

Willimon calls some of the riddles. Every page a blast. His moving introductory chapter I’ve read twice already, it is so rich. He offers these curious reflections on the parables (many quite brilliant) in the context of the time in Jesus’s life when he was heading to Jerusalem. He was heading towards the last supper. It is remarkable how this seasoned preacher and Bible exegete weaves the conversations Jesus was having with his disciples into the very actions of the last supper.

These “conversations that led to the cross” are so good, they are not to be missed. So what if you just did a sermon series of parables — all the better for this fresh take. So what if we’re in the season of Eastertide, living into the power of the resurrection. Part of resurrectionary living is always being grounded by our fundamental story, which certainly climaxes in what we now call Holy Week. So bring it on, anytime. I’ve read a lot of Will Willimon, and this is one of his best in a very long time.

If you journey with Jesus as he heads toward his last meal you’ll have to put up with his riddles.

What kind of Son of God, Prince of Peace, Savior of the World, would end up at super, the night before his death, with a cluster of losers, promising them a place at the table in his coming Kingdom?

This book is your answer.

Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom (revised edition) Walter Brueggemann (Santos Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This was one of the earliest books by the great Walter Brueggemann, written for his UCC community in 1972 (that is, before his ground-breaking Prophetic Imagination or The Land.) It went through a reprint, and, then, a different publisher (Chalice) put it out under the title Peace (in their “Understanding Biblical Themes” series.) Now, Brueggemann’s late-in-life good friend, Conrad Kanagy, put it out in an expended, updated edition that has a new foreword by Walter. I wonder if it was the last major thing he wrote before his death last year.

I was deeply influenced by this book; most of my peace studies were by New Testament scholars and evangelical peaceniks. Brueggemann was not Anabaptist and a vibrant Old Testament guy. His words were life-changing for me, and I am delighted that Conrad got permission from Brueggemann to re-do this book with a fresh reprint.

It seems to me that for anyone who is living in the power of Christ’s resurrection, rooted in His reconciling work through His death on the cross, must work out what they think about being a peacemaker, working for shalom in this fracturedworld. Such peacemakers will help us resist the dangerous idols of Mammon and Mars, will “hunger and thirst” for the righteous of God which, in a word, can easily be summed up as shalom. If we don’t know the many usages of this in Scripture (and the contexts, often military and strategic) we will be ill-prepared to faithfully bear witness to the restoration of creation that God promises.

The Bible attests, writes Brueggemann in his new foreword, “that God is willing and able to tame, domesticate, and finally defeat the power of chaos…” Later, after naming the current threats of chaos, he proclaims that “the gospel is a summons and an empowerment to an alternative.” That’s resurrectionary! Get this book!!

To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times Alan Noble (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We had highlighted this earlier as one to pre-order and it has now arrived (and we sent out copies to those who pre-ordered it.) Skip back a week or two if you’d like to see more of my initial comments. But trust me, Noble is a wise and good writer, somebody you will enjoy reading and appreciate for his clarity and insight. He’s culturally savvy, deeply Biblical, a bit of a philosopher — he’s a literature professor, actually — and yet deeply practical. His previous book was about emotional health and psychic and moral resilience, called On Getting Out of Bed, which I myself found reassuring and helpful.

This new one is fantastic, direct and no-nonsense, a study of virtue. If we are going to be resurrectionaries, pushing for God’s reform in all areas of life — honoring our place in history, making peace with the proximate, alive to the Spirit’s dreams — we are simply going to have to be deeper, better people. We have to live well.

One of the marketing pieces from the publisher said, “You were told to live a meaningful life but n one ever told you how.”  We are exhausted from the competing messages, with little clarity about what really matters and how to embody coherent values. In To Live Well you’ll be helped with explanations of our fragmented culture (and the mixed messages we get and the battering of our attention.) He writes about our moral imagination and true, human flourishing.

I love the simple structure of this with titles about renewed habits and conscientious practices. (That Justin Whitmel Earley wrote the foreword says something of the practical edge to this.) The chapters are Choosing Decisively, Acting Justly, Suffering Steadfastly, Living Moderately, Believing Soundly, Hoping Resolutely,  and Loving Rightly.

Near the end he writes, “As society continues to spin away from any sort of central moral standard, and as norms continue to shift, we will continue to feel an aching anxiety about what it means to live as a full human person.”  This means we need community, we need to be aware of our own failures embracing a God-based perseverance; we need grace.

Better Than Normal: Virtues for an Off-Script Life MaryAnn McKibben Dana (Eerdmans) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

If the carefully-written, sober book by Alan Noble (a Baptist university professor) seems a bit heavy, then this one— written by a mainline denominational pastor and stand up comic — might be more your speed. I love her assumption in this brand new release that “normal is a myth — and recognizing that truth can free us all.” If the world is obsessed with fitting in, Better Than Normal gives us a better image, a better way, a vision of knowingly not fitting in. (Didn’t the Bible say something about being “non conformed.”) Think of MLK’s call to be righteously “maladjusted.”

I was captivated by Dana’s first book, a fun memoir called Sabbath in the Suburbs and really enjoyed her book called God, Improv, and the Art of Living. A few years ago she did Hope: A User’s Manuel. She is an associate pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon, VA, a generous PC(USA) church that underscores the essential dignity of all. It seems to be a “better than normal” community.

In Better Than Normal McKibben Dana shares a bit about the mental health struggles in her family and critiques how society shapes our understanding of worthiness and belonging. As it says on the back (I haven’t read it yet as it just came a day ago) “Her expansive vision encompasses anyone living outside society’s narrow bounds: neurodivergent individuals, LGBTQ+ people, racial minorities, those with disabilities and more. And she demonstrates that liberation comes not from adjusting to dominant culture, but from creating spaces where all people can thrive authentically.”

Here’s are the chapters, three in each of two sections.

• Part 1: Individual Values
• 1. From Certainty to Curiosity
• 2. From Comfort to Courage
• 3. From Productivity to Presence
• Part 2: Communal Values
• 4. From Artifice to Authenticity
• 5. From Blandness to Beauty
• 6. From Competition to Community
• Perhaps we could describe this as an upbeat guide to “the collective work of transformation.”

Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God Malcolm Guite (Square Halo Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Oh my, surely we know that a part of bearing witness to the newness Christ is bringing to His fallen world is a renewed focus on goodness and beauty. We simply must have the renewed mind (as Romans 12:2 calls it) and more generally, must work to place ourselves under the influence of those who will stoke our imaginations in life-giving ways. There are so many books these days about the arts and creativity, about renewing our efforts to promote the allusive gifts of imagination and play. Not all of us are artists, of course, but we all are call to steward and cultivate the imaginative sides of our lives. We need novels and paintings, poets and singers, potters and playwrights. You get the picture.

Malcolm Guite is a world-class poet from the UK (we stock all of his poetry volumes) who has also given considerable time pondering a Christian aesthetic. He wonders about the imagination and seems to be on a quest. (Some think he may actually be some sort of hobbit.) His work, here, now in this lovely short book, was originally given as dynamic lectures at Regent College in British Columbia; these presentations have been handsomely compiled and illustrated with all kinds of great art — old etchings by Blake and modern charcoal by Wayne Forte and handsome woodcuts by Stephen Cross and a famous illustration of The Prodigal Son by Rembrandt, and more. He gives rightful kudos to Square Halo Books for releasing this important contribution, sort of a foundation for his poetic work.

You may recall that I invited folks to pre-order Guite’s now brand new Galahad and the Grail, so very handsomely done by Rabbit Room Press ($34.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99.) It is the first time in over a century that a poet has done an epic ballad telling the whole Knights of the Roundtable, Guinevere, Lancelot and King Arthur stories. We heard him lecture on this last week and it fired our imaginations greatly. We have some autographed copies left, if anybody wants to order them at our 20% off. Galahad, by the way, is the first of a projected four volume set that will come out over the next two years. This first one is one of the most handsome and well-made books I’ve seen this year.

Anyway, for resurrectionaries needing a short but weighty reminder or some guidance about a faithful use of our imaginations, the four talks in Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by Malcolm Guite might be good for you. The chapters are, “Imagination and the Kingdom of God”, “Christ and the Artistic Imagination”, “Christ and the Moral Imagination”, and “Christ and the Prophetic Imagination.”

In an epilogue Malcolm cites a Blake poem and reminds us that “all prophetic art is intended to arouse us and stir us to action. How do we awake from the deadly sleep?” This is the resurrectionary question — how do we lift the veil?  Pondering this book is part of the answer.

Made to Belong: Five Practices for Cultivating Community in a Disconnected World David Kim (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose sometime I should do a whole BookNotes column about living in community, about relationships transformed and healed, about church life and such. From the classic Life Together by Bonhoeffer to the treasure Living Into Community by the late Christine Pohl, there are so, so many good ones. Just yesterday we got The Way Back to One Another: How to Live as People Created for Community by Jeff Galley & Phillip N. Smith (IVP; $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19. One of the authors is a central Pennsylvania guy and it looks really good.)

For this list, I want to list something for resurrectionaries who want to make a difference in their lives, living well for God’s Kingdom without falling into quietude and personalism on one hand or zealous revolutionary idealism on the other. How do we keep our spirits up in these crazy times? How do we discern what is ours to do? How do we continue on in spiritual practices that are hard (even if life-giving and transformative in the long haul.) Where can we find healing from our wounds and brokenness? How do we really become resurrectionaries in practice?

One part of the answer is that we simple have to have a band of friends around us to help us on the Christian journey. As every such books insists, we cannot go it alone. The Christian life is by definition a matter of being enfolded intern alternative community, a fellowship of friends, a support network, a life-shaped tribe. Each and every one of us needs supportive community.

David Kim’s book is one of the best we’ve seen on this question about how community can help shape our deepened discipleship. Sure, we have the felt need of a “great ache of loneliness” and community is the antidote to that. (Justin Earley’s Made for People: Why We Drift Into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship [$19.99 // $15.99] is a great resource on that — highly recommended. )

Made To Belong is ideal for reading alone or in a group, and it seems to me to have an air of resurrection about it. That is, you can do this! It is positive. These are practices taken up by those who believe God is at work in the world and want to participate in Christ’s redemptive mission. Kim draws from Biblical wisdom and has plenty of personal stories. It’s a good read. He has experience in pastoral ministry and he knows how to guide us into how to get involved with others, on how to really belong. From research about best practices to theology and spiritual formation to practical guidance, Made to Belong shares plenty.

He offers five simple, powerful practices for creating a meaningful and transformative community. I am sure that this book will help you deepen your relationship with others and you relationship with God.

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

I quipped a previous time I highlighted Steve’s important and altogether lovely recent book that I was going to keep telling folks about it, over and over, if needs be. I really do think, in ways perhaps to complicated to explain here, that it is a very rare books, unique in it’s impact and extraordinary for the ways in which those who love it become very humble but devoted fans of Steve and his work. Part of it is that Steve evokes a seriousness of relationships on line and in his rigorous speaking schedule. If somebody wants to take ideas serious, if someone is seeking coherent and meaning and stamina for living meaningfully in our time, in their own ways and places, he will talk. He will stay in touch. He will recommend books and articles. (He will send them to us, sometimes, so we can be their personal bookseller.) He wants quite earnestly to be of service so the words he labored over come to life in the lives of readers.

The heart of this book seems resurrectionary to me. That is, he is asking, even if we are alive in the power of the Spirit, shaped by vibrant worship, aligned with the risen Lord, there is, for most of us, the very tough question of how we sustain what Peterson’s famous book calls us to: a long obedience in the same direction. How do we keep on keeping on, knowing what we know about the brokenness of the world. Can our story be sustained by framing it by the bigger Story of all stories?

The lovely cover hints at a story early in the book about Steve’s love of seashells. He’s eloquent in showing how beauty shines through the brokenness of each one. Drawing on great literature and film he draws us in, over and over, to visions that can sustain us for the long haul. He tells wonderful stories from around the world, many which are woven together in such as way that they would resonate deeply with each other. He will write of an urban doctor who cares for the homeless or a fabulous vignette about his hero John Perkins or a window into the lives of those working in the Telos Group who labors for peacemaking among Israeli’s and Palestinians, brave folks who offer goodness day and night, and then he’ll highlight the Japanese art form using broken pottery called kintsugi, as told by Mako Fujimura. The book covers so much — it meanders a bit, in the best way — but hangs together to help readers deeply understand and cultivate this way of seeing.

A chapter called “Love in the Ruins” (swiping from Walker Percy) maybe says it best.

The book looks hard at this sad world but it is — get this! — not bleak. It is full of hope and invites us to habits of hopefulness that will endure. His key is “making peace with the proximate” and you’ll have to read the book to get all the nuances and wisdom of that.

Can we continue on in hope of the coming restoration by living into the resurrection now, bit by bit, honoring the deepest realities of life? With gladness of heart, even, yes, indeed.  Without simplistic formulas or more to-do lists, Hints of Hope is a book to live with in this season of joy.

Resurrection & Contemporary Spirituality: Navigating Faith in an Uncertain World edited by David Ponta & Amanda Avila Kaminski (Paulist Press) $32.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.36

This is an academic book for serious scholars of theology and spirituality, maybe what might seem a tad arcane, but the title makes it too good not to share in this list. The overarching question in this anthology of 13 chapters (and a fine epilogue by Philip Sheldrake) is what the relationship is between the facts and creedal affirmation of the resurrection of Christ and our own spiritual lives in the “the secular age.” In the heady but captivating preface they suggest the book is seeking “A Resurrection Spirituality: An Easter Imagination for Everyday Life.” See what I mean! So apropos and so exciting.

The book Resurrection and Contemporary Spirituality offers a wide-ranging and appreciative conversation  with Sandra Schneiders,

The first major chapter is, in fact, by the world class scholar Sandra Schneiders, a nun with degrees in philosophy, patristics, New Testament, and spirituality from prominent Catholic institutions like Institute Catholique in Paris and the Gregorian in Rome who taught at an important Jesuit school in Santa Clara, California.  Her opening piece is called “Christian Spirituality in an Age of Uncertainty” which sets the stage. The next chapter is a response to Schneiders (by Bernard McGinn of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago) called “Insights from the Easter Sermons of Three Mystics” (which briefly looks at Easter messages from Augustine, Gregory, and Eckart.)

More substantive is “The Transfigurative Hermeneutics of Sandra Schneiders: A Strategy for Transformative Knowing in an Age of Deconstruction and Despair” by Amanda Avila Kaminski (who notes that trauma is “the zeitgeist of a generation” which calls forth “the theopoetics of possibility.” In her hands the Transfiguration becomes a metaphor for “seeing and unseeing.” Kaminski, like Schneiders, is attuned to the suffering of this world and yet says “her work is a tour de force in the theopoetics of hope, one not passively awaiting for further eschatological glory or triumphalistically proclaiming political power or economic might. She asks: if we cannot see here camped in the midst of misery then where?”

There are other good, academical pieces, laden with the strengths and weaknesses of this genre of writing. But a few are clear and delightful.  Lauren Winner has a wonderful chapter on resurrection and prayer. Her vignettes are super smart — as always she weaves together insights from her wide reading — and colorful. She prays in graveyards and art museums.

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BookNotes

We love selling books this time of year as folks think about children’s books to give as Easter gifts; we even hear about Easter baskets and books given out at egg hunts and more. What fun

I trust you saw last week’s listing of eight excellent books to pre-order (some of which, like the new James KA Smith (Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark), The Pastor as Gardener (by Matthew Erickson) and Mako and Haijin Fujimura’s Beauty & Justice have already arrived. Others on that list include the forthcoming Kate Bowler, Michael Gorman, Malcolm Guite, Alan Noble, and Tish Harrison Warren.

For now, here are a few newer Easter books for children. Did I hear something about Easter baskets??

By the way, I’ve written about children’s books for this time of year HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE (among other times.) The discounts on these remains 20% off even if the older prices may have changed…

(MOSTLY) NEW EASTER BOOKS

God’s Colorful Easter: The Good News Is for Everyone Esau McCaulley, illustrated by Rogeria Colho (Tyndale Kids) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I hope you recall my enthusiastic highlighting of a handful of recent children’s Bibles (see HERE) in which we celebrated Rev. Esau McCaulley’s God’s Colorful Kingdom Storybook Bible which not only has multi-racial characters (as most kids books do these days) but draws out the multi-ethnic themes and trajectories in the Bible itself. From the very beginning, the back cover says, “God’s plan has been for a beautifully diverse family.” This new Easter edition has new content and a newly designed set of great illustrations from the bigger Bible. This engaging re-telling doesn’t start with Holy Week, but with Simon and the death of Jesus. Of course it explains the resurrection, the reaction of His followers, has a page on the Great Commission and a final page about how we are Christians today because somebody spread the good news. The story starts by pointing out that Simon, who helped Jesus carry his cross, had traveled from Northern Africa.The last pages ask kids if they remember that part of the story, recalling that Christ’s followers are all different colors from every continent! Yay.

The Great Waking Up: The Story of Easter Sarah Shin, illustrated by Shin Maeng (Waterbrook) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I love so many children’s Bible stories and appreciate so many great Easter tales. I listed some of our favorites in previous columns (see the links above.) Yet, I sometimes wonder how to communicate to little ones the remarkable news that Jesus came back to life, resurrected, after his death. Saying the tomb was empty may not make sense. New life can become a metaphor detached from Christ’s bodily resurrection and defeat of Death. This new one might be one of my all-time favorites.

Sarah Shin (author of the excellent Beyond Colorblind, by the way) did her previous children’s book about Christmas called The Deliverer Has Come. With Shin Maeng’s Korean art and Shin’s storytelling chops, this new one brings the Jewish girl Anastasia back as she tells about her favorite dream, which she calls “The Great Waking Up” (the day when there will be no more death.)

This amazing little book tells movingly about stories that should help us anticipate the resurrection and which informed Anastasia’s dream, namely  Ezekiel’s dream of dead bones coming to life, of the healing of Jairus’s daughter, and of the healing of Jesus’s friend, Lazarus. This girl knows the stories of hope from her Scriptures and friends but when Jesus is killed she is bereft. But, wait? Jesus is alive?? Is this the beginning of the “great waking up”? This nice book explains the big picture dream of dreams and how it comes true in Jesus’s resurrection. As a bonus there are a handful other Scripture’s she offers at the end, inviting kids to study more. And don’t miss the symbolism and special scenes embedded in the outfits and landscapes. This book is amazing.

Jesus’s Easter Journey: A Resurrection Story Carine MacKenzie, illustrated by Daniele Fabbri (Christian Focus) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

This Scottish Bible teacher has done dozens and dozens of often small paperback children’s books, usually Bible stories, inexpensive and solid. As a conservative Reformed thinker, she is impeccable about being true to the text and yet has a charming storytelling style. Nothing clever or made up, just a re-telling of Scriptural stories. We appreciate her style and found this one to be pretty unique. It has the “cleansing of the temple” during Jesus’s last week, a goo description and explanation of the last supper, and other vivid scenes (the prayer in Gethsemane, is moving, the betrayal by Peter isn’t often told.) It’s a marvelous, accurate story with tremendously artful but pretty realistic art stylings.

Here is one unique feature and I hope this doesn’t turn you off; this publishing house, or at least this pair of writer and illustrator, don’t believe we should speculate on the look of Jesus. If we are Trinitarian and take the gospels and Christian theology serious, Jesus is God. And we dare not make images, they insist, so there are no illustrations of Jesus in these excellent, allusive renderings. The text is thorough but advisable and the artwork is good. Agree or not with their conscience on the prohibition of painting pictures Jesus, this book is very nicely done, and will make for nice conversations with children as you read it to them.

Sparrow’s Easter Garden Roger Hutchison, illustrated by Ag Jatkowska (Beaming) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I’m not going to lie — I wasn’t sure about this one. Roger Hutchison has done some excellent books on depression, some about using the arts, allusive and thoughtful. He has another really great book for children called Sparrow’s Prayer (where other animals teach him ways to pray when he can’t quite work up the energy to sing or be grateful.) In this new one, Sparrow is eager to get the garden spruced up for Easter. They’ve got 40 days and every animal helps. (Kids will love seeing Buck, the deer, using his antlers to dig up the ground for seeds.) But on Good Friday, a storm blows in and all the creatures are scared. Will the garden even survive? It’s seems like the end of their dream. They’ve got work to do, but on “Holy Saturday they rest.”

As you might guess there is a moral to the story with the rain and wind helping to cultivate the ground causing the seeds to blossom just in time for an Easter celebration. The animal friends “gasp in joy.” “After forty days of tilling the soil, planting seeds, and waiting with hope, new life blooms in the morning light.” And what a happy, colorful scene it is.

The last spread has these words:

They share stories and bless their food, and the hardworking friends enjoy the gift of the garden with their neighbors.

Quietly at first, Sparrow begins singing. One by one, the others join in, their hallelujah’s filing the morning sky.

Twas the Morning of Easter Glenys Nellist, illustrated by Elena Selivanova (Zonderkidz) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is not brand new, like most I’ve listed here, but I had to share it. It came out in 2021 and yet somehow many don’t know it. It is richly illustrated — I love the style and respect the Russian illustrator very much — and it follows the cadence of the classic “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” It is not overly forced and it is not cheesy. But it does have that clever play on the famous piece by Clement Clark Moore. I hope you enjoy hearing about it here.

I was happy to previously highlight Nellist and Selivanova’s Twas the Season of Advent: Devotions and Stories for the Christmas Season and her most recent, The Season of Lent: Devotions and Stories for the Lenten and Easter Seasons.

You may know her tremendous “Love Letters from God” series of books that have little letters from God to the children tipped into a little envelope. They are so nice! Try the updated Easter Love Letters from God Bible Stories illustrated very nicely by Sophie Allsopp (Zonderkids; $16.99 // $13.59.)

Perfect Peace Child Steve Richardson, illustrated by Sarah Nunnally (William Carey LIbrary – Mission Kids) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Do you know the true story of how God used the Sawi people’s own tradition — giving a baby to make peace with an enemy people — to show them that Jesus is God’s peace child? Set in New Guinea this tells this famous missionary story which, as they say on the back, “invites children to see how God’s love brings deep-down-forever peace anywhere in the world.”

I love how this story offers a creative way to understand the nature of Jesus’s reconciling work. Plus, there’s a little lizard on every page.

Jesus, Our True Friend: Stories to Fill Your Heart With Joy Sally Lloyd-Jones, illustrated by Jago (Zonderkidz) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

The last chapter of this lovely, recently released book from the beloved creators of The Jesus Storybook Bible (“where every chapter whispers his name”) is about the post-resurrection story about Jesus making breakfast on the beach for his disciples. It offers several other well told gospel stories and ends with this marvelous event.

Hooray for children’s writer Sally Lloyd-Jones (she has done over 40 books!) and the very creative designer and artist, Jago who has worked with her on The Jesus Storybook Bible.  As you can tell from the title, it is a more limited telling of a few stories about Jesus. And I’d say it is for younger children maybe 4 – 8 or so.

Jesus Our True Friend is slightly larger than most children’s picture books and the colors are vivid and while not exactly whimsical, certainly done with verve. Like the writing, which is bright and conversational, theologically informed, and utterly charming. It starts with a creative paraphrase of parts of John 1.  I love this.

As it says on the back,

The Bible tells the wonderful story of how God loves His children and comes to rescue them. And at the heart of that story is a young hero — the Great Rescuer, Jesus, God’s own Son. He stepped out of Heaven and came to live with us and show us what love is really like.

Stories include The Party That Went Wrong, Our True Friend, The Two Sisters Jesus Loved, Jesus and the Stone Throwers, Jesus and the Deadly Storm, Our True Older Brother, and Breakfast on the Beach.

As she notes in the beginning — on a wonderful page written to “children and their grown-ups” — these are seven Good News stories. “They come from the time when Jesus was on Earth. They start with a party and end with breakfast!” Then she says, earnestly, “I hope they fill your hearts with joy.”

We do too.

Keep Us This Day: A Morning Prayer for All God’s Children / Keep Us This Night: An Evening Prayer for All God’s Children Todd R. Hains, illustrated by Natasha Kennedy (Lexham Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Here is what we wrote when we first announced this “Fat Cat” book:

This is one of these great flip books that can be read first one way, and then you turn it over and upside down and the second half is read, also front to back. A delight, no matter which end you start with!

Keep Us This Day / Night is one of the handful of FatCat books that we regularly promote and we’re glad for this gently liturgical resource, offering the rhythms of morning prayer and evening prayer for the child, her energetic family, siblings and, of course, the hidden cat on every page spread.

One need not be Lutheran to appreciate this, but the twin prayers in this book are drawn from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, published in 1529. The simple phrases are drawn from Psalm 31:5, Psalm 91:11 and Psalm 121.  Hooray.

Another neat part of this book is that the family in the story is Korean, so there is some Korean language print besides the English type, and you will notice it in the home-life scenes. A fabulous book in so many ways, mature, if simple! Kudos.

The Art of Holy Week & Easter: Meditations on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Sister Wendy Beckett (SPCK / IVP) $17.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39ß

While this obviously is not a children’s book you may know older kids or teens who enjoy good art. This is a devotional rich in color, different styles of vital art pieces, with expert commentary by the late, great art historian, Sister Wendy. I hope you know the someone thicker The Art of Lent…

CHILDREN’S STORYBOOK BIBLES? Want a fresh new children’s Bible with great art and thoughtful re-telling of the Bible stories? Check out this column we did not too long ago. If you want a real, full Bible with study notes for kids, reach out to us on our inquiry page or shoot me an email at read@heartsandmindsbooks.com. Knowing what translation you prefer is a good start… we’re happy to help, eager to serve.

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BookNotes

I am deep in a reading groove on a couple of topics and I can’t wait to tell you soon; there are a couple of really captivating and important works I will be recommending soon enough.

For now, though, I’m very eager to promote a couple of titles that will be among the best of 2026. What a stellar early Spring we’re looking at, at least among the sorts of authors you expect us to highlight. There are others and I hate to exclude fine books, but I want to list the very best.

Here are 8 titles that you can pre-order from us now.

Use the order tab below.

I could have listed more good ones soon afoot but these are sort of the cream of the crop for our readers. Truly, you can’t go wrong with any of these. I’ve read several advanced manuscripts, and even among those we haven’t seen (some publishers are more helpful for their authors and bookstores than others) in most cases I know the authors and their unfolding work well enough that I can promise you that these are worth having.

If you are ordering more than one (as surely you should) please tell us if you want us to send one now and the others later or if you want us to hold off and consolidate them. Note the release dates shown.

ALL BOOKS MENTIONED ARE 20% OFF.  PRE-ORDER TODAY.

The Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry Matthew Erickson (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59  – RELEASE DATE MARCH 24, 2026

I say this sometimes and I really, really mean it. I’m not a pastor (not even close) and yet I adored this book, thrilled by its wonderful insights and its glowing prose. I knew it would be extraordinary a few paragraphs into the wonderful foreword by Winn Collier of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Seminary in Hope, Michigan I almost want to say that Winn’s exquisite, solid, insightful, knowing words are themselves worth the price of admission. He sets us up with high expectations for The Pastor as Gardener and Erickson delivers.

Yet, this rhetoric of expectations and delivering isn’t even quite right as part of the thesis of this marvelous book is that pastoring and church work is not a matter of delivering the goods, let alone positioning for a career in which one can be measured with the typical American metrics of success. Gardeners mess in the dirt with hopeful patience. That’s my own cheesy illustration but you get the idea: Erickson draws the metaphor of gardener out in profound and wise way, inviting pastors — and those who they serve, maybe specially those who hire and oversee them — to see themselves as gardeners. Not that different than another agrarian rabbi in the first century who describe this work as shepherding.

Matthew Erickson, curiously —Wendell Berry fan that he is — pastors an urban church in Milwaukee. I believe the book will appeal to any pastor rural or urban or suburban, small or larger. Frankly, it’s a blast whether you like gardening or not.

Pastor and pastoral writer Mandy Smith (author of The Vulnerable Pastor) says The Pastor as Gardener, laden with the same kind of plant-life imagery Jesus used to explain his Kingdom, “helps us grow our capacity for embracing those kingdom ways and remembering how to partner with miraculous things.”

This is profound stuff, a counter-veiling voice against many of the expectations of pastoral service these days, inviting us all to slow down, to deepen our concerns about pastoral integrity and formation. It offers keen insights about how to nurture a “pastor-gardener.” Erickson says:

“We kneel with our hands in the soil of pastoral ministry, finding connection with those who have done this work before us and those who will do it after we are gone. We learn from Jesus, who is simultaneously the seed, the vine, and the gardener.”

To be clear, The Pastor as Gardener is not a simplistic read or quaint devotional. There is substance here, Biblical, theological, spiritual, and cultural. Think of some of the best work of Eugene Peterson — he’s in that mode, and it is rare for me to suggest as much. It is clear from his amazingly good recommended reading appendix that he has spent time with some of the best writers of our time (and plenty ancients as well.) His appendix has a dozen books or so under several categories from agrarianism to pastoral care to church life to ecotheology. It’s really wonderful.

He says that hope is the defining virtue of the pastor-gardener. Again, this is so good that if you are a pastor you need this book. If you are involved in church life, care about pastors, know anybody in ministry, you should buy this for them.  If you happen to be in a collegial pastors group, this would be a great book to read together.

The Pastor as Gardener is a lovely thing. We all know that a pastor is a shepherd, but the image of the Christian life as a garden–a garden that thrives with careful tending–is also embedded in Scripture and in Christian tradition, as Matthew Erickson shows us in this quietly, deeply, sweetly meditative book. His account is capable of bringing great refreshment to anyone called to ministry, but it is also illuminating for lay Christians, in or out of the pews. — Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path Unknowing James K. A. Smith (Yale University Press) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40 – RELEASE DATE MARCH 24, 2026

Sometimes when I’m telling about an author that I’m terribly enamored with or think is important for all of us I explain his or her earlier works, why they were formative for me, why you should know them. I say something about where they worked, what caused them to write what they did and how it all matters. You can put Jamie Smith’s name into the search engine at our BookNotes archives at our website and discover several such missives. I’ve appreciated his books for decades and have read all his popular ones and a couple of his technical philosophic ones. (He is a professional philosopher and some his books are quite scholarly.) I say often that his You Are What You Love is a must-read for all of us.

Smith teaches philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids and he has done generative philosophical work, largely on the postmodern school of thought known broadly as phenomenology. And, importantly he had done popular level, collections of essays about cultural engagement, books on worship, on political life, on time.

One of his themes in recent years has been how our embodied life of habits and practices — he calls them “cultural liturgies” — informs how we life, shaping the story of which we think we are apart. As these cultural liturgies shape our vision, our imagination, the direction we have as we seek a good life (even the meaning of a good life) we move from a worldview of dogma and ideas to being propelled by a deeper sort of “under the hood” desire. We are not primarily what we think, but what we love.

Which, if you follow with even a little bit of philosophical awareness, leads to a question (some might frame it as a crisis) of knowing. What do we really know? Where does certainty come from? If truth (Biblically speaking) is less a set of ideas to intellectually assent to but a Person, if we know (as Proverbs 23 put it) with our hearts, doesn’t that sort of deconstruct the very foundations of much of Western philosophy? Does it leads us to embrace mysticism? Or at least an imagination shaped by the arts?

Exactly. Who would have thunk it, but this professional philosopher and expert reader of all manner of scholarly texts, came to a crisis —his description his depression is chilling and vulnerable — and he embraced books like The Cloud Unknowing and, of course, Saint John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and The Interior Castle of Julian of Norwich.

Smith’s project in this book — I’m on my second time through — is to invite us to explore “how radical uncertainty can be liberating, opening us to another way of being.” In Make Your Home… he draws deeply on films, novels, poetry, and art pieces and his description of these is exceptional, informed and deeply felt. (Maybe you recall these sorts of moving deep dives from when he was the editor of the arts journal, Image.)

As the back cover of the advanced reader’s copy puts it, “Smith speaks to the fundamental. Yearnings that persist in late modernity, including the philosophical quest for knowledge and certainty.” But, brilliantly, I think, he shows that the gifts of the contemplative tradition (not to mention the allure of artists and their insightful, allusive work) can “embody a liberating spirituality that recovers the fullness of being human.”

Jamie opens the book with a vivid telling of his Pentecostal years as a very young itinerant preacher. He apologizes for some of his harsh sermonizing, in a way nodding to the damages many of felt in the past generation of combative evangelicalism. He may be alluding, too, what one of his mentors, Calvin Seerveld, discusses in a chapter called “The Hurts of Worldview” in a book called After Worldview. In any case, he is grieved that he once was that guy, and even has his reputation as a Christian postmodern scholar rose, he knew something was missing.  This is the journey of his discovery, reading medieval mystics (and moderns like Thomas Merton) in the twenty-first century.

I loved this book, even though it stretched me intellectually. You see, once he has given himself over to this contemplative spiritual posture, this being at peace with not knowing (at least not knowing in the modernist propositional sense) and knowing more deeply by way of allusion and mysticism, then his question is (if I might paraphrase) what does it mean for my vocation of being a philosopher? And how do I teach philosophy in light of what I now realize about this mystical epistemology?

So, again, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark is not primarily an introduction to the contemplative tradition. We have books by and about the medieval mystics and lots of accessible books about the contemplative way — think of Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster or Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton or the deep trilogy by Martin Laird (Into the Silent Land, ) — but is more his grappling with the worldviewish implications of all of this, As such he explores the likes of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Derrida, Heidegger. In the excellent introduction he cites the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.”

Despite these scholarly discussion, the book is lively and lovely. Early on he learns from the fiction Reverend John Ames, of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. And there is a spectacle transcript of a speech given by Leo McGarry in a memorable scene from The West Wing. And you’ll be fascinated as he tells of the “wild ride” of the opening sequence of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev. I’d say this whole book is a wild ride.

Do you know what famous mystic counseled to “make your home in this darkness.. stay there as long as you can” from which Smith drew his title? Buy this book and you will. And maybe, just maybe, you will want to take him up on the advice. Hang on.

Beauty + Justice: Creating a Life of Abundance and Courage Haejin Fujimura & Makoto Fujimura (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99 – RELEASE DATE APRIL 7, 2026

This is a book I’ve been eager to tell you about. I was so, so glad when Beth and I were with Haejin & Mako (at a conference for lawyers — that’s her gig and he just was along for fun) and they told us about this book they were doing together. She has long been a respected acquaintance, doing good work in the legal profession (and engaging in anti-trafficking efforts.) She understands deeply the call to serve God in one’s career and vocations and has been a leader in calling professionals to a Christ-like cost of discipleship in public life.

Mako, of course, is world-renowned as a visionary abstract painter and has written widely about faith and the arts; his last two, on Yale University Press, are Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (with a foreword by N.T. Wright) and Art Is…A Journey into the Light.

One of his first published pieces is an excellent chapter in a collection edited by Ned Bustard entitled It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God; I read it years ago and I was immediately drawn to it.

After the horrors of 9-11 happened in his neighborhood in lower Manhattan, Mako, already busy as a painter, started writing about art and peacemaking, how art offers an allusive, creative gift for those in grief, even in the rubble of the destruction. Those “refractions” as he called his post-9-11 essays we published beautifully by Navpress; they have recently been reissued in an anniversary hardback, still entitled Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture. Ever since those early pieces I knew Mako was an artist who cared deeply not only about aesthetics and his craft but also about what we might rather prosaically called the social responsibilities of the artist. Or, as Calvin Seerveld’s fine anthology puts it, how might we offer Redemptive Art in Society? Can art (again to site a title by Seerveld) “bear fresh olive leaves”, like the dove from Noah’s ark, indicating signs of life?

In 2016 Fujimura released Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering which is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. It tells of his own conversion to faith, in part, while in Nagasaki, Japan (we know the horrors of the bombing there on August 9th 1945) and, more, encountering the place where Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo wrote Silence, which was later made into a movie by Martin Scorsese. Again, this shows his passion and wisdom about relating faith to the questions of creativity and the arts in the context of the harsh and broken world in which we live. Can faith be born of great suffering and can that faith offer something akin to beauty?

Perhaps even shalom?

To see a justice worker and an artist — who love each other deeply and work together wonderfully — combine to reflect together on the relationship of justice and beauty (with stories from all over the world) is so exciting and so needed. We praise God in heaven for this amazing couple and this extraordinary book.

(Interestingly, they note in the introduction that their marriage is cross-cultural. Mako was born in Boston from Japanese parents and Haejin was born in South Korea and moved to the states only as a teen. As they put it, “Japan and Korea have had an acrimonious relationship throughout their history; as such, our marriage represents beauty born out of the fractures of sister nations.” Nothing is as easy as it looks, eh? And yet even hard things can become signals of transcendence, point the way into God’s coming Kingdom.)

I suspect you may know this, but I’ll say it for the record: there is no other accesible book like this written from a deeply Christian orientation. They draw on the important, brief (and heady) book On Beauty and Being Just by Dr. Elaine Scarry (published in 1999 by Princeton University Press) but there is no title which does what this book does. There is no book that I know of that even comes close of Beauty + Justice.

When a global justice activist like Gary Haugen (founder and CEO of International Justice Mission) says Haejin and Mako “bring invigorating new insights that I hope will encourage many toward renewed partnership with God in his mission to end violence and make all things new” you know you have a very important book. Haugen travels the world fighting some of the worst evil that exists and he reads deeply and is a man of great prayerfulness. When he says that the reflections in Beauty and Justice have brought deep refreshment to my soul” that is really saying something!

I love the one-word titles of many of the chapters — they are attention grabbing but sometimes gentle, allusive and artful, even. After early chapters on experiencing and creating beauty and on experiencing and seeking justice, there are chapter titles like Estuary, Grit, and Generosity. There is a fascinating chapter largely about “creating beauty out of ashes” called “Generational Stewardship” and their bit on “New Wineskins” is not to be missed.

Can we trust God’s abundance? Can we foster “the courage to do the slow work of justice”? I wonder: is there a connection between the slow art of Mako’s Nihonga style and the patience needed for those who work for proximate justice?  Mako wrote the lovely, deep forward to Steve Garber’s much discussed Hints of Hope and that seems to inform some of Haejin’s insights about law and justice as well.

Her insights into the need for healthy, God-evoking rhythms in her law practice are exceptional and wise for any of us in hectic workplaces. She writes about her generative environment (including daily time for prayer) and her own “Emmaus Road experiences.” I so enjoyed hearing of her own call to the practice of law and her maturity in learning about mishaps and tsedaquah, Hebrew words rooted in the laws of God.

Their mutual reflections on paintings— especially the work of George Rouault — is nothing short of inspiring. I don’t get out much to museums and rarely see live art. But, oh, their telling of it was a gift.

They speak of the glories of the extraordinary and the mundane. They work for shalom, for the realization of God’s new creation. Beauty, in fact, can bring healing and hope and if you never fully understood that, this book will be a great joy and bring you confidence. Beauty + Justice is a great book, serious but not needlessly academic, and not too long. (It is under 150 pages.) You should pre-order it now and consider using it in an adult class, book club, or study group.

Joyful, Anyway: Finding Delight in Impossible Times Kate Bowler (Dial Press) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00 – RELEASE DATE APRIL 7, 2026

Okay, if Smith is a bit heavy — philosophically, spiritually, living deeply in a world of a different kind of knowing —  and Haejin & Mako’s is, while lovely, very much about the brokenness of the world and what repair might look like as we work for shalom — then this book will supplement the gravitas of those with a different sort of heaviness. Kate Bowler, as I assume we all know, is dying. Aren’t we all?

She was given a terminal diagnoses several books ago and she wrote wonderfully (wonderfully) about the experience of being a young, upbeat theology professor (at Duke Divinity School, no less) while struggling with family, children, and a life-saving chance at demanding flights out of town to a cancer treatment place. The first book was Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) and if the cliche of the title strikes you as Christian common sense, you need this book. If you do appreciate that it is a dumb lie, then you’ll love it. She is biting and funny and sentimental and faithful. The sequel, another memoir, this one written when her life was miraculously extended, was equally blunt and funny and serious, No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear.) I sometimes say that she writes somewhat like Anne Lamott, but without the frizzy hair and playful whining about aging. Or like Nadia Bolz-Weber without the tats and cussing. One respected writer says her prose is “razor-sharp and tender” as she gives us “luminous clarity and unsentimental grace.”

She wrote two popular devotional books, one called Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection and an oversized “book of blessings for imperfect days” called The Lives We Actually Have. She did two scholarly books — one on women in the evangelical subculture and another called Blessed: A History the American Prosperity Gospel. She got to know some of these “name it and claim it” Pentecostals when she was researching that work and it was a small part in Everything Happens when they wanted to pray for her healing. She didn’t theologically agree with their thinking, but she sure appreciated their prayers. Ha.

Now, in this forthcoming one, she is back to doing memoir-like reflections on her life and times, living with this dangerous condition. As noted above it is called Joyful, Anyway: Finding Delight in Impossible Times. If almost anybody else tried to suggest that it is healthy or Godly to be cheery when going through hellish circumstances, I’d roll by eyes (at best.) But I trust Kate Bowler. She seems to have a Christ-centered joy that never minimizes our broken world and the hard stuff that happens. Jerry Seinfeld says she suffers no fools, “especially the toxic optimists.” But, yet, if she can charmingly remind us to be “joyful, anyway” I think I’ll give it a try.

You, too?

Paul and John in Harmony: A Theological and Historical Exploration Michael J. Gorman (Eerdmans) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39 – RELEASE DATE APRIL 14, 2026

I can’t say too much about this forthcoming book but I will say three quick things. First, Mike Gorman is one of the finest Biblical scholars working today; he is prolific (especially on work on Paul; his major volume on I Corinthians last year was fabulous) and he is a great, beloved teacher at Saint Mary’s Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore, MD. He has hosted men and women scholars from around the world, from Fleming Rutledge to N.T. Wright.

Secondly, not only is he a preeminent scholar, he’s a Sunday school teacher (in a United Methodist congregation) and sees his work, brainy as it is sometimes, as part of a calling to serve the church. He is ecumenical, global, cross-cultural, and has a servant’s heart. Not every scholar has such a gift for speaking with less academic folk, and he’s got a foot in the world of higher education and the Biblical studies guild and yet he loves God’s people in the churches.

Thirdly, even when his work is sometimes a bit technical, he has an obvious desire for it to translate into personal and corporate transformation. To see he has an eye for application is one way to put it. He knows that serious theology that funds serious Biblical research simply must change lives. I like his tone and even in his more scholarly works, how it always has a trajectory towards usefulness in the church and in our lives.

To wit, we’re going to have this. And, wow, I’m eager to see it.

I have not seen this yet but I know it is a signifcant hardcover making the case that Paul knew of John’s testimony. (Does this necessitate an early dating of John? I imagine so.) Gorman’s close reading of Paul shows four common aspects of his “locative language” and offers a good vision of where Paul got some of his ideas about participation with Christ. A major chapter will be “Paul, John, and Jesus: Christology and Its Implications for Discipleship.”

If there is a “spirituality of Paul”, Gorman seems to be saying, it comes, in part, from his familiarity with John. Marianne Meye Thompson, the important (Emerita) New Testament prof from  Fuller Theological Seminary (and author of The New Testament Library’s John: A Commentary) calls it “stimulating and provocative.” Cornelis Bennema (one of the world’s leading John scholars) calls it “a scholarly masterpiece” and “groundbreaking.”

Scholars have long studied John and Paul as though they inhabited mutually exclusive theological worlds. But recent work on both writers is now raising afresh the possibility that they are in fact closely related, even mutually dependent. Gorman is one of the wisest and most seasoned guides in these areas, and this book will open the eyes of a new generation of scholars and preachers to exciting and fruitful study and proclamation. — N. T. Wright, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, God’s Homecoming

Gorman has produced another scholarly masterpiece. The importance of this groundbreaking book cannot be overstated. While Gorman’s explanation of the commonalities in the theologies of John and Paul is pioneering, it is his innovative explanation of this phenomenon — namely, that John influenced Paul — that is truly revolutionary. This magisterial book is poised to challenge several long-standing scholarly consensuses. — Cornelis Bennema, London School of Theology, Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John

Galahad and the Grail Malcolm Guite, illustrated by Stephen Crotts (Rabbit Room Press) $34.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99 – RELEASE DATE April 20, 2026

One of the heralded literary releases of this year is by the world-renowned poet, Anglican priest, writer, rock star, and hero to many and will soon release. It is the first part in his Merlin’s Isle series (called, “An Arthurian.”) Trinity Forum in Washington DC will be hosting a major, early reading of this on March 23rd, by the way, and we will be there with the first batch of books, for early sale that evening. The incredible illustrator Steve Crotts will be there as well. If you’re in the area, you should get tickets — come and say hello and, more importantly, hear this legendary poet re-tell the first part of this legendary story of Sir Galahad and the other knights of the quest (they set out from Camelot, you’ll remember )as they search for the holy grail.

This story (including the hope of healing the wounded Fisher King) offers renewal for the land and culture and hearing it afresh in poem style — the first time this has been done in over a century — offers a creative glimpse not only into the Arthurian lore but the worldview of 13th century people faith. (Wasn’t it Tennyson who popularized it in the 1800s?) This is huge.

Rabbit Room will be doing an excellent job of this grand story and we cannot wait to see it. (They already did one creatively fictional volume with a padded leather cover with various authors offering (new) chapters, including one by Malcolm Guite, alongside Jennifer Trafton, Jonathan Rogers, Andrew Peterson, Annie Nardone, Doug McKelvey, illustrated by Ned Bustard under the title The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad, which itself is an incredible volume.) Pre-order this groundbreaking epic poetic rendition of Galahad and the Grail now from us and we might be able to get you an autographed copy from our gala with Trinity Forum.

(By the way, the second forthcoming volume, The Coming of Arthur, will be out in November of 2026. You heard it here first. Pre-order that now, too, if you’d like.)

To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times Alan Noble (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99 – RELEASE DATE APRIL 28, 2026

This is another one that I have not seen but can assure you that it will be fabulous, a great read, important and helpful and interesting. One impressive advanced reviewer has declared it one of the year’s best!

I know Alan Noble a bit having met him at conferences and heard him lecture. We follow each other on Facebook and that is revealing as well — he shares good stuff. He’s a fabulously nitrating guy, having started (before he became a book author) a very impressive blog and website back in the day called “God and Pop Culture.” I met just the other day a writer for them and was blown away by this guys credentials, scholarship, and passion for his sub-genre (of horror fiction.) Anyway, I’ve followed Alan for a long while and am nothing but impressed.

He is a literature profession at Oklahoma Baptist University and is not only sharp in his obvious field but has written about other more general topics. His first book was spectacular and I highly recommend it, Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age about how to talk about talking about faith in an age of screens and digital distractions. It works on many levels and covers a lot. His very popular next book, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World was a nearly luminous, mature, lovely reflection on that line from the famous Heidelberg Catechism (reflecting on 1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 that I learned to love from a mi James Ward song.) Following up on Disruptive.. Noble again does astute cultural analysis, helping us grapple with what it means to resist the idols of individualism and autonomy. Yet, it’s hard to feel that assurance of God’s good rule in our lives (and the life-giving human flourishing it forms) in this secularized age when true human flourishing isn’t deeply understood or even valued. The two books were my kinds of reads — cultural analysis and person Christian growth, theology made read in our dubious times.

Next Alan did a book that surprised some, a small hardback that was about (for lack of a better phrase) depression. It was called On Getting Out of Bed and he both offered solace and understanding and bit of prodding for some to put one foot in front of another and carry on. It assured each and every reader that they matter, that they’ve got not only a personal life to live, but a culture to contribute to. Believe it or not, you are needed! You can do this! I have recommend On Getting Out of Bed often and have benefitted from it myself.

With this forthcoming one — I hope we get it early — Alan looks to be about his classic thing: observations about the chaotic times and wholesome (if substantive) advice on how to carry one. I wonder if this one is sort of a culmination of the previous three: this, this is what is has always been about — living well. Living well, practically, in this messed up world.

I do know this, too: To Live Well will be about the classic virtues. Here’s how the publisher tells it:

Contemporary life is confusing. We are overwhelmed with choices and given conflicting messages on how to live. This book uses seven traditional virtues as ways of reorienting our lives toward God: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope, and love. Cultivating these virtues enables us to address practical issues that face us daily.

After a hefty introduction there is a sure-to-be great forward by the wise and upbeat Justin Whitmel Earley; here’s the table of contents. It’s going to be a very wise and compelling book.

1.  Choosing Decisively
2.  Acting Justly
3.  Suffering Steadfastly
4.  Living Moderately
5.  Believing Soundly
6.  Hoping Resolutely
7.  Loving Rightly

What a book! Each chapter brims with wisdom–drawn from Scripture, steeped in deep reading, and refined through life experience. I found myself not only nourished personally but also earmarking pages to send to family and friends wrestling with major decisions or simply trying to make faithful daily choices. Truly one of the year’s best. — Trevin Wax, The Gospel Way Catechism and The Thrill of Orthodoxy

What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience Tish Harrison Warren (Convergent) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80 – RELEASE DATE MAY 12, 2026

This has a strict street date on May 12th so I wasn’t sure if I should highlight this, yet, but it is one of the books I’m most eagerly anticipating. I’ve read the early version I got a while ago (I know, I know, a perk of the job) and I’m grateful for my helpers at Random House / Convergent Books. And I’m grateful to be in touch with Tish on occasion. I know how she worked hard to get this book into shape. It is spectacular.

I sure hope I don’t have to convince you of the value of her wonderful previous hardbacks, the lovely and wise (and for some game-changing) Liturgy of the Ordinary or her deeply moving and reassuring Prayer in the Night. These are among my favorite books in the years we’ve been book lovers. I wonder if, over time, What Grows in Weary Lands will also be among this upper shelf of important books for many of us. Some say it is her best yet.

The heart of this book is about resilience. It is evident to me that it is deeper (although not scholarly or arcane) than many fine pop psychology books, even Christian ones, on this hope for resilience. We all have issues; these are hard time; who doesn’t wish for greater stamina and grace in living into the hope we are suppose to have? As her last book put it, we are in the dark a lot of the time; we need that evening prayer for those who work or watch or weep.

Tish is a fabulous writer, a clear storyteller and I was captivated by her story — that ended up as a nice, instructive parable — on the first few pages. Describing weariness, burnout, emptiness it is grueling, yet she throws in a clever line. She’s trying to build a fire and remembers how much being “on fire” for God played into her church youth group and early formation. She says, “There was enough fire imagery in my early Christian formation to alarm a park ranger.’ Ha.

Columnists offer think pieces and article and podcasts about this, so ubiquitous is this languishing in late modernity. Maybe it’s capitalism, maybe the forces of our secularizing culture, maybe screens, even, but important as the big picture analysis is, it doesn’t help you get through your dreary days.

Sure, we need spiritual renewal. And certain practices help facility that — keep sabbath, love your dear ones, go to church. Whether one has severe writers block or a lack of creativity or have felt a listlessness in a prayer life, this anxiety about the doldrums is real and painful. We are all so tired.

She indicates early on that the book is mostly about perseverance of a certain sort. We hear a lot about conversions, as well we should. And these days, de-conversions. The drama surrounding a worldview change and a new sense of things is, well, dramatic. And we need stories of elders, sages, older mystics. But what about the middle; mid-life, mid-faith? Old timers used to call it fortitude. The “unsung virtues” that sustain this are, she says, “the most vital quality in a lifetime of discipleship.” She believes that “grit is an essential ingredient of grace, that resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be.”

If you are wondering about the medieval word acedia (about which the great Kathleen Norris wrote in Acedia and Me) you are right. That is part of what is going on when we feel so depleted.

Tish is incredibly vulnerable in her description of her desert season. She is not whining, not making things out to be worse than they are. She is, as I said, a good and careful writer, colorful but not excessive. Her explorations of these themes are mature, even sophisticated, and wise and I will cherish this book as I study it more carefully in the months to come.

I am not naturally drawn to the desert fathers and mothers, but a quick glance at her great footnotes — amid essays from The Atlantic and quotes from interesting theologians, citations of Ezra Klein podcasts and Taylor Swift lyrics — there is an abundance of names like Syncleica and Chryssavgis and Cassian and Evagrius of Pontus. Don’t let the ancient names throw you. This is rich, good stuff and she is introducing classic writers that have strengthen the backbone of many a saint over the years. Yes, she looks at John of the Cross (if only she’d had Jamie Smith’s manuscript described above) and the stuff about “desolation” in the Ignatian tradition. But she reads the memoirist and poet Mary Karr and the ecological wonders of Refugia Faith (by Debra Rienstra.)

She wrote this alongside three fascinating (and funny) growing children — one calls her new bit of gray hair her “tinsel” — a great husband with whom she squabbles a bit and a mom increasingly living in the fog of Alzheimer’s. Who wouldn’t long for a more felt faith, a bit of fire?

What Grows in Weary Lands is coming out in early May. You will read it quickly, I bet — it’s hard to put down — and then you will want to read it again over the summer. Pre-order it now; you won’t regret it, I promise.

This book is like a friend who reminds you who you are and who God is when you’re too weary to remember. It’s a theology of staying-put — a gospel for those of us in the long middle of faith who are tired not because we’ve lost our faith, but because we’ve kept it. —Jon Guerra, singer-songwriter

 

What Grows in Weary Lands is poised to become a modern spiritual classic and another must-read offering from one of the brightest spiritual writers of our day. — Rev. Claude Atcho, pastor of Church of the Resurrection (Charlottesville, VA), author of Rhythms of Faith and Reading Black Books

 

Honest, wise and persistent in imagination, this is a book to refresh the seasoned spiritual traveler. A beautifully crafted weave of both resilience and wonder. — Martin Shaw, author of Liturgies of the Wild

 

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BookNotes

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Most of our BookNotes columns celebrate new books or they highlight authors I think you should know about. Our curation is intentional, trying to find the sorts of authors and books we can champion and that our audience — that’s you! — might purchase. Sometimes I wax eloquent, sometime in full-on fan-boy mode. When I’m most long-winded, some love it. A few roll their eyes and skim. I get it.

For this edition I’d like to highlight some books to supplement our list about Lent from a few weeks ago. (Visit the archived BookNotes at our website if you want to scroll back and see those.)That post described more obviously Lenten devotionals and books about this liturgical season. As I walked around our shop this week I kept seeing titles that just seemed right to list for reading in this somber season; some are quite new, some are older. It’s a good list for the curious.

Most of you know the standard practices that accompany this season and the Lenten spiritual tone. If this is new to you or you are talking to someone who worked up the courage to ask what that ashen smear on your forehead was all about a few Wednesdays ago, I’d recommend Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley. It is part of the “Fullness of Time” series which includes short volumes about the history and habits of each season of the church calendar.

Unlike some BookNotes I am not going to be too wordy. I’m going to name the book and say why I think it would be useful to read during this time of year. I’ll keep my comments brief (ish) so I have time to share a lot of titles. Maybe something here will speak to you.

As always, these are offered to you at our BookNotes 20% off. If you saw it here it would be good to remind us of that. We’ll reply promptly, do the discount, and send ‘em right out. Our order form page is secure for card info although, as we say there, we can also just send you an invoice and you can pay by check later. Hope that helps.

I’m saying to myself keep it brief, Borger.

Slow Theology: Eight Practices for Resilient Faith in a Turbulent World A.J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Two great, prolific authors offering lighter ways to think about faith in a slower mode, hearing God’s voice despite our fast-paced world. These everyday practices to resist our frenetic pace of living (and thinking) help us embrace our own theological journey, taking in wonder and mystery and rest, admit our pain and find an enduring spirituality, believing together with others. This is absolutely right, and perfect for slow reading these next weeks. One of my favorite recent books!

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

I’ve often said how much I appreciate her clear but thoughtful style, her eloquence and honesty. This is a perfect Lenten read as it is about being honest with our doubts and pains and struggles — praying in the dark, in that metaphorical sense. But it is grounded in the literary evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer and what compline is about as an evening practice. Do you ever feel all you can do is keep watch? This will accompany you and you won’t feel so alone. Highly recommended.

Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord’s Pray Shapes the Imagination of the Church In a Secular Age D. J. Marotta (Moody Press) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

DJ is a young Anglican priest in Richmond and I respect his work there immensely. You may recall him as the co-author (with artist Ben Lansing ) of Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place.) Anyway, this was his earlier book and it is on the Lords Prayer and is very nicely done in nine excellent (and succinct) chapters. I mention succinct as you might think this could be weighty, covering stuff about modernity, the wilderness of these barren times, how to use our imaginations and how what Jamie Smith calls “liturgies” might refresh our habits into life-changing new loves. Pray really does shape our believes which, of course, shapes how we live. This is subversive stuff, perfect for Lenten pondering.

With God in Every Breath: A Guide to Drawing Closer to Jesus Through Your Senses Whitney R Simpson (NavPress) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I love that more and more authors about the contemplative life write that they affirm an embodied existence and creatureliness sense of living in God’s creation, even as we nurture our souls. Whitney Simpson has been at this for a while —an earlier book on Upper Room seems like a forerunner of this one (that handsome workbook is called Holy Listening: with Breath, Body, and the Spirit; she has an Advent one, too, called Fully Human, Fully Divine which underscored Christ’s incarnation’s implications for our “whole selves.”) Anyway, after a stroke at age 31, Whitney learned to attend to her body, pay attention to her breathing and more, and has now helped us all learn the practices of finding God and experience God through our senses. She is not the first to do this, but it is still rather rare, and this book is a wonderful guide and a good blessing. She writes like a mystic at times but is always aware of the really real in our very bodies. (He essays on why she uses The Message paraphrase is fantastic, by the way.) 30 short chapters have wonderful ideas, good exercises, sensory cues, short prayers — it is practical and inspiring. There’s helpful stuff like breath prayers and further ideas I bet you haven’t thought of; here are habits that could help us all live into Lent and Easter and beyond.  As she advises, “when life gets loud, get quiet.”

How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything Andrew Arndt (Herald Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

When I reviewed this before I highlighted how wonderfully it is written. The foreword by Marilyn McEntyre says as much. It is about the liturgical calendar, about seeing all our life-time in light of the light of Christ, and how that can shape our own character in Christ-likeness. Winn Collier (who wrote that great biography of Eugene Peterson, A Burning in My Bones) says the sentences “sing and simmer.” What a joy. And what good idea to focus on Jesus during Lent. This offers a full picture of the full gospel, written with imaginative and nearly prophetic prose.

Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons Eve Tibbs (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Everyone should know something about icons even if using them — perhaps I should say beholding them — isn’t part of your actual tradition. These religious renderings are designed as windows into eternal truths and many who write them (we learn that they iconographers don’t use the language of “painting” them) are deeply driven by a spiritual hope, offering these as gifts for the spiritual formation of others. This is as winsome and interesting and helpful a book on the topic as we’ve seen (and it is lavishly illustrated with icons to ponder.) As Hans Boersma  says, “Tibbs explores iconography as a divinely given exegetical guide.” There is great beauty and truth here. A fabulous foreword is by Reformed thinker Richard Mouw, offering an ecumenical touch. So good.

Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life Karen Stiller (NavPress) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Lent is a time to ponder holiness and this is one of the best books on the subject you will find anywhere. She invites us to ponder how holiness is “sacred and mysterious. It’s breathtaking and beautiful — and we’re meant to live it daily.”  Naturally, we ask: Really? And What does that look like? Here she offers insightful reflections oral sorts of mundane stuff and “stirs the spaces in your soul that need refreshment.” Not your typical book on virtue and repentance, although there is clarity about that. This is Biblical, humane, and fruitful holiness revisited. Perfect for this season of repentence.

When Life Feels Empty: 7 Ancient Practices to Cultivate Meaning Isaac Serrano (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose we could list a dozen books that might guide seekers or doubters or anyone struggling with faith but I wanted to suggest at least one really good new one for those with this particular ache. Serrano is a pastor in California and is on the leadership team of the ReGeneration Project (and is an adjunct prof at Western Seminary in Portland and California.) He’s a really good writer and an obviously thoughtful guy.

I recommend this for anyone who feel as if something is missing. As it says on the back, “like the story you’re living lacks purpose or direction.” The modern secular narrative, of course, erodes or negates meaning and transcendent purpose but even for those who believe in some higher power, we are living any differently because of it. Our lives feel languid, at best, even though we believe the gospel.

In this creative, elegant read, Serrano uses philosophical reasoning and lots of stories and good theology and wise insights to help us develop practical steps that can “replace the empty promises of materialism with the profound depth of a life center on God as Father.” This is wise and good, inviting us to embody the deepest meanings of church pratices and Christian discipleship in the world. It’s very good.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? The Meaning of the Crucifixion Adam Hamilton (Abingdon Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Some years during Lent I highlight a couple books about atonement theories, about deeper conversations about the meaning of the cross. We should read a book about the cross of Christ maybe every year or so since it is so central to our faith. I really books like the magisterial Cross of Christ by John Stott and the magnum opus by Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. The last two years I’ve given very serious kudos to Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross by Brian Zahnd.  Friends have insisted that I read Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death by Andrew Remington Roller. For a pocket-sized excerpt, beautifully made, see the wonderful (if traditionally formulated) What Did the Cross Achieve? by J. I. Packer. You know I’m a fan of The Day the Revolution Began by N.T. Wright which systematically looks at the verses about the cross in the writings of Paul, studying them afresh in light of the doctrine of new creation. Yes. All of those are 20% off.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? is by one of the great communicators or nuanced faith in our day, a thoughtful and balanced United Methodist pastor who is respected by many folks from across the reasonable theological spectrum. In this new one, Adam Hamilton offers a variety atonement theories and seems to offer fair critique of some and fresh takes on others, offering a classic and yet very contemporary approach. Six chapters.

Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom G.K. Beale (Crossway) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is one of many fairly dense but succinct volumes in the “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” done by the mostly Reformed and clearly evangelical, classy publisher, Crossway. These short books bring world-class conservative scholars to do relatively accesible versions of larger works of Biblical Theology. (That is, drawing themes from throughout the unfolding redemptive narrative or plot of Scripture rather than, say, using the decidedly un-narrative approach of Systematic Theology.) Beale is one of the most brilliant Scripture scholars around with a keen interest in eschatological visions and new creation hope in the Old and New Testaments. Here he does this marvelous little project of documenting ironic reversals, redemptive signals — the ironies of it all. The most obvious (besides the resurrection itself where death is undone by death) is that in the Christian life power is perfected in powerlessness. Get it? Perceptive and fascinating.

The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World David Zahl (Brazos Press) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I’ve spilled some ink on this and highlighted some about it before. I’ll just remind you that it brings notions of grace in the Bible a very fresh and contemporary new coat of paint, using the language of “relief” — an emotion or gut feeling we all long for.  The gospel is obviously not about shame or burdens, and he calls us to embrace Christianity “as a refuge rather than as a project, a beacon of hope instead of a vehicle of shame.” Maybe refreshment? Give up a faith that demands performance and perfection and embrace the gospel as the gift of grace. Zahl, the head of Mockingbird Ministries, is pretty amazing.

You Can Trust a God With Scars: Faith (and Doubt) for the Searching Soul Jared Ayers (NavPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I raved about this when I first wrote about it, saying out tender and funny and passionate and cool it was, citing rock music and cool films and serious literature, all pointing seekers and doubters to the reliability of a God so audacious as to come to earth to die. If you know anybody who sees no point in existence, I beg you to share this book with them. If you, yourself, need a reminder of the core of the gospel, told in honest and raw ways, I commend this wonderfully-written primer to you. It is unlike any other introduction to the faith I know and it is hard-earned by a good, good guy.

Speaking of scars, I guess Lent is an ideal time to read this, trusting again this sad, sacred story of the betrayed and murdered Lamb of God.

Any of us who have found ourselves in “the borderlands between faith and doubt” or suffering from church fatigue or unsure what to make of biblical claims will find in these stories and reflections a hospitable invitation to take a long second look. Maybe even to venture through the doors of a church. Jared Ayers meets readers in the shadowy places of uncertainty not with arguments but with stories that help even the deeply disenchanted reimagine a life in which faith is sustaining and a vigorous community of thoughtful believers is possible. — Marilyn McEntyre, author Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

Bearing God: Living a Christ-formed Life in Uncharted Waters Marlena Graves (NavPress) $10.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

What does in mean in this season of Lent to discern God’s will and call in the midst of such turbulent waters, such turbulent times? What does it mean that Jesus might still the waters (as in Mark 4)? And what if — as Marlena Graves imagines powerfully — what if we are the boat in the story, bearing Jesus and the disciples? Aren’t we all vessels carrying Jesus, being a part of his Light? What does that mean, to carry Christ, to bear God?

This wasn’t written as a Lenten resource, but, man-oh-man, if you put a Lenten title on this, it would certainly be a wonderful book to ponder in this season of getting right with God and submitting to His ways in our stormy world. Marlena is a woman we like very very much and a writer and scholar we respect. Her book The Way Up Is Down is one I used in a Lenten reading group two years ago and it still haunts me. I adored her first one about a relatively poor, Pentecostal person discovering the desert fathers and mothers. She has done good work in public witness and has written and edited volumes speaking peace into our culture of injustice. In this little six chapter meditation, you’ll be invited to venture out to sea and to become a person of Christ-like refuge. We can be “Christ-formed” in these disorienting times!

Jesus and the Disinherited Howard Thurman (Beacon Press) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

I hope you have heard of this twenty century classic, one of the books Martin Luther King carried with him to jail; Thurman was a very impressive educator and black leader and a writer of deeper spirituality. We stock most of his several Quaker reflections and a devotional of his work (and more than one important biography.) But this is his classic, one of the seminal books of public theology and liberative spirituality of our time. Rev. Otis Moss III says that “no other publication in the twentieth century has upended antiquated theological notions, truncated political ideas, and socially constructed racial fallacies like Jesus and the Disinherited.” First published by Abingdon Press in 1949, this more recent edition has a new foreword by Kelly Brown Douglas alongside a classic foreword by the great Vincent Harding.

I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People Terence Lester (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

One of the classic spiritual practices of the Lenten season is almsgiving — serving the poor. This book goes beyond mere giving (which is hard enough for some of us, I know) but to a richer, fuller sort of thing: seeing. What does it mean to actually recognize and “see” and befriend and come to know (and be known by) those who might be marginalized, stigmatized, such as those experiencing homelessness? There are a lot of myths about poverty and race and the poor in our culture and this lively book not only breaks down many assumptions about those who are sometimes called “the underclass” but it invites us to a Christ-like care, to enter real relationships with real people (who we often overlook.) There are lots of stories here, mature spirituality stuff, helpful sidebars and suggestions. Look: we don’t care much about what we don’t really see. This humbling (but also inspiring) book is ideal for this season. Love can open our eyes, perhaps even “the eyes of our hearts.”

As another bonus, if you like it you can then buy for a young one Terence Lester’s fabulous children’s picture book talking about these issues (with his own daughter, Zion) called Zion Learns to See (IVP; $18.00 // 14.40.) It’s very nice. Lester and his family live and work in Atlanta. He is the founder of Love Beyond Walls. His new book is an autobiography, From Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice.

A Hope Observed: Finding Solace Through Share Stores of Grief David Bannon (Paraclete Press) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I could write about this at length but I promised to be succinct this time. I’ll say this: years ago Bannon wrote a wonderful, wonderful book about artists who felt great pain and whose pain suffused their work. He wrote it as an Advent book and it worked well — you’ve heard of blue Christmas, of course. Bannon had suffered greatly and his honest struggle to find art and words to cope honest during the holidays was a great gift. It is sadly now out of print.

But his work continued and here he put together a marvelous collection of origins and stories of those who have suffered and those who have experienced loss. These stories are arranged nicely, with great art of lovely design touches.  The excellent writing and remarkable art are arranged in themes under the titles grieve, cope, hope, and love. Whether your grief is new and overwhelming or lingering, it is comforting to know you are not alone and it is good to read some of the wisest words. A very impressive endorsement on the back is from Gerald Sittser (author of the unforgettable A Grief Observed.)  That means a lot.

This is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith Darcey Steinke (HarperOne) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This is brand new and I have not read it. I read a few pages here and there and the prose is stunning. Her bibliography is very extensive and mostly unknown to me — except, maybe The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry, a Dorothy Soelle book, and Merton’s Raids on the Unspeakable. And she has a section on Simon Weil. Steinke is an award-winning novelist and memoirist and has taught at many of the most prestigious universities in the world.  She here shares of her own physical pain after back surgery, journeys to Lourdes, meets sufferers of all kinds, including the mastectomy of her mother and the brain cancer of her preacher father. Despite the fluid, graceful prose and high-minded theory, she tells of a conversation she had, over hot-dogs, with Curt Cobain. I am not sure I am saying that this is a Lenten book, but if you are in pain this season, this could bring insight and solace of some kind.

Walking with God Through the Valley: Recovering the Purpose of Biblical Lament May Young (IVP) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

If the above gift-book style collection of excellent writing on grief and loss and renewed hope isn’t quite your need, now, this rigorous study of lament in the Bible might be stimulating and important. The church needs the practice of lament. This book explores the topic and offers some insight about what it all looks like.  Can this practice of lament — protest and crying out — lead to healing and liberation? Young teaches at Taylor University and has written widely about the Psalms and about global Christianity. Very, very impressive in under 200 pages.

Crying Out to God: Experiencing Grace Through Psalms of Lament Wendy Alsop (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a brand new 8-week Bible study experience in a line of IVP produced workbooks that are interactive, thoughtful, and more than simple inductive observations and questions. This study offers a deep encounter with God through Scriptures and it is the best (one of the very only) studies on the Psalms of lament I have seen. Wendy Alsup wrote a powerful, theological solid book called Companions in Suffering: Comfort for Times of Loss and Loneliness (and has often written in thoughtful, evangelical publications. Melissa Kruger of The Gospel Coalition says it is for “the weary, discouraged, the sick, and the suffering.” Although not directly a Lenten resource, what better time to explore how the Psalms cry out against all that is not right in our tragic world? As it says on the back, “Whether our response is rage or tears or numbness, the Bible offers an avenue for our paint: Lament.”

Crying Out to God offers a daily set of individual studies and reflections and then group sessions for once a week. It’s an excellent format with some pen and ink drawings as well.

Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza edited by Bruce Fisk and J. Ross Wagner (Cascade) $39.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

With the US and the right wing administration of Israel joining in yet another brutal war, it is vital to ask — among lots of other questions worth debating about the ethics of war-fighting — what it looks like on the ground, among the victims. This book, obviously, is not about Iran, but it is a very recent release from many people of Christian faith who know the Palestinian battlefields well. These are essays by many who have worked in social service, Christian ministry, and peacemaking project in the Middle East for decades and some are exceptionally astute, almost rare. Lent is always a time to come before God asking for the Spirit to make our hearts more compassionate and for our vision to be ore Christ-like. Part of this must be to ask what faith means in these days of war. After the Desolation of Gaza is a groundbreaking book and although it is thick — almost 20 mostly hefty chapters in just under 375 pages — it is important.

Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World Andrew DeCort (IVP Academic) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I’ve been intending to write a major review of this but just can’t finish it. I want to say that this is one of the most important books in the field of social ethics and public theology I have read in a decade. Agree or not fully with his profound and Biblically-attentive study and conclusions, it is clear that he is right in insisting that we must love our neighbors. His Facebook posts are amazing (and often long, essays in their own rite) and he reminds us that we must not view others as the enemy, not any “other.” He is wanting to show God’s love to each and every person and in this he is nearly revolutionary. In Reviving the Golden Rule he traces the history of the idea from the ancient world to today.

If you’ve read any Martin Luther King or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, say, you will appreciate this. There is a great study guide, a short annotated bibliography on neighbor-love, and then a much more extensive bibliography.  Other ethicists have called it rare and impressive and masterful.

The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (Orbis Press) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Again, this is one we’ve highlighted several times before and even named it as one of my personal favorites of last year. Granberg-Michaelson is a great guide to this vital topic — the spirituality of justice work — since he has first-hand experience in everything from public policy work with a US Senator to street protests and community organizing to years of working with ordinary church folks and global church leaders, not to mention a deep and abiding, grounded sort of spirituality. A previous book, Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage (another favorite) documents his own journey as a pilgrim, learning an embodied sort of spirituality as he moves from what you might think of as church dogma (however good and proper) to a lived encounter with the Spirit. Anyway, Lent is a time to deepen ones spiritual habits and also a time of caring for the poor and working for justice. The Soulwork of Justice is ideal for these next weeks. I’d highly recommend it.

Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing Andy Crouch (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have decieded to read this during Lent this year as one of my own hopes to learn more about a Christ-like way to think about power and influence, suffering and humility. The apostle Paul famously said his strength is in weakness and this is truly one of the great (and needed!) upside-down ways of the Kingdom of God. It preaches well, but we need this marvelously written, very insightful book to show us (using a four way or 2 x 2 grid rather than a continuum) how to embrace both strength and weakness. Near the end of this invitation Andy wisely reminds us of Christ’s own suffering, his journey towards weakness, the brilliance of the gospel in all it’s counter-cultural relevance. This is what love looks like, how human calling takes its best shape, how following Jesus can allow us to be people who have the confidence to take risks, for love’s sake. This is one of the best little books I’ve ever read and Lent seems the perfect time to spend more time in it’s life-changing pages.

Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace Mark DeYmaz (NavPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Yet another new one about which I should write much more, but which I will just tell you pretty quickly what it is about. The title and subtitle says it all — it is about a Protestant (evangelical) who has written much about multi-ethnic ministry and forming racially diverse congregations who discovers the powerful simplicity of the famous Prayer of Saint Francis. We all know it, but how seriously do we take it, line by line? And can praying this prayer with intentionality perhaps be a way (as the sub-title puts) to “become more like Jesus.” Isn’t that what Lent is about? Praying for spiritual formation, becoming Christ-like in a way that allows us to better serve others.

Can’t we all become a little more Christ-like this season? Doesn’t “Make me an instrument of Your peace” sound like a prayer we all need, now?  Leonard Sweet (whose recent book Jesus Imagination: Maker, Mender, Minder, Master I wrote about not long ago) says, “Mark DeYmaz doesn’t just write about peace — he hands you the tools to make it.”

Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week Jason Porterfield (Herald Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I’ve written about this extensively in years past so won’t belabor it, although I am glad to remind youth it is brilliant, easy to read, ad a great way to follow carefully the story as the gospel-writers have it unfolded for us. It is well known how much emphasis the gospels place on the final passion week of Jesus and this book shows how the drama starts on what is often misunderstood and misapplied, the event often known as Psalm Sunday. Jesus comes into the City of Peace (which he soon enough wears over) not on a war-horse or chariot but on a donkey, a dramatic, prophetic gesture for those who have eyes to see. Porterfield unpacks the peace-making themes of Holy Week and there is no better book to help us live into and perhaps embody the story of Jesus’s final days.  There is a good group study guide included as well.

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I know I’ve pitched this to you before. I said in was one of my favorite books read in 2025 (although it came out just in January of 2026.) I reviewed it again, and told you much about it as I invited you to our online webinar where I interviewed the author for an hour or so. We hardly scratched the surface so I suggested it, yet again, in an early Lenten list, thinking this beautifully rendered book telling of Steve’s own carrying the weight of the world seemed right for this sober season. It is a sober book, but yet — believe me — there are glimmers of glory, the grand (Hobbit-like) adventure we are all on, bringing us thrills and pains, joys and sorrows. Until Christ comes in glory to do what the Bible and the creeds say He will do, we work with hints of hope. This conversation about the “proximate” — not expecting everything, not being utopian, not triumphalistic, but not complicit or cynical, either — is perfect for Lent. In Christ we hope. In Him we wait. In Him — the suffering King — we hold on the best we can, still not finding fully what we’re looking for. That can be devasting or it can be liberating. With Steve’s wise help, it can be a key to flourishing and health.  Read it now tapping into the virtues proper to the season. Or maybe right after Easter, in resurrectionary hope. Sooner or later, you’ll need this. We are delighted to suggest it to you now.

Killing a Messiah: A Novel Adam Winn (IVP) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

I don’t have to say much about this other than to say it is a fictionalized account of the death of Christ as passover approaches in the city of Jerusalem. It is, as he puts it, a “political tinderbox.” Adam Winn is a professor and author of several scholarly works on the gospel of Mark, especially understood in light of the influence of first century imperial pressures. How was the early church’s Christology developed under Cesar and what is the relationship between the writing of the New Testament and the realities of Empire. Anyway, he knows his stuff and this is a fresh imagination of the events leading up to Jesus’s execution. What a better time to read a novel like this. Wow.

Shades of Light: A Novel Sharon Garlough Brown (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Some of you who have followed us for a while will recall my rave review of this novel about a young Christian social worker who faces burnout from job stress, a broken heart from a relationship break-up, and, frankly a serious bout of depression. Wren takes refuge in a retreat center run by her aunt and in a story that Publishers Weekly called “heartbreaking and enthralling” she slowly finds some solace and healing with her aunts gentle spiritual direction and the retreat center’s calming influence. Shades of Light is a great story and there is a really good (six week) study guide for personal use or book clubs ($13.99 // $11.99.) I won’t give away a key plot event, although the next review gives it away.

Remember Me: A Novella About Finding Our Way to the Cross with the devotional and artworks “Journey to the Cross” Sharon Garlough Brown (IVP) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

A novella, of course, is a very short novel. Longer than a short story, but not quite a full novel, this is just 100 pages. It is a story formed by letters sent by Katherine Rhodes, the director of the New Hope Retreat Center to her niece Wren who — as told in the fuller novel Shades of Light — finds a partial way to cope with her depression when her aunt invites her to paint contemporary artworks for an upcoming Stations of the Cross service. Remember Me picks up that story as Katherine share her own grief (coupled somehow with the pain of our savior) making this a perfect Lenten read.

But get this: the final chapters of Remember Me has the (fictional) program and artwork from the (fictional) Stations of the Cross as done by the fictional Wren. Ends up, this program of reflection and the full color art pieces (reproduced in full color on glossy paper inserts) makes a great Lenten devotional. The real life artist Elizabeth Ivy Hawkins stood in as the character Wren and painted these paintings of the Stations as she thought Wren might have and described them in this real devotional. The paintings are created in Shades of Light which causes Katherine to write what becomes Remember Me, where the art and devotional are included. What a great idea, eh?

Liberated at the Cross: Peace and Reconciliation in God’s Kingdom Kristel Acevedo (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I am telling you, I have never seen such a rich and thoughtful small group Bible study on the topic of the cross and the social implications of a theology of atonement for peace and public justice. Okay, I’ve never seen any kind of Bible study on this (although there is a huge body of often academic literature showing how the cross brings both personal justification and cosmic reconciliation, how Christ’s death defeats the principalities and powers, how the victory of Christ in resurrection leads to a Kingdom of healing and restoration, etc. etc. etc.) If you know that vast literature — whether its the teaching about the cross from John Stott or Ron Sider or James Cone or Jorgen Moltmann or Brian Zahnd or Sylvia Keesmaat or NT Wright or others with their unique contributions — you may have longed for their full-orbed visions of the transformative power of the cross to be offered in accessible Bible study formats. This is it and I am excited and grateful to Kristel Acevedo and to IVP for daring to do such a helpful, radical, faithful resource. Get a bunch and spread the word.

Each section is enhanced with bold super-graphics and bright headlines and cool, colorful design and each week has QR codes that have amazing videos to watch; this is not your father or mother’s fill-in-the-blank Bible study booklet. Nope, this is chock-full of ideas and activities and good, good conversation starters to help you be rooted in the cross and dream for a better world. The best part, of course, is the solid Biblical study you’ll do for six or more sessions. There are review pieces, “self-check” notes, closing prayers and more. Kristel, by the way, is discipleship director at Transformation Church a multiethnic community (pastored by Derwin Gray, author most recently of Lit by Love) near Charlotte NC.

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BookNotes

Some years, after the massive and important Pittsburgh Jubilee conference (put on, with a bit of help from us, by the campus ministry outfit the CCO) I write a reflection, reminding readers how much fun the hard work is, how many books we sell about all manner of topics, and why, for many churches, the vision promoted at this conference about living into God’s promises of new creation — thy Kingdom come, on Earth! — is still underdeveloped. The CCO’s team putting together great keynote talks about the good creation, the seriousness of the fall into sin, the life-changing nature of Christ’s redemptive work, and the hope of living now in anticipation of God’s cosmic restoration, coupled with dozens of workshops on everything from science to journalism to the arts to business is nothing short of genius.

You can read some of my older celebrations of this event and how much it means to us (and our business) HERE, HERE, or HERE. Sorry, the sales mentioned are long over. Ha.

You can watch or listen to the last handful of our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast where I talked over a series of episodes about some of the seminal thinkers and best-selling books over the course of the conference’s last 50 years. Listen at Apple or Spotify or watch us on YouTube. The Jubilee ones start with Episode 48 and I’m doing another one soon.

AND, if you want to know even more you can enjoy any number of episodes of the podcast “Fifty Jubilees Story Project” made by the great Jen Pelling for the CCO (again easily found on Apple podcasts or Spotify. ) I’m in the very first one, in fact, as these conversations tell stories of former staff or participants in the yearly conference. I know every one of the people involved in these fun interviews and I’m not going to lie — a few of them brought tears to my eyes. It may seem like insider baseball, as they say, but if you are interested in the best ways to bring God’s Kingdom transformation to young adults, enjoy these fabulous chats.

For those who were praying for us and the stamina needed during the weeks of very hard work running the pop-up bookstore there, thank you. Beth and I both survived pretty well with the help of a large team of volunteers. Two of our best friends and H&M supporters came in for four days before the event to help us pack and lug and load boxes into the big rental truck. We are grateful that so many from all over care about our work here and the Jubilee conference is one dramatic example of our vision and vocation.

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A DOZEN NEW BOOKS YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT — on sale, now.

After the Lenten list last week, I’m eager to curate another list of what we think are vital resources for those who making reading a spiritual habit and for those who want to know about some of the important resources for this end of February in the year of the Lord, 2026. You can order by clicking on the link at the very bottom. Please and thanks for doing that.

God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal N.T. Wright (HarperOne) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I hardly know what to say about this other than it may be the most important theological /Bible book of the year. If you like the way I described the Jubilee conference, above, inviting students to think of their studies, their sports, their shopping, their work, their relationships, their future callings as citizens and employees and church members (etc) in light of the redemptive trajectory in the Bible towards God’s renewal of all things, then this book explores that with Biblical detail, fleshing out at least some of the feisty implications. The final talk from the Main Stage at Jubilee, with praise songs capturing this very theme, is laden with hope for an embodied future, a new earth and Wright here shows that this isn’t some quirky schtick of the CCO but is the very heart of the gospel message. As I often say here, if your church doesn’t proclaim the incarnational nature of the Kingdom of God then they aren’t proclaiming the real Bible message. Personal salvation alone is not the gospel. Social transformation alone is not the gospel. We live with a story and in the Bible that unfolding drama goes from a good creation fallen but restored into a new creation. Wright is the one who helps us see this, maybe better than anyone writing today.

He has always had a fairly wholistic and Biblically faithful approach to the multidimensional realities of the story of Israel’s God and the church of Jesus Christ. He’s never preached a personalistic or overly pious pie in the sky sort of faith. He filled in some fabulous details with this Kingdom teaching in How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels which he preached about, some of you recall, in the backyard of our store, but spelled out the details of a renewed creation in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (which hit the shelves in 2008 and people are still talking about it.) In a way, this new God’s Homecoming might be considered a sequel or follow up to Surprised by Hope. He seems to be saying that while he has long rejected the dualism (taught by the likes of Plato or Aristotle and too many church thinkers) between body and soul that leads to a hard dualism between the secular and sacred, even heaven and earth, he wants to say now that God’s plan and promise to reunite heaven and earth is *the* key to unlock so much of the Bible’s message.  The story of creation to new creation is the Biblical story and the hope of the gospel.

Here, the vivid thinker Time magazine called “one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought” explores all kinds of Bible teachings and themes and shows how new creation insights bring into focus the real meaning of topics from glory of God to the temple, the meaning of exile and the nature of the gospel accounts. He is helpful with a nuanced view of the Kingdom and, of course, wise ways to understand Paul and the early church. He ends by showing how we “switched the script” and how to re-read the texts faithful. There are big implications for worship, evangelism, and prayer, vocation, work, and the running of our churches. My, my, this is, maybe, a deeper dive and summary of much of his life’s work.

I haven’t studied the details or even the footnotes very carefully yet, but three other books (besides Wright’s Surprised by Hope) come immediately to mind. Although I wouldn’t say that God’s Homecoming is only about eschatology (a study of the end times) it obviously is exploring how our vision of the final restoration of creation must influence our current understanding of the Bible, our faith and daily discipleship, and our mission in the church as God’s vanguard of the coming Kingdom. The book that is doubtlessly the best undergirding for Wright’s hopes is J. Richard Middleton’s groundbreaking and hefty A New Heaven and New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic; $31.99 // 25.59.) It’s big and a bit dense but it is a must. (His epilogue about why all this matters is wonderful and his exploration of the implications of the Year of Jubilee, there, are brilliant!)

I suppose you know my appreciation for another hefty, rich volume called Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brian Walsh (Eerdmans; $39.99 //OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99) where they explore the notion of original home-making (and fallen home-breaking and redemptive home-coming) as motifs for our stewardly care for the world. It unpacks this wholistic vision (by way of talking about the housing crisis and homelessness as well as the carelessness with which we experience place and creation-care) better than anything I know. Brian has often talked in detail with Wright about these things, which Wright has often acknowledged. (It is notable, I think, that the book Brian and his wife Sylvia Keesmaat wrote on Romans called Romans Disarmed is cited by Wright in his concise Into the Heart of Romans.) Anyway, Beyond Homelessness is generative and I suspect that it influenced N.T. a bit.

A third volume which obviously opens us up to the “homecoming” of God is The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything by Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz (Brazos Press; $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00.) It came out in 2022 in hardcover and was just released a few months ago in paperback. I can’t wait for a review of Wright’s God’s Homecoming by Volf — that would make perfect sense, eh?

As it says on the back of God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal:

“Everything changes when you begin to believe God’s plan has never been to leave the world he created and loves, but to dwell with us.” Indeed.

Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church G.P. Wagenfuhr & Amy J. Erickson (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Holy smokes does this look mighty. Serious and scholarly, but with a fine writing style and practical sections, this seems like an incredible work, blending insights discerned with fresh and rigorous Biblical scholarship and good stuff for ordinary folks (and pastors or anyone working in congregational or parachurch leadership.) There are even discussion questions for brave groups willing to work through a 250 + page volume.  Wagenfuhr is a Presbyterian pastor in Yakima, Washington and Erickson lectures in theology and ethics at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre in Australia.

Although I’d categorize this as a book of Biblical studies, it is clear it provides research offered for sake of the harried and hurting. It is for pastors who are hyperactive and ordinary folks who are exhausted. It offers a rejection of the idols of the culture — more and more and more! — and invites us to “anticipate the true rest that only comes in God’s reign.”

I mentioned, above, the Jubilee conference that has been going on yearly for 50 years. When we named the conference back in 1976 a Dutch neo-Calvinist philosopher was guiding us through the famous book The Politics of Jesus by Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder; it showed the link between Jesus’s first sermon (Luke 4) and his text of the day (Isaiah 61) which draws on the Jubilee initiative in Leviticus 25. Not having done much reading from Leviticus, I had never head of the Year of Jubilee. Sabbath Gospel explains that, too, inviting us to notions of ultimate rest (think of Hebrews) to which we are invited. Yes, in Christ the Jubilee rest is gifted. Yes, in Christ, we can experience — now but not yet, here but not fully — the regime of shalom, rooted in rest. We don’t have to earn or achieve or try to deserve it. Sabbath, as explored by this wonderful book, is gospel language — gift and grace.

Yes, these authors are indebted to NT Wright. They quote remarkable books, from Seeing Like a State to early works by Jacque Ellul (and Marva Dawn on Jacque Ellul) to the rare book, Sabbath Economics by Ched Meyers.  Of course they love the respected old Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel and his work The Sabbath and cite, importantly, Sabbath as Resistance by Brueggemann.

You may need to rest after working through Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church but, believe me, you will rest better than you ever have, getting this stuff in your bones. We recommend it highly.

Becoming Neighbors: Common Good Made Local Amar D. Peterman (Eerdmans) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

This little book came just today and although it is slim (under 100 pages) it is potent and wonderfully done. I think it would be ideal for outreach committees or adult ed classes or book clubs or small groups. There is a great foreword by James K.A. Smith which shows how important it is and the blurbs on the back are stellar. From Eboo Patel to Karen Swallow Prior, many have raved about the beauty of the words and healing, hopeful count. Hannah Reichel (For Such a Time as This) calls it “provocatively practical.” Joash Thomas (The Justice of Jesus) says it is “a hope-filled, prophetic reimagination of what the church was always meant to be.”

My friend Stephanie Summers (of the impeccably balanced Center for Public Justice) says very nice things about it. So does the eloquent Anne Snyder (of the equally eloquent Comment magazine.) So does John Inazu, who did a fabulous job, by the way, at Jubilee with his thoughtful book of legal theory (Confident Pluralism) and his delightful “year-in-the-life” book about being a professor on a conflicted campus, Learning How to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect. Talk about local!  Anyway, if Inazu recommends it, that’s worth listening to!

Amar Peterman was a leader in the civic networks movement of InterFaith America and founded Scholarship for Religion and Society. He holds an MDiv from Princeton Seminary (and I think is doing a PhD at the University of Chicago.) He’s convinced that we can best cultivate the common good by starting in our own neighborhood. He offers five wonderfully written and provocative chapters, each inviting us to care well for our neighbors and our neighborhoods. It’s beautiful and potent, not dense but perhaps what might be called thick (that is, not a thin telling.) He cites the likes of Norman Wirzba, Christian Wiman, Oliver O’Donovan, Hartma Rosa, William James Jennings, so he’s delightfully brainy. There is even an old Rubem Alves quote!  Talk about short and sweet. I hope Becoming Neighbors is discussed often, all over.

Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagine Faith Rachel Held Evans (HarperOne) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I guess most of our readers (whether they appreciate her much or not) know who Rachel Held Evans was. Her first book was a memoir about growing up in a strict fundamentalist family and church in Dayton, Tennessee, the town famous for the Scopes Trial. First called Evolving in Monkeytown, I suspect that many potential readers didn’t know what that meant so they changed the title and reissued it as Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions. She wrote several books poking fun at legalism and strict configurations of faith, whether it was A Year of Biblical Womanhood or the poignant Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. We met once and had a few deep conversations; we debated a bit and she was funny if firm. She has become sort of the poster-girl for a generous faith that rejects toxic formulations and invites gracious, inclusive, generous practices. She was dubbed by The Atlantic, “the hero to Christian misfits.”

Jeff Chu, author of Good Soil, one of our favorite books of last year, was devastated when his good friend and comrade died unexpectedly. I can’t imagine how hard it was, emotionally, but he responded to Rachel’s husband’s request and finished Rachel’s last manuscript, in her spirit, knowing much about her writerly style and trajectory. That book was called Whole Hearted Faith and I’m sure I said somewhere that it was her last book.

Happily, if bittersweet, her good friend Sarah Betsy, edited and brought together a whole bunch of Rachel’s previously unpublished [in book form] essays, articles, chapters (maybe journal entries?) and serious facebook postings and nicely put them together as only a good editor can, and we now have what I really do believe will be the final posthumously published book by Rachel Held Evans. The chapters are short but compiled well, bringing various pieces together in what truly feels like a major contribution to our reformulations and reconsiderations of faith both public and personal.

There are six major units or parks, each with maybe a dozen or more chapters. They include:

• An Evolving Faith: Essays on Doubt, Asking Questions, and the Cost of it All
• The Unholy American Trinity: Essays on Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and Religious Nationalism
• Casseroles, Evangelicalism, and the Kingdom of the Hungry: Essays on the Church
• All Right, Then, I’ll Go toHell: Essays on Gender and Sexuality
• Still a Bible Nerd: Essays on Scripture
• Telling the Truth: Essays on Life in the Midst of It All

Throughout, in each of these sections, are a few very appropriate pieces by friends and conversations partners such as Matthew Paul Turner, Shauna Niequist, Sarah Bessey, Scot McKnight, Shane Claiborne, Lisa Sharon Harper, Kathy Khang, Jen Hatmaker, Osheta Moore, Micha Boyett, Cindy Wang Brandt, Pete Enns, Kaitlin Curtice, and many more. All are exceptional writers and dear, dear people of character. You won’t want to miss her “meditation on nursing”, a penultimate piece called “Lent for the Lamenting” and the final chapter, the first I read, “Her Last Act as a Blogger: A Reflection by Amanda Held Opelt” (her sister.)  Sarah Bessey’s afterword “Go Forth, Woman of Valor” is beautiful. Braving the Truth is a very special book, mostly her own words and yet plenty of tribute, plenty of grace. We recommend it.

Lit Up With Love : Becoming Good News People to a Gospel-Starved World Derwin L. Gray (NavPress) $12.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

I know not everyone has time or disposition to wade through major hardback texts. I know some want a short and succinct shot in the arm (or what Dylan called a “shot of love.”) Or maybe you want to share a book with somebody but it can’t be too thick or pricey. Or maybe you’re looking for an accesible little book for a small group or one-on-one mentoring session. This little book is a gem and we’re happy to tell you about it. I hope it sells like hot-cakes.

If I were to say it is about evangelism, I suspect that will be a less than winning selling point so I’ll try not to use the E-word, even if that is how I’d best describe it. But please forget the bad images of pushy big-mouths or the person who is “that guy.” The world is hungry for answers, creative, winsome people with a big vision of life’s deepest meaning really can — when lit up with love — bear beautiful witness to the work God is doing in the world. If any of the above titles makes sense — reimagining apologetics, embodying faith, living into the story of new creation, caring for the brokenness of the world, working for racial and multiethnic reconciliation, affirming a high view of work and our callings in the world — then this little volume by a well-known black pastor will scratch where it itches for you and your friends. I’m sure of it.

Lit Up is a book about how to be the sorts of communities that when they talk about God people response well because they think it makes sense.  It is rooted in a full-orbed vision of the Kingdom, not a truncated, bullet-point formula of faith. It shows how we can become people who “develop a heart for the hurts and longings of the people in our lives” and are “living the adventure of being an everyday missionary.”  I won’t use the high-powered marketing lingo of this starting something like a catalytic movement or how “living loved” will change the reputation of the church in your community and therefore transform the world. But it sure can’t hurt, eh? Who doesn’t need a little help learning to love well and share faith in honest ways? And it is fun that Derwin Gray used to be a pretty significant NFL star who came to faith as a professional football player and eventually went on to study theology and church planting. Very cool.

This has 10 short chapters each followed with some “holy habits” and some discussion questions and a closing prayer making it fantastic for a small group or book club. There is also a fee church hit. With small-group curriculum videos, even possible sermon outlines for those who want to go big with this little guy. Gray is the cofounder and lead pastor of Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. N.T. Wright says that his “passion for Jesus and the gospel leaps off every page.”

Discipling the Diseased Imagination: Spiritual Formation and the Healing of Our Hearts Justin Ariel Bailey (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I often wonder how best to mentor others, to teach and inform and influence. I’m a lowly bookseller and do some public speaking, traveling here and there on rare occasions to talk about the importance of reading widely, preaching about the ways in which being a life-long learner can inform our faith and our visions of discipleship. What does it mean, really, in the famous text, to “make disciples of all nations”? And how do you do it in this day and age?  I’ve got my list of books about disciple-making and this now, is a vital addition. I’ve just started it but it is by far the most provocative and faithful and thoughtful book on the topic I’ve read in years.

Justin Bailey is a professor of theology (and the dean of chapel) at Dordt University. If you’re reading carefully, I alluded, above, to a Dutch philosopher who was teaching some of us back in the mid-1970s when we cooked up the idea of the Jubilee conference. That leader, a flamboyant philosophical evangelist named Pete Steen, had connections at Dordt College and Justin Bailey (when he spoke at Jubilee a few years ago) was happy to be reminded of the connections between Pittsburgh and Sioux Center, Iowa, between CCO and Dordt.

And now Bailey has a brand new book which, it seems to me, will be really useful for those such as the campus workers in CCO (or IVCF or RUF or Cru or Navs or at the Christian Study Centers or Fellows Programs, etc. etc.) who are tasked with guiding young adults in their faith journey. Although not written about shaping the lives of teens or those in confirmation classes, I’d say it offers a grand foundation for those doing that kind of work, too. Do you teach Sunday school? Mentor others in outreach groups? Are you a parent or teacher? This book is for you!

In fact, it isn’t even exactly about teaching others, but about understanding our own damaged imaginations and how our own faith formation can only develop if we reconsider how to find healing for our distorted imaginations.

Bailey’s main point his that the imagination should be at the center of our discipleship (that is, our Christian growth, internally and outwardly, so to speak, informing how we live out our faith.) If it is central to our own sanctification, this sort of intentional attention to our imagination therefore needs to be a part of the effort of those shaping and cultivating and nurturing others in their faith journey. Obviously, growing as a Christian or mentoring others in their own growth as Christians involves a lot more than transferring data, even if that content is Bible-rich and theological sound. Inner transformation is more than learning facts about religion. Duh.

I loved his hefty previous book called ReImagining Apologetics which invited us to reach others in outreach and persuasion by telling a better story than that which they are currently living; that is, apologetics can be more than arguing about the reliability of the Bible or the viability of a life in Christ or the importance of truth. Rather, we can use myth and the arts to rekindle the imagination so as to evoke a desire for deeper more wonderful things. Now, in Discipling the Diseased Imagination it seems like he has written a sequel, rather than focusing on using the imagination to enfold others into the Christian story but to mentor and build up others in the faith by forming not only the mindset the heart and spirit.

The modern sickness of the soul runs deeper than most diagnoses are able to reach,” says Joshua Chatrow, author of Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age. Of Justin Bailey’s book he continues, “Discipling the Diseased Imagination is the treatment plan the church sorely needs. With a rare blend of intellectual depth, pastoral care, and elegant prose, Bailey prescribes a vision for the Christian life that is honest, humane, and hopeful.”

Oh my. Isn’t that what you want for your life, for your church, for your witness to your unbelieving neighbors and friends? My pal Alex Sosler, who has a new book on hip hop, by the way, says that Justin Ariel Bailey writes artfully and convincingly and that “to reimagine is a moral imperative of possibility.” Yes.

The first chapter is about imaginative perception and the second is about prayer. The third is about resistance and the next is about attention. Do you believe God is still speaking? Do you believe we need to foster a wondrous sense of being alive to that? Listen to Bailey who is orthodox and rigorous and prayerful and yet eager to help us discover a broader spirituality of human-ness, of glory, of goodness.

Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow Jay Stringer (Convergent) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Okay, we’ve been suggesting books about living into a grand and robust vision of the gospel which takes fully the Bible’s teaching about the good sturdiness of creation, the radical and debilitation corruption caused by sin and idolatry, and the hopeful, substantial healing promised by Jesus the King of the coming new creation. Our speaker the first night of Jubilee, Drew Hyun, nicely describes the reality of these Biblical motif that we all know in our bones. His book is called Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful. Right? We all have these experiences of a good world gone south and we all need some way to make sense of the hope we long for. Much of this — as Augustine told us centuries ago and as many, many writers and preachers have said of late (many drawing on James KA Smith’s marvelous You Are What You Love)  — all hinges on matters of desire. What do you want, Jesus asks early in the gospel of John. It’s a good question.

Dan Allender, a name who shows up often here at BookNotes, helped start at graduate school of psychology and advance studies of counseling inspired, in part, by this deep perspective on the nature of the heart’s longings, attending to story and desire. How do we cope with longing and loss, how to we live out of our own authentic stories, if we aren’t self-reflective about what drives us, what we want, what we love?

Jay Stringer is an amazing young scholar who wrote a singular book seven or so years ago among a sea-full of mostly ineffective ideas about resisting pornography and other sexual brokenness. This was called Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (NavPress; $18.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16) and was based not only on his big picture, deep assessment of the nature of longing in the human heart, but on his own survey (one of the largest of its kind) about those who had unwanted sexual issues. “Listen to your lust,” he advised, not because lust was good or acceptable, but because putting a tourniquet on it, saying no, doing what all the other hundreds of books and pamphlets and Bible studies and pastoral messages said do simply wasn’t working. Most know that, frankly, those with unwanted sexual desires, even Biblical Christians empowered by the Spirit to want to do the right thing, find it complicated to break sexual compulsions. Jay invited readers to deep and honest awareness of what’s really going on, below the surface, under the hood. It’s a book we are glad to sell and that we think is for many a godsend.

And now (releasing next week) we have a brand new book that in some ways goes deeper and wider than the quite specific Unwanted. His faith is still evident and his helpfulness as a counselor is obvious, but Desire is a bit of a broader study, at once both more philosophical (about theological anthropology, I might suggest) and scientific (brain studies, attachment theory, etc.) His scope, now, is not just helping people with porn addictions and the like but asking how we even understand this human experience of longing. What is desire, really, and where does it come from?

And how cool is this — the best-selling author Will Guidara, a chef (whose high-end restaurant was the basis of several scenes in the TV hit The Bear) and author of Unreasonable Hospitality has called it  “a master class in caring for the human spirit.” Chef Guidara says that “Desire turns the work of hospitality inward, changing how you understand love, purpose, and what it means to serve those around you, and yourself.” I know Jay lives in New York City but I hadn’t seen that coming. Nice, eh?

Dan Allender, one of Jay’s mentors, has long talked about God’s story and our longings being fulfilled as we allow God to author our story, as we find our meaning in delving into our personal story in light of God’s redemptive story. (That Dan came to faith in part through that Dutch philosopher I mentioned who helped us name Jubilee is not inconsequential; from his earliest days as a collegiate follower of Jesus he was rooted in a philosophy of life and culture and a theology of the human person and grace that saw things others often missed. And so he’s a world-class leader, now, as is Jay Stringer.)

Jay did a massive bit of social science research and tons of interviews (number in the thousands, I’m told) to discover much about what people think about their own desires. We learn, in Desire, what he calls findings and skills and the like, making it researched based but immanently helpful. From a desire for personal growth (and ways we sidestep it) to a desire for intimacy (and how we create “rituals and routines of love” to sustain our affections) to even practical reflections on depression and joy, loneliness and friendship, the search for meaning and faith, Stinger’s years of work have paid off.  He is curious about all of this deeply human stuff and he invites us to fight our shame and be real about it all — can we become curious stewards of our own desires? Do we even know what we want? This book is provocative and a major work to study and discuss.

I’ve only scratched the surface. We can send them out next week when Convergent officially releases it. You should order it now!

Here is a bit of what the publisher has shared about it; I quote:

“Desire drives our search for intimacy, meaning, and joy, but it can also lead to shame, betrayal, and self-sabotage. Too often we are encouraged to silence it, distort it, or treat surface-level symptoms like loneliness, low desire, or porn use — without listening to what our longings are really telling us.

In Desire, Stringer shows how to decode those clues and transform your story. Drawing on unforgettable stories from his clinical practice–individuals and couples navigating everything from childhood scars to purity culture, professional exhaustion to sexual difficulties, codependency to self-doubt — he shows you how to ask the questions you’ve been avoiding and move toward the healing you didn’t know how to seek.”

Jay Stringer brilliantly invites us to a well-researched, richly imagined, and compellingly written understanding of what he calls the inner civil war of competing desires. His scholarship and personal honesty will give you a new path to offer kindness to your soul and the conflicts that have beset you. I say with no fear of exaggeration — this will be one of the most important books you will read for knowing yourself and others. — Dan B. Allender, PhD, professor of counseling psychology, founding president of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology

Jay Stringer wants to give you permission — permission to stop running; to stop trying so hard; to stop the self-criticism; and, most of all, to start desiring again. This book is a much-needed corrective to strategies that get you almost there — but never quite feeling free and healed. Desire has the immense power to actually help people change and grow. Take this invitation to excavate buried desires and move toward an authentic, whole, and integrated you! — Sheila Wray Gregoire, author of The Great Sex Rescue

Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice L. Daniel Hawk (IVP Academic) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have long said that IVP and IVP Academic have been the premier evangelical publisher and, at the same time, also the premier Christian publisher doing readable, useful, transformative book on racial reconciliation and racial justice. In recent decades all legitimate publishers everywhere joined in and nearly every faith-based publisher has something in their catalogues about race, anti-racism, or ethnic diversity. IVP has been publishing these kinds of books since the 1970s.

Early on, IVP — perhaps because of their connection to the evangelical campus ministry outfit IVCF which has worked on large city campuses since before there was an IVP publishing house — have done books for Asian American’s navigating Christian faith and for Latinos as well. Hooray. And, in recent decades they’ve pioneers books by and for and about indigenous peoples (such as Saving the Gospel from the Cowboys and books on diversity by Native leader Randy Woodley.) This past year they released the First Nations Translation New Testament and the First Nations Translation: Proverbs and Psalms. We stock those in hardback and paperback and a nice imitation leather.

Which is just to say that it makes sense for IVP to do this extraordinary scholarly history of white settlers spreading across North America and how they “crafted and enacted an epic story of their God-given dominion — over the land, over Indigenous nations, and over the future.” As Hawk explains, “Their narrative constructed a myth of innocence that justified a massive program of violence and dispossession by suppressing a darker history. That history still reverberates today.”

Daniel Hawk, with a PhD from Emory University, is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio.  He is considered a published expert in postcolonial Biblical study. Here he is doing the necessary backstory to the turn in postcolonial theory and simply writes — as a descendant of White settlers — American history (with theology and Biblical scholarship combined) to show how to bust up the myths of Manifest Destiny.

Every Moment Holy: Rites of Passage Douglas McKelvey, illustrated by Ned Bustard (Rabbit Room Press) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

This just arrived today and we are thrilled. This is not the time to do another extended review of the previous three editions, or discuss in detail the glories and wonders, the theological depth and  quotidian, prayerful usefulness, the aesthetic richness of language and the artful classy design of the first three volumes of Every Moment Holy.

I hope you know the belovedness of the three full-sized, leather-bound hardbacks and their smaller, flexible, leather-bound compact editions, as well.  Their popularity has nearly created a movement of liturgical prayer in houses, markets, college dorms, businesses, playgrounds, garages, workplaces, bedrooms, kitchens, yards, cars, and more. The taupe-colored first volume (in larger or smaller versions) include random liturgies and prayers for every imaginable occasion, some whimsical, some incredibly wise (if rare) while others are sort of standard (for hospitable visits, first days school, various hard moments.) The second — in those gorgeous tan editions — focuses on loss and lament (those were the most used, it seems, in Volume I so in Volume II they did more prayers for loss and sadness and complicated moments, richly illustrated with Ned Bustard’s striking graphics. Volume III (in large or smaller) is the bright blue one, with prayers and litanies composes by a variety of poets and pastors and the artwork (while still that black and white linocut /woodcut style) is by a handful of artists. Ned still designed the layout, the parts in red ink, the ribbon marker, and so forth. The three volumes (each in two sizes and prices) are precious and beautiful and have sold everywhere we go.

At last there is now a fourth and it is just a tiny bit different to behold and use. Every Moment Holy: Rites of Passage could be described as prayers and liturgies for young adults in transition. They have called it “a companion for early adulthood” and there are prayers about the unique day-to-day trials, joys, hopes, and griefs of these “critical years.”  There are more than 150 prayers  and liturgies for classes, graduations, dating, anxiety, job interviews, seasons of doubt, travel and more. There are over 30 illustrations by Ned Bustard.

The size is just a little different two. It is a leather-covered hardback, like the larger editions of the first three, but just a bit more trim in size, a bit thinner. It’s a fabulous size, in a rich brown with a Bustard linocut on the front. Not as small and chunky as the smaller editions but not as large as the bigger hardback editions, it feels just right. Hooray.

And guess what? Most of us are in transition and could use these prayers and litanies for knowing how to make good choices, for hosting our doubts, for seeking God’s will, to pray before an awkward social gathering, for cultivating gratitude, consuming media (for solo gamers.)

On the dedication page it reads:

For all who heed the wild call

to set foot upon this pilgrim road,

to take up your cross and follow Christ

wherever he might lead.

Run hard. Finish well.

 

Let’s gather at the Wedding Feast.

Strong Allies: Creating, Cultivating, Restoring Leslie Anne Bustard & Théa Rosenburg and others (Square Halo Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’m pretty proud of my pal Ned Bustard, a dear friend and admired artist and “Barnabas” for artists. He and his teams founded Square Halo Books, run out of his Lancaster home office, in part, to deepen the literary contribution of artists writing about aesthetics, creativity, art history, and the importance of ordinary saints doing culture-making in our good but fallen world. In his own other job as graphic designer and printmaker, Ned has helped with the extraordinary success of the Every Moment Holy prayer books (see above) we couldn’t be more pleased to see his rising reputation.

You may recall us sharing about the death of his wife a few years ago. She was his ally in writing and publishing and curating their Square Halo Gallery in downtown Lancaster and was a poet and essayist in her own right. We have enthusiastically promoted her co-authored must-read Wild Things and Castles in the Sky a “guide to choosing the best books for children.” We so very much appreciate Tiny Thoughts I’ve Been Thinking: Selected Writings that include her essays and poems, published posthumously. Poet and her friend Malcolm Guite called it “a little trove of beauty and wisdom in the midst of ugly and confusing times.”

Well, one of the things Leslie and I (and Leslie and Beth) talked about from time to time was the Biblical / theological discussion about properly understanding gender roles and, particularly the vision and vocation of woman. She tried hard to develop what she and I more than once called “a third way” beyond the polarizing dogmas of the far feminist left and the far evangelical right. She herself was part of a lively and artful PCA congregation so we disagreed about some considerable matters, but I valued (really valued!) Her efforts at bridge building and discerning a Biblically solid and Reformed theological alternative to women-despising misogyny. More than polemical, too, she wanted to invite women into a generative and active role as women. The subtitle in this new collection of her pieces — finished by her close friend Théa Rosenburg — is important Strong Allies is not merely a “position” in the discussions about gender roles, it is a vivid and delightful and restorative call for women to be collaborative with others (male or female.) This really is Leslie’s gentle and lovely manifesto, written as only she could have, with plenty of strong insight and plenty of charm and grace.

The title is important as Leslie felt she had come up with the key to her particular take on the vocation of women, and that is the Hebrew word ezer, used in Genesis 2:18. It is often translated as helper (or in King James language, “helpmeet”), but that sometimes is used in ways that seem merely an assistant, not mutually valuable. She shows that the only other times that word is used is when the Biblical writers use it to describe God. God’s helpful, faithful, cultivating, creating, restoring power. Obviously, the linguistics of this part of being made in the very image of God suggests no secondary servant status. Ezer, Leslie realized, is a word loaded with fresh insight and poetic power.

Since she never fully finished her manuscript during her cancer years, Théa, with Ned’s full approval, found other women to weigh in, to share their insights, to tell stories, to make this whole vision of collaborative femininity for God’s reign become real, practical, down-to-Earth. So we have well-known writers and friends from Luci Shaw (perhaps offering her last written essay) to Margie Haack to Christie Purifoy to Karen Swallow Prior and many others, each sharing a story or insight. The book is visionary and thoughtful but also tender and practical; it is written for women and men, I’d say. Yes!

(And, for the record, for the three people who might care about this, she cites the rare book by Creation Regained author Al Wolters, a collection of scholarly pieces on Proverbs 31 called The Song of the Valiant Woman published by Paternoster in the UK. Just saying.)

No matter ones social status, stage of life, career, constraints or talents,  “Strong Allies calls women in every walk and stage of life to love the people around them in the places where he has planted them…”

I love the blurb on the back saying “countless books have been written about what women can and can’t do. But this book asks the question: “What did God make women to be?”

Leslie’s beautiful book not only shows us Scripture’s strong vision for women to be strong allies, but brings that vision to life in the stories of dozens of women then and now in a wide range of life circumstances. Personal and tender, practical and inspiring–we finally have a guide to biblical womanhood! — Carmen Joy Imes, author of Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters

Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest James Martin, SJ (HarperOne) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I could write about this for pages and pages but I’ll say just three quick things. I suppose you know of James Martin, a famous and often very funny Jesuit priest who sometimes appears on Colbert and has written many titles, including good ones on Jesus, on pilgrimage, on prayer, and on the Jesuits. He’s a fine writer and a good, good guy. This is his memoir of coming of age, his many summer jobs, and discerning his eventual call into the priesthood, which sort of surprised everybody. It’s a great fun read.

So, point number one: it’s a great fun read by an important Christian writer so you ought not miss it.  If you don’t buy it from us, visit your local library! It’s a delight to read, inspiring, and upbeat, humorously written with lyrical moments of lovely insight. Although I spend some of my days reading some heady stuff, I so enjoy dipping into this each night and I’m going to miss his clever voice when I’m done. Enjoy!

Point number two: it’s about work, summer jobs, all kinds of dumb and enchanting occupations, written about with zeal and idealism (except, well, when he tells about his often hilarious goof-ups and oddball antics — like being a caddy at one of the fanciest old country clubs in the country while not knowing a single thing about golf. Or trying to collect payment for a free paper he delivered to people who never requested it.) Anyway, we all need to honor the work of our hands (and the word of others hands and the theological conversation about workday callings and careers often skews to the professional and corporate. What fun to read about odd jobs and the life of a teen trying to make sense of the value and dignity of common labor.

Thirdly: Jimmy Martin grew up in the 1970s in a wonderfully colorful very middle class neighborhood outside of Philadelphia and describes childhood games and youthful anxieties and teen problems. And he nails it! I am not quite a decade older but this resonated so much, a fabulously fun glimpse into a world not unlike my own growing up. From the avocado colored decor and shag rugs (none of which we had) and saving money to buy 45s and albums and paperback books, and talking about the concerns about money (there were some rich kids around, but not many) and status and class and dating, it all rang so true.  This coming of age story — told through the jobs he had — is not merely a nostalgia piece (although it is charming to reminisce so well) but, like any really good memoir, a glimpse into the interior lives of folks making their way in the world. The remarkable memoirist Mary Karr notes in her rave review that “there is no greater quest or romance than this.”

I won’t even talk about what would be a major fourth point: Martin goes to the University of Pennsylvania, graduates from the Wharton business school and does sort of grow up. He becomes a corporate tool for a while (his word) spending time in New York City and eventually, even famously, discerning a call to ministry. I’ve not finished the story yet, but I see it coming. I do not think he will wax overly spiritual about how being called to what Catholics call the religious life is somehow better than so-called secular life. For him, though, becoming a Jesuit was finally a sweet spot and we can all be glad. That he finds God through it all is lovely and good; that he isn’t done writing yet might indicate that his priestly vocation also includes being a very good writer. Hooray!

Start with a Word: On the Craft and Adventure Writing Marilyn McEntyre (Eerdmans) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I sure hope I’ve done our job here as (at least one of) your book guys by highlighting the prolific work of the lovely and wonderful writer Marilyn McEntyre. I’ve often shared that she has been a literature prof working at a med school, helping wanna-be doctors and medical researchers understand more deeply the humanity of it all, reflecting on classic and modern literature and poetry and essays on illness and grief and bodies and hope. She knows how to use words well and uses them in this extraordinarily important work. Obviously we are fans.

Further, I think in every talk or class I’ve done on the reading life I’ve done since the summer of 2009 I’ve cited her fabulous book (originally given as the esteemed Stone Lecture at Princeton) Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. When I get carried away here, I recall her chapter (one of her “stewardship strategies” for words) is to “love the long sentence. Ahem.

Just recently I had reason to revisit Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict and at Jubilee a weekend ago I pressed her When Poets Pray into the hands of a young writer. From daily devotionals to Biblical pieces to literary criticism, she has created a notable body of work. And now she tells us, in her eloquent prose, just how it’s done.

One would think that reading a book about writing by a master writer would be a coup de state. But, alas, not every good writer shows their finest prose in teaching about their craft. Some are wise and useful, others are pleasantly delightful but more rare are those books about how to write that are a joy to read. Enter Marilyn McEntyre, a profoundly Christian thinker with a wide palette of reading and a broad vision of being a good writer.  This, I am sure, is going to be a favorite book of the year, although I’ve only dipped in. It is very new and you are among the first to hear about it, so enjoy! Buy it now, even if you aren’t an aspiring writer (and certainly if you are.) I need it, in more ways than one!  You too?

I know I might sometimes overstate the importance of who endorses a book, although it remains an important keystone for my initial evaluations. Marilyn has had writers and reviews far more important and skilled than I praising her work. From Reformed writer Cornelius Plantinga to the interfaith mystic Carol Zaleski; from thoughtful, evangelical singer-songwriter Michael Card to the famous Catholic activist Richard Rohr, so many have appreciated her work. I love a long blurb on the back of this one by Scott Cairns, the extraordinary Orthodox poet. New York pastor and poet (and half of the band The Welcome Wagon, who has played with Sufjan Stevens, by the way), Vito Aiuto, says that “studying with Marilyn McEntyre helped set the trajectory of my creative life.” Wow. Now we can all take in her instructions with what looks like a great, great resource.

By the way, the very first chapter is, not surprisingly, to “read like a writer.” Yes!

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If you enjoyed this newsletter feel free to share it with those who might enjoy it as well. If you want to purchase any of these we sure hope you’d send the order our way. All books mentioned are 20% off. Click on the link below. Happy reading in these hard times.

FIFTEEN BOOKS TO ACCOMPANY YOU ON YOUR LENTEN JOURNEY

If you’ve read our last several BookNotes you know there have been some trying times in the Borger household, and, also, that we have been consumed — as we always are in February — with prepping for and (with a lot of volunteer help) running the largest off-site book display we do each year, offering a pop-up bookstore for the CCOs annual Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh. Maybe you’ve seen a few Facebook posts (a couple ended up at our store’s group page) and I know more than a few of you were praying for us as we sold books about the wide-as-life transforming vision that undergirds the CCOs work of helping college students understand their majors as holy vocations. It is a joy to see others (especially young collegiates) buy books so they can think Christianly as they take up their places in God’s world, living into habits that allow them to be agents of God’s redemptive work from the workplace to the neighborhood to the public square.

Which is just a long way of saying we’ve been busy and are, as I’ve said to some friends who’ve asked, “exhilarated but exhausted.” Still, I feel badly that we just haven’t gotten a big Lenten list to you yet. Thanks for your patience as we all now shift into this season of sober spirituality, heading towards the cross.

We’ve done some pretty hefty lists in years past and many of those titles are still very useful. We even have some of them in stock now, and we can usually get more in a matter of days. Go to the BookNotes tab at our website and put “Lent” into the search box and see what comes up.

Check out these (mostly) new ones and send us an order if anything catches your attention. And if you wonder what this whole business even is, try our favorite introduction to the reason for the season, Lent: A Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59. It’s one of several in the great Fullness of Time series. It makes a nice little gift this time of year, too.

TEN (mostly) NEW ONES

Here are ten Lenten ones that are new this year and the five more that just seemed good to tell you about. As always, all are offered to you here at 20% off. We’re grateful for our online friends and enjoy our mail-out ministry. Thanks for your partnership. Read on!

Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings Malcolm Guite, Julia Golding & Simon Horobin (Canterbury Press) $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

As we await the first volume of the extraordinary epic telling of the King Arthur legend redone by Malcolm Guite coming in April, we can dip into this, a great little Lenten reader which is arranged nicely as an introduction to various writings of the collaborative fellowship of Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and others (and their heros, including George MacDonald, T.S. Eliot, and G.K. Chesterton.) Each entry describes the particular writer in view, a survey of the part of the story under consideration (say, the Turkish delight scene from Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe or something from the Ransom “space trilogy” or a spotlight of Sam from LotR as “one who serves.”) This book would be fun and formative to read anytime, but the 40-day Lenten format, complete with Biblical texts and a prayer, makes it ideal for this season.

Christ in Our Midst: Daily Lenten Reflections Through Scripture & Gregorian Chant Paraclete Press $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This handsome hardback is unlike any Lenten devotional we’ve seen in ages. There are QR codes throughout that link each devotional reading to a recording of a Gregorian chant, richly and traditionally performed. The publisher has a robust collection of award-winning chant recordings and it is nice to see them applied in a book. Each day’s reading offers a Scripture, a meditative reflection, and sacred chants to hear (and, dare I say, sing along with.) As it says on the back, “On this journey toward Easter, you will discover a wellspring of peace, stillness, and joy that is both ancient and ever new.”

Meeting Jesus on the Road: A Lenten Study Cynthia M. Campbell with Christine Coy Fohr (WJK) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

A short, compact-sized resource from the beloved Cynthia Campbell, this is a lovely looking volume designed (as Kara Eidson puts it) “with reflections and practices that encourage full integration of mind, body, and soul.” Dr. Campbell is former president of McCOrmick Seminary and retired pastor of a large PC(USA) congregation in Louisville. She and Fohr collaborated before in a previous Lenten book called Meeting Jesus at the Table.

What’s also fun about this is there are introductory videos for each chapter (for group or individual use, of course) on YouTube. This really is a “come and see” invitation to pilgrimage with the Master.

When Did We See You? A Lenten Exploration of Poverty & Wealth Elizabeth Mae Magill (WJK) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

If you know your Bible even a little bit you know that concern about wealth and poverty is a major, unavoidable concern. The title of this book, of course, comes from Matthew 25. I want to suggest that this release is not done by a publisher grasping at wild straws to come up with a trendy Lenten curriculum. It’s not a liberal author trying to be radical for some hip marketing reason. No — it’s solid, Bible stuff, theologically grounded in gospel teaching.

And, you know, old-timers use words like charity and chastity and almsgiving in this season. When Did We See You is a Lenten book that was waiting to be written.

Like most of us, it seems that this author, a Disciples of Christ pastor with some experience with the underserved and poor), struggles to cope with the tensions the texts bring to us. Is it wrong to plan for the future? Is a saving account an act of holding (as the early church fathers might say — read Chrysostom!) How do we engage with matters of economic justice?

Anyway, this offers a chapter for each week of Lent with reflection questions for each day. There are litanies for Ash Wednesday and for Good Friday. She’s added good stories from real congregations and offers lots of practical ideas about how you and your community might get involved to alleviate poverty. There’s a lovely epilogue for Easter morning, too. Hallelujah!

Sacred & Still: Embrace the Holy Rhythms of the Lenten Season Julie Fisk, Kendra Riehl & Kristin Demers (Tyndale) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a very handsome hardback with some nice design touches, making it a volume you’ll want to pick up and hold. It has a slightly classy feel, with two color ink, a reflection piece to ponder after the reading and prayer as well as a practice or application they called “sacred rhythms.”  As we surrender to Christ more deeply and make spacer God to work, we will perhaps understand Easter afresh.

Maybe this year the sacred beauty this season will bring healing and purpose in His presence.

Everyday Gospel: Easter Devotional Paul David Tripp (Crossway) $7.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $6.39

Paul Tripp is a pastor in Philadelphia who has written bunches of popular books and who drills down on the gospel-centered life based on the grace found in appropriating the cross of Christ for our inner formation. His New Morning Mercies is one of the biggest selling yearly devotionals in years, and his more recent one, Everyday Gospel is another intense hardback set of 365 reflections. This new Lenten one is adapted from portions of that.

It is curious that it isn’t called a Lenten devotional. I’m guessing his deeply Protestant / Reformed orientation makes him and his publisher reluctant to use that word that seems Roman Catholic. I’m just guessing, but this four-week set of 30 daily readings is not for post-Easter reading or about Eastertide. It’s a two-pages-a-day devo leading up to Easter.  It draws from all of Scripture from creation to new creation and offers a rumination and prayer for each day. Nice.

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter — Revised and Expanded Plough Publishing $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Hey — notice this! The fabulous Bread and Wine has been considered one of the great anthologies of our generation (a companion to the equally wonderful Advent reader called Watch for the Light) and it has now been significantly expanded with dozens of new readings and new authors. Brilliant. Man, the folks at the Bruderhof community do good work; we stock almost every book they’ve done. And this significantly expanded new edition is well worth having, especially at our sale price.

If you don’t know, this handsome hardback has short excerpts of primary source readings from a delightfully wide range of voices from throughout church history — from Augustine to Chesterton to Madeleine L’Engle to Bonhoeffer. You’ve got bits by Merton and Dorothy Sayers, Howard Thurman and Wendell Berry, Watchman Nee and Edith Stein and John Stott. The new excerpts represent, again, the best classic and contemporary Christian writers. Importantly, the new expanded version takes readers through Eastertide to Pentecost.

Thanks to the good folks at Plough (I hope you know their classy magazine by the same name.)

A Just Passion: A Six-Week Lenten Journey Ruth Haley Barton, Sheila Wise Rowe, Tish Harrison Warren, and others (IVP) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I know this one is not new and I’ve mentioned it before but it is relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and includes an incredible array of our favorite authors. Created from the stable of IVP authors, it offers excerpts of various books, nicely curated and arranged with breath prayers for each week. There is a lovely (sometimes subtle, sometimes less so) on social justice and a Biblical call to public righteousness and servanthood. More than a few are writers of color.  I’m such a fan I have to mention it again. Please consider A Just Passion.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein (Paraclete Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is another repeat from other years — there are so many good older titles — that I find so interesting and unique that I wanted to name it again. Yep, it is a Lenten devotion, each reading inspired by a different animal. Endangered species, actually. The Bible says the whole creation is groaning, waiting for redemption (see Romans 8) so this makes perfect sense and I’m grateful for the authors and publisher for bringing this to us, relating creaturely delight to the dangers of being vanquished, to the hope of redemption. In a way, this is just lovely natural history with fun stuff to learn about. But with Gayle Boss’s wise ways, it really does become a Lenten resource. And the wood cuts are truly excellent.

Wild Hope is a companion volume to the very lovely Advent book about hibernating animals, All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings, also illustrated expertly by David Klein. Boss lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflections and Action Tim Muldoon (Loyola Press) $5.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $4.79

This mass-market sized paperback is a sharp little resource, a 40-day guide offering “40 ways to grow closer to God.” Obviously, it is rooted in the Ignatius method, reminding us that Lent is not primarily about giving up something but a time of seeking internal change — realigning our wills with God’s will by taking on the heart and mind of Christ. Not bad, eh?

We’ve got quite a lot of Ignatian resources here at the shop, and this little one looks very useful. We only have a few of these but hope more will arrive soon.

FIVE OTHERS FOR THIS SEASON

Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends Carmen Joy Imes (TUMI Press) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I adore this well designed book in the bigger “Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics” series produced by an urban ministry team at Taylor University. Carmen is a good friend and grand supporter of Hearts & Minds and — hooray! — did one of the best Jubilee talks last weekend in the history of the storied Pittsburgh conference. (More on that next time.) Dr. Imes is a respected and beloved Old Testament professor and prolific author. This is a book which is perhaps not as well known and it’s a shame as it is a treasure.

Praying the Psalms with Augustine is not a Lenten resource (although it seems so very apropos) and it will take you further than the Lenten season. (There are eight sections here.) Besides the insights drawn from Saint Gus and other early Christians, Carmen teaches us well, opens up the Psalms as a prayer resource, and then offers a fabulous ending section of further resources and guidance to “continue the conversation.” This is a book, as they say, of “soul work and soul care.” Thanks be to God.

Wisdom’s Call: 100 Meditations for a Life in Christ K.A. Ellis (Moody Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

What a delight it was to be greeted by Karen Ellis at Jubilee this past weekend. She did one of the most creative presentations ever done on that main conference stage as she did an eloquent one-woman retelling of the death of Christ, leading to an incredibly moving singing of an older black spiritual and “Amazing Grace.” What a way to invite people into the redemption story.

Dr. Ellis is a serious scholar of global Christianity (and has travelled to marginalized communities the world over.) As a black theologian she has focused deeply on the spirituality of public witness and social ethics. (Her husband is old Jubilee friend Carl Ellis, author of my favorite book of black history, Free At Last.) This handsome recent hardback offers 100 meditations about our union with Christ, inviting us to ponder the deeper meaning of being a follower of Jesus, born from above and in solidarity with His Kingdom. It is, finally, a book about life, about God’s ways, about wisdom.

You could read two a day (morning and evening, maybe?) for Lent, even if it isn’t exactly designed as a Lenten resource. It sure feels like an ideal book to read this season, leading to Holy Week, eh?  Wisdom’s Call.

Heaven Meets Earth: A 40-Day Journey of Transformation Through the Nicene Creed Josh Nadeau (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Oh, wow, this is very cool. A nice, trim-sized hardback with glossy paper and full-color illustrations (done by Nadeau who runs something called Sword and Pencil.) Of course it has a short phrase from the Creed, a meaningful meditation, and a bit of original art. I like how the reflection sometimes explains a feature of the illustration, helping us really use the art in a reflective manner, and seeing how it illumines the ancient words for modern times.

The back cover invites us to “step into a sacred rhyme that blends ancient tradition with a present-day insight.” You know it was the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed’s formation (in 325 AD in Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey.) It’s not Lenten, precisely, but it sure seems apropos, doesn’t it?

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I have shared much about my deep appreciation for this author and this major work. Maybe you saw our conversation online that was shared as a webinar — it’s at our store’s Facebook page. Steve is a good friend and one of the most interesting people I know. As joyful and hopeful as he is, he knows well the hurts of the fall, the wounds of the world, the wages of our idolatry. If there was ever a book that was germane and appropriate for a Lenten read, this is it. Garber leans into the cross, hopes for heaven, but for now he writes wonderfully about the trials, the distortions, and sadnesses of our messed world.

Do you feel alienated these days, maybe even from family and friends, from church, even? Are you weary? Do you want to make sense of life and seek a coherent and truthful way to know? Do you want to embody what you really know in honest ways? Hints of Hope is about this (Lenten) theme of the proximate. We may not “give something up for Lent” but we do need to take up practices of wrestling with the difficulties living well in these days.

I will keep reminding our customers of this eloquent, profound book, so you might as well pick it up now. Lent is a perfect time to ponder making peace with this wacky world and embracing the pains of the world as a spiritual practice. Read it slowly, perhaps with others.

Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole Micha Boyett (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

If you are seeking solace or leaning in to this Lenten season with some sort of hope for a renewed faith, this lovely, beautiful book — part memoir, actually about longing and hope and the Sermon on the Mount — will be a great companion. A true companion, I’d say.

Memoirist Mary Karr says it is a “graceful, moving book that should required reading” that “conjures spiritual solutions for very real problems.” Nadia Bolz-Weber calls it “breathtaking.”

I will quote the back cover to explain it succinctly:

When Micha Boyett’s son was born with Down syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, she was drawn into the ancient teachings of the Beatitudes. There, she found an invitation to honor her limits in a world that values performance, perfection, and strength over mercy, meekness, and the longing for justice.

In Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Boyett invites us — especially those of us who are burned out, tired of performing, living with grief, feeling exhausted, or powerless — to discover our wholeness not in our own accomplishments but in the dream God has for the world.

The first month of the new year — which delightfully started with Christmastide and carried us into the light of Epiphany — kept us busy, doing what seems to shape my early days of January, naming my favorite books of the previous year. In two large BookNotes I named personal favorites and “Best of…” titles, awarding those I felt I simply had to highlight for you. I missed a few good ones, skipped some for some quirky reasons, but, by and large, curated for you a great, great batch of books. I’m sure you care about your reading habits and we are honored that you allow us to speak into your life, suggesting titles both serious and fun.

Thanks to those who are praying as Beth goes through her weekly chemo infusions. She’s switching the meds around a bit and shifting to every three weeks (for about a year, yet.) So far, she’s coping well. Pray for her strength, please, as she needs extraordinary stamina for the big book display we do at the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh next week. It’s been a concern ever since the treatments began last fall.

We closed the month with two webinars, live on-line conversations, first with author and photojournalist Dorthy Greco (who Beth and I like very much) about her powerful book For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America Zondervan; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.)

Sadly the tech gods failed us and we were unable to get a usable recording from that memorable night. We thank everyone who watched, live, and for those who purchased the book from us. It’s important.

Earlier this week we had an almost hour and a half conversation with my long pal and serious conversation partner in life, Steven Garber, celebrating his new book Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate (Paraclete Press; $24.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99) HERE is the recording of our tender and often touching conversation. I really hope you find time to watch it; Garber is too good, honest and gentle and thoughtful about the things that matter most.

With all that, we’ve got some ground to cover. January started with some really good-looking titles, books that seem just right for our Hearts & Minds community of fans and friends. Let’s get to it.

All the books mentioned are 20% off. Use the link at the end which takes you to our secure order form page. You can safely enter credit card info or, as we say there, we’re happy to just send a bill so you can pay later. We also say there that we can send almost anything almost anywhere so if you’d like us to gift wrap or tuck a little note in for a special recipient, don’t hesitate to let us know. Please remember we have tons of stuff we don’t write about here. Let us know whatever you might be looking for.

TEN GREAT NEW BOOKS – ALL 20% OFF

Of Prophets, Priests, and Poets: Christian Formation at the Gates of Hell Brian J. Walsh (Cascade) $23.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

I want to lead off with this because it may be the book I care most about this new season. As some of you know, Brian is a friend and a writer I respect deeply. He was influential in my life when I was in my mid-twenties, and he was one of the early people we brought to Hearts & Minds, back when The Transforming Vision came out, the seminal work he did with Richard Middleton. (If you follow our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast you may recall my naming it a few episodes ago as an important book for those of us who have worked on the Jubilee collegiate conference in Pittsburgh.) Anyway, this is a new collection of a handful of very important sermons, essays, speeches. It is, as always, creatively written, astute, provocative, and righteous.

Last year Brian did a book I reviewed at BookNotes and then re-reviewed in my Best Books list a month ago. We really do recommend Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of the Biblical Imagination Cascade; $23.00 // OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $18.40) and I can’t say enough about its nearly brilliant insight into both Cohen and the Bible.

You may know that I’ve touted the two big Bible commentaries he co-authored with his wife, Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed and Romans Disarmed. Both are unlike anything you’ve ever read, I promise you. I return to them regularly.

A number of years ago Brian left his innovative work as an urban pastor (he spent a year as a “theologian in residence” at a homeless shelter) and was also a campus minister for the CRC at the University of Toronto. The first chapter (and the book’s title) comes from his autobiographical reflections shared among his campus ministry friends when he retired which was later posted at the Empire Remixed website. I had read it there and was blown away. If you have anything to do with campus ministry, it’s a must-read; check it out either there online or on this valuable little volume.

The rest includes previously published stuff on public justice, on poverty, or the Bible (always the Bible) and a few are important discussions about the way in which the world “worldview” has changed over recent decades and his own disillusionment with some of the conversations about relating faith and learning.(A fabulous piece from The Christian Scholars Review co-done by ecologist Steven Bouma-Prediger is nicely included.) There’s a great fictional conversation about trying to “think Christianly” without a clarity about living the gospel, even in hard places. Resisting the idols of the culture is a Biblical call that is important to him — perhaps more than anyone I know, which says a lot — and a critique of ideologies and unsustainable practices pervades the book’s prophetic insight and fuels its prophetic power.

There is, of course, as Brian has long known, power in the arts and the imagination. (He gets some of this from The Prophetic Imagination but has been teased about the regular Bruce Cockburn quotes in his early books, although he has done brilliant sermons inspired by texts from other bands and singers and poets.) So it doesn’t surprise us that he does his modern-day equivalent of the ancient Jewish preaching technique known as targums — a live (improvised?) and relevant, expansive updating of Scripture, and, man, his poetic targums are something. The last one, inspired by verses in Colossians after the election of Donald Trump, made me weep.

As socially incisive and prophetic as this book is, it is, deeply, a book of joy and a book of love. As he ruminates about the need for a less thin sort of discipleship, for a process of being formed into a Christ-like community, he both explains his passion for the displaced and homeless, and offers a better vision for us all, about homecoming and joy.

I cannot explain all of this now, but I know there are those longing for some sane way out of the idols of white Christian nationalism and the ungodly stuff many American evangelicals have fallen for. The Spirit is calling us to join God’s work in repairing the world. This book will inspire us to get going in these disorienting times.  It is dedicated to his good friend and academic colleague when there were at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, James Olthius.  Nice!

Light for the Way: Seeking Simplicity, Connection, and Repair in a Broken World Sojourners (Broadleaf) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Had this released in December — it is brand new in January — we would have raved about it and suggested it both as a great gift for those looking for a justice-minded, profoundly Christian, but rather progressive daily devotional or who would like such a volume. I supposed it isn’t exactly a daily devotional, but it is a rich anthology, a collection of some of the finest pieces that have appeared in Sojourners magazine (one of the view journals we used to sell in our store and that was very formative for us in the last decades of the 20th century and into more current years.) Jim Wallis — their founder and the first author we ever hosted in our bookstore in the early 1980s, I think — is no longer with them, and new issues and new ecumenical voices continue to offer often powerful and beautifully written essays and journalism for our jagged times. This book celebrates their last 50 years. A few of us might remember that they started as The Post American and moved to DC a half a century ago, now, forming an intentional community amongst the poor and agitated for peace and justice and social righteousness there and increasingly, around the world.

Here we have some of their best essays, from old timers like Wallis and Daneil Berrigan and  Rabbi Arthur Waskow and the ever present Rose Marie Berger. What a delight to see a memorable piece by children’s author Katherine Paterson and long-time reporter and Sojo friend Julie Porter interview literary memoirist Kathleen Norris.

Many of these essays and columns (arranged by theme) are by younger, contemporary voices. Sure there’s Bill McKibben and Brian McLaren and Walter Brueggemann, but there is wonderful writing by recent writers, from J. Dana Trent to Isaac Villegas to Mike Kim-Kort. I loved that Kaitlin Curtice and Kat Armas are in here. There are standard Sojourners-type pieces like Ched Myers’ “Jesus’s new Economy Grace” as well as unique ones like Mitchell Atencio’s “A Black Christian Approach to Veganism – An Interview with Christopher Carter.”  From Rose Marie Berger’s interview with Wendell Berry to Margaret Atwood’s “What About the Meek” you’ll find some high-profile folks, but many of these essays are quiet meditations and wise proposals.  Kudos!

At the moment, I cannot think of a better tonic for the spirit than this new collection from Sojourners, which has been in the business of encouragement for as long as some of us have been alive. Whether you are ready for refreshment from some of your favorite authors or on the lookout for new sources of inspiration, you will find them here.             — Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Leading Worship for Workers: How to Design Liturgies for All of Life Matthew Kaemingk and Kathryn Roelofs (Baker Academic) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

In our online conversation, Steve Garber and I hinted on occasion, and got explicit from time to time about a huge theological and spiritual impulse that drives both of us, namely that there is an integrated connection between worship and work. God is redeeming, in Christ, all areas of life and this means we who have a missional vision of whole-life discipleship can bring God’s light to our careers and vocations. As Garber put it in the conversation, we need to help “butchers, bakers, and candlestick matters” learn that their work matters to God.

This is, as you may know, one of the big themes that drives the Jubilee conference that the CCO hosts out in Pittsburgh next week and is the biggest thing Beth and I and our volunteer team do all year. We will see Steve there as well as Matthew Kaemingk, co-author of this splendid and rare brand new resource co-published by the good folks at Made to Flourish.

Kaemingk, along with his Calvin Seminary prof Cory Wilson, did Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy, a hefty and extraordinary volume that does the heavy lifting of helping us think about the ways in which church worship can equip ordinary folks in their ordinary jobs.  It was meaty, with some very useful tools, prayers, litanies, songs. It is a must-have for anyone in congregational church leadership and certainly for anyone who helps plan or lead worship.

The brand new Leading Worship for Workers is the handbook just filled (23 chapters and more than 230 pages!) with vital, even transformational resources. It just arrived (just in time for Jubilee) and we will have to review it more carefully later, but we rejoice in this one-of-a-kind volume. It really is, as one reviewer notes, “wonderfully grounded in the realities of local church life.” No matter your worship or liturgical tradition or style, it’s important for you.  How many do you need?

Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church G.P. Wagenfuhr & Amy J. Erickson (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

With the big Jubilee conference coming up in Pittsburgh next week, we’ve been naturally thinking about the Biblical call to sabbath, the seven days that in Hebrew literature become seven months and seven years, and then — the glorious 7 x 7 49th into the 50th year — which was to signal the great and radical social restoration outlined in passages like Leviticus 25.  Isaiah dreams about it and Jesus uses His Spirited words as the text for his inaugural address (in Luke 4.) Jubilee has come! The Kingdom of God is breaking loose among you.

That is only a part of this hefty and amazing work. The heart of it is laden with Jubilee themes, it seems to me, but the main point is this: the major call to keep sabbath is given by God twice in the Old Testament. The first time it is said that we are called to rest because of God and God’s ordering of time in creation. God rested, after all. But the second time the law is given and sabbath is proclaimed — remember Exodus? — the reason we are told we are to rest is because of the liberation from Pharaoh. That is, Sabbath (as Brueggemann boldly puts it in Sabbath as Resistance) is a call to resist the brick-making quotas, the machinery of extractive capitalism and workaholism and the consumerism that demands it. We don’t have to live like that, “enslaved” to the system of more and more and more. If the creation story funds the one call to sabbath, the liberation story funds the other.

Wagenfuhr (pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Yakima, WA) and Amy Erickson (a lecturer in theology and ethics at St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Australia) combine here to teach us a lot about the Hebrew Scriptures, the way sabbath themes are threaded throughout the ongoing Biblical narrative and about Jesus’s fulfillment of this promise of true rest and social transformation.

Theologically profound yet practically grounded, this work casts a compelling vision for individuals and communities striving to live with faithfulness and sustainability amid the hyperactive pace of contemporary life. — Alan Hirsch, Reframation: Seeing God, People, and Mission Through Reenchanted Frames

Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian Miroslav Volf & Christian Wiman (HarperOne) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I love everything about this new release — its shape (just a tiny bit smaller than typical) and the two authors (one of our great poets and essayists and one of my favorite theologians.) I even love its epistolary style. (Yes, yes, I, too, have been smitten by the novel of letters called The Correspondent by Virginia Evans so I’m all for this, a real-life correspondence.) This Glimmerings just glimmers, with thought, with wonderful writing, with friendship.

I hope you know Volf, a thoughtful theological writer who teaches at Yale Divinity School and helps run the Yale Center for Faith and Culture which has researched and advocated for everything from a Christian view of the arts to the nature of human happiness to a meaningful engagement with public life, even pop culture. Anyway, Volf brings scholarly work down to nearer ground level and that he would take up a set of letters with one of the era’s great poets is not that surprising.

Wiman, as you may know, was known and respected as a top-shelf poet and editor of poetry magazines; now he, too, teaches at Yale and writes for the likes of The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Commonweal. His return to something akin to his childhood faith (after getting a brain tumor) was chronicled in the moving memoir My Bright Abyss. He continues to do essays and poems (like Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair.

And here they are, in what is going to be one of the most cherished books of the year. Believe me.

Beautiful, glowing. even impassioned reviews and endorsements are from Mary Karr (who says it is “destined to become a classic’) and Rowan Williams and Eliza Griswold and Pádraig Ó Tuama Nicholas Wolterstorff. Nick says “I know of nothing like it. Take, read, and savor.”

Weathering Change: Seeking Peace And Life’s Tough Transitions Courtney Ellis (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Hooray — this book just arrived and while I haven’t read it yet, I’ve been waiting and I’m glad it’s here a bit early. Courtney Ellis is an active social media voice and, more importantly, a pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master in Mission Viejo, California. She’s written several earlier books; they were lovely and basic; one on happiness, one on mothering, another on decluttering. Good, playful, well written. But then she experienced some serious grief and wrote about it in an excellent, excellent book called Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief which so many people loved for so many reasons. It was well written, sweet on stuff about birding and the life of loving the outdoors, and it was a memoir of grief. It was a great read.

This new one is about change, about transition, about the unexpected (or maybe we see stuff coming.) She notes that some changes we look forward to and celebrate (think of a wedding or the birth of a baby.) Others may be “a shift we fear” and of course there are those things like moving or changes that come with a broken relationship or aging. Tell me about it.

The key to Weathering Change, I think, is how the natural world — God’s creation which speaks! — is central to our process of weathering change. (The word “weathering” is intentionally chosen, no doubt.)  Like in her Looking Up, she weaves together nature writing and beautiful, even fun, stories of attending to creation, and draws from it healing insight.

Courtney Ellis’s Weathering Change teems with a tumble of life: sage thrashers and ocean tides, falcons and microbes, bears and goldfinches. Amid this kaleidoscopic tour of the earth’s wonders, Ellis reveals a shimmering thread of wisdom about managing change. At a moment in history when change feels overwhelming and pervasive, Ellis’s witty and gentle prose brings nature’s wisdom to bear on our human experience, drawing from her own family life and pastoral ministry as well. Spend a little time with this congenial companion, reveling in delight and wonder and God’s provision, and you will feel more at ease with change-and less alone. Debra Rienstra, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth

I am sure this is going to be a great read, really well done, thoughtful, and loaded with enduring insights. Who doesn’t need some help and hope in these turbulent times?

Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them L. Roger Owens with Mary Clare Owens (Upper Room Books) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It’s rare when we get to highlight a book by a kid; Mary Clare, daughter of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Roger, was 14 when she wrote this with her dad.  Roger has written other very good books for the “everyday contemplative” exploring how ordinary folks can embrace certain practices of the monastic life and practice “the heart of Christian spirituality.” You’ve got to check him out if you don’t know his readable, fun, useful books.

But this. Wow. He told me he was working on this two years ago (he spoke at the Wee Kirk small church conference in Western PA) and I was intrigued. Now we see just how good it is.

Praying Their Way is pitched as offering a new vocabulary for talking to kids about prayer. Indeed, this is a good guide to how parents can have a creative, gentle, allusive sort of style in doing spiritual formation with their children. Sure, he’s a seminary prof, but this isn’t about imparting doctrine 9at least not directly) but inviting kids to find those liminal spaces where God is showing up. This is about prayer practices to try with kids from, oh, say, maybe 9 or 10 years old up to 14 or so

As it says on the back:

Whether you’re a parent, pastor, Sunday school teacher, or other adult seeking to raise kids in a life of faith, Praying Their Way will equip you to embark on a joyful journey of discovery and holy connection with the kids you love.

As you explore these practices with our children, you may find that your own relationship with God is deepened and enriched as well.

After each chapter, Roger invites his daughter to offer her own input as she writes about doing this thing. 

The first twelve fairly short chapters are about friendship with God; it is on prayer. The second six are more specific practices about various places and styles (from praying with your body, praying in nature, praying for justice, and, of course, praying the Scriptures.) Join this daughter and dad as they learn together. Very nice!

Generously Reformed: Theology Rooted Deep and Reaching Wide J. Todd Billings, Suzanne McDonald & Alberto La Rosa Rojas (Baker Academic) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

We’ve had a few people on a waiting list for this and we were delighted to get to send it out a little early. Brand new — and I haven’t touched it yet — I am sure this is a book that will be discussed and applauded (and criticized) for the rest of the year. It’s important and I’m sure just the sort of thing we need.

I’ll just say two quick things. All three authors teach Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland Michigan. I love that place! Rooted in the tradition of the RCA (the Reformed Church in America) it is known for both a robust sort of wide-as-life redemptive vision of neo-Calvinism and a generous orthodoxy. They host, just for instance, the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination, which says something, eh? Billings became known for the hard, hard story of his starting an academic book on the lament Psalms when he was diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor and as the book came to life it was lauded from all quarters. Joined here by two colleagues at Western (McDonald teaches systematic and historic theology and Rosa Rojas is director of the Hispanic Ministry Program and a professor of ethics) which models a collaborative spirit. That’s a good start, I think.

It has already earned raved reviews from people I respect. Rich Mouw calls it “a wonderful book that is surely destined to take its place among the classics of Reformed theology.” Jennifer Powell McNutt of Wheaton says it is insightful and thought-provoking, “a gracious response to the question of what it means, and does not mean, to be Reformed.” Kelly Kapic not only applauds the content but “the gracious tone.”

Longtime devotees and the newly curious alike will find much in these pages that clarifies and commends Reformed theology’s deep roots and expansive vision of God and God’s commitment to us. — Kenneth J. Woo, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, author of John Calvin: Refugee Theologian

We have needed this book for years, and at long last we have it — a generous, thoughtful, accessible introduction to the Reformed tradition. A must-read for Christians today. — Kristen Deede Johnson, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, author of The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance

If you associate Reformed theology mainly with tulips, this book will deepen and broaden your impression. Highly recommended!  — Michael Horton, Westminster Seminary California, author of Core Christianity: Finding Yourself in God’s Story

Set Me Free: The Good News of God’s Relentless Pursuit Lecrae (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Oh man, we’re excited about this, but, again, it just arrived. Just in time for us to take it to Jubilee next week in Pittsburgh. The hip-hop artist and memoirist, Lecrae, has spoken and performed at Jubilee so I’m hoping today’s college students know the fame he had a few years back. It is good to follow such strong, black, creatives in the public square and we respect him a lot.

Lecrae, here, is doing a blend of poetry and essays, spoken word pieces and fine literature. And some polemics. The style seems to range from playful to deadly serious, from obviously spiritual to allusive. It is sure to be of interest to those who may be a bit disillusioned in their faith, “wandering away from the people and places you once called home” He notes that “the wilderness is often a faith-strengthening place.”

This will lead to an encounter with God who “cares for your dignity, both body and soul.” It suggests a spirit of liberation. As before, he writes about freedom.

Set Me Free is a hardback (sans dust jacket) with glossy paper, lots of art and graphics and reverse color ink, a couple of moody pictures, cropped with an edge. It’s very, very cool. It is hip to say it looks hip? I dig it.

Jesus Imagination: Maker / Mender / Minder / Master Leonard Sweet (The Salish Sea Press) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This is the new one from Len Sweet, a master of remarkable lines, clever prose, creative thinking. He’s a United Methodist pastor and preacher and bills himself as a semiotician. (You know Jesus himself lamented those who don’t know the signs of the times.) Futurist or not, he is socially aware and culturally wise and breathes Jesus, often in ways that might cause others to wheeze. Man, he’s something. I promised myself years ago that I’d read every book he does, and I’m trying to keep up. (His last one was about football and I haven’t touch it yet.) This one is really new and it ain’t slim. But the print is an easy-to-read size, there’s that.

He suggests here that Jesus’s greater miracle may be his imagination. He envisioned the world differently (and his vision changed everything!)

As it says on the back, Sweet “invites readers into a creative consciousness of Christ — the tekton, the artisan who didn’t just fix what was broken but reimagine what it meant to be human. Jesus didn’t see the world as a machine to manage but as a garden to end a story to retell, a masterpiece still in progress.” Wow.

Maybe, he suggests, reading this book won’t just offer new ideas, it will be an initiation. He also calls it a summons.

I  studied his numerous footnotes and was (as always) intrigued and almost jealous of his wide reading and memory and capacity to use just the right quote. There are lists and blessings and short, punchy sections on all kinds of related stuff. Put on your seatbelt, it’s a wild ride, although he offers helps — “dance steps” and discussion guides and outlines. I opened it at random and read some pull quotes; one made me smile, one made me roll my eyes, and one blew me away. Jesus used parables and metaphors to evoke a holy imagination so Sweet is in good company. And evoking this is, I think he’s saying, the redemptive mission of God.

To be clear, I don’t think this book is necessarily for creatives or those interested in big ideas although he offers many. I think it may be for anyone interested in Jesus and who is “navigating a world flattened by algorithms and starved of wonder.”  As he says,”step into the divine workshop.”

I think it may be for anyone interested in Jesus and who is “navigating a world flattened by algorithms and starved of wonder.”

In my heart I want to write a longer review of Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate by Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) than I have already written. We had, happily, a long list of pre-orders waiting for this January 2026 release simply from my description months ago. I suspect, actually, that most of you who pre-ordered it did so because you know of Steve’s great integrity and serious writing, his grace and insight, because you have been with him at conferences or workshops, at coffee shops or long walks on a college campus. You have had conversations of consequence. Or, you see his long, eloquent Facebook posts. Those who have read his Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior or Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, or the wonderful collection of short pieces called The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love & Learning, Worship & Work, know he is simply one of the most significant and fascinating Christian writers of our day.

As much as I want to walk with you through a close reading of Hints by offering a looooong review, talking about his big ideas and his tender stories, I’m going to refrain.

In this BookNotes I want to whet your appetite for a conversation about the book. Yep, we are hosting a free online webinar (what a clunky word, that) this coming Tuesday (February 3, 2026, at 8:00 EST.) Won’t you please register and join us?

Steve and I will chat about his years writing this new book, his travels, his cares and concerns, his hope for the book. He’ll most likely probe my heart as well, and, as long-time friends can, we’ll have a rather intimate conversation with many more joining in. You’ll be able to make comments or ask questions in the “chat” feature of Zoom (although, no worries, you won’t be on the screen.) We really hope you join us.

If you care about Hearts & Minds (and we are so very grateful that so many really do) Beth and I hope you will make time to join us as I interview a very important author as we talk about a very important book.

Here is the link you must use to pre-order. Once you sign up you will get a confirmation and you will get a link to use for the event.

Again, our evening with Steven Garber starts at 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time this coming Tuesday, February 3, 2026.

You must register by clicking the above link.

Hints of Hope has a wonderful foreword by Makoto Fujimura, the abstract artist known world wide for his deep Christian faith and his work in the ancient Japanese style known as Nihonga. It is an excellent bit of writing itself, and including Mako in this lovely book indicates at least two things: first Steve is a fan and patron of the arts and he writes about artists of various sorts through the book. Mako writes how he feels honored and seen in Garber’s prose. Steve has long looked to artists — including rock stars and writers — for glimmers of insight and for their articulation of things many of us feel. In the book, Steve will describe novels and films that will thrill your creative heart. And he’ll quote Bob Dylan. More than once. And Hobbits. There are a lot of Hobbits.

Secondly, Makoto was born in America, raised in Japan, and attended college here in Pennsylvania. He was perfect to introduce the book. Steve is drawn to folks from all over the world and I do not think I know anyone who has so many international friends. Hints of Hope is jam-packed with amazing stories of faithful folks, serving God and loving their neighbors the best they can, in Eastern Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in South America. Although he tells of his and his wife’s families — in Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, Kansas, Virginia — and many stories are set in middle America, many of the stories are not set in North America. The endorsements, too, are from around the world.

Josef Luptak (a cellist and curator of a music festival in Bratislava who Steve writes movingly about) insists that the book is “absolutely necessary” in these dark times. Cosma Gatere (himself the director of a consulting group in Nairobi) notes that the book has “inspiring anecdotes from places as diverse as Bethlehem and Beijing.” Tony Soh, the CEO of a national philanthropy centre in Singapore, says the book is so good it will be “a companion for life.” From South Korea to Birmingham, from Norway to Brazil to Nashville, Tennessee, the accolades have poured in from little-known but remarkably faithful women and men.

(If you want to see a really, really fine review by Steve’s friend singer-songwriter and Academy Award-winning record producer, Charlie Peacock, visit the Hearts & Minds facebook page where I have it posted. Or track down Charlie’s writing on Substack. It’s a grand review!)

Romel Regalado Bagares, who studied at the Sorbonne and the VU in Amsterdam and now is a human rights lawyer in the Philippines, calls the various chapters “luminous” and suggests that this book is about what it means to be human, how to navigate our own being implicated in the sorrows of the human condition. He writes,

“Garber’s stories of fraught travels, unexpected encounters, and unforgettable characters remind us that the weight of true love is the lightest in the heart, even as we bear the wounds and scars of human frailty.”

And that, my friends, is what this extraordinary book is about. Can we learn to love the world even as we know how wounded it is? Can we be at peace with that, living responsibly in a fallen world? Can we mourn the sadness and still seek some sort of substantial healing?

You’ve heard the theological phrase about the Kingdom of God, saying we live in the “now and not-yet”? That is what Hints of Hope is about. Living proximately, not expecting everything, hoping for love’s sake but facing our limitations and evil’s persistence. Can we care about the world, our culture, our institutions, our neighbors, enough to have them see the light of Christ without needing to think we can build the Kingdom here and now? This is no psycho-babble and it’s not cheap, but, I think, it is a key to true resilience.

And bearing the wounds of Christ is not just a Lenten notion, it is the heart of Christian humility and spiritual formation.

In a letter to readers, Dave Evans of the Stanford Life Design Lab writes:

Steven’s peerless staying power to never look away from the beauty and the brokenness has hammered out practical and true ways to engage the proximate and become more human in the bargain. While taking us deep into the full and unvarnished reality of this world, he will do so not harshly, for as he says, “it all turns on affection” and Steven is nothing if not affectionate. So, come along. Accept the invitation to plow this life deep, and unearth mature hope. You won’t be the same, and you won’t be disappointed.

“Plow this life deep and unearth mature hope.”

Please share this with anyone who might want to join us this Tuesday evening for an hour or so of gentle conversation and an overview of Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate by Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

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This is a quick new BookNotes reminding you of the special webinar we are doing this Tuesday night (January 27th at 7:30 EST) where I’ll be interviewing author Dorothy Littell Greco, author of the recently published For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America. (Zondervan; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.)

As I shared in the last BookNotes it will be an upbeat and fascinating conversation, if on a heavy topic. Greco, herself a journalist, will be great to interview and we invite you into our conversation as we discuss this painful but nearly ubiquitous problem. She will tell how she defines the word, why it’s important to examine the impulses, habits, and systems that create cultures of harm, and what to do to heal from toxic masculine forces in various sectors of culture and church. You can see a bit more of my celebration of the book in our Best Books of 2025 (part two) BookNotes a week or so ago or in the previous one where we announced this event (and another upcoming webinar with author Steve Garber, scheduled for next week.)

Here’s the link you must use to pre-register; they will then send back to you a free Zoom link which gets you to our virtual program. We hope you can join us.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/misogyny-in-america-with-dorothy-greco-and-byron-borger-tickets-1980724025881?aff=oddtdtcreator

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TEN RELATED RESOURCES

Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantle Patriarchy and Redefines Manhood Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

James’s book Half the Church is a great resource about women in the global church and is a great read, but this one is urgent and helpful, a great book That I know Dorothy recommends. God is dismantling patriarchy in the trajectory of the Biblical story and we need a new kind of man for living in God’s Kingdom. New Testament scholar Michael Bird says it is “book that every Christman man needs to read.”

Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose Aimee Byrd (Zondervan) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Given how ecumenical we are here at Hearts & Minds we have a variety of views on this topic, from a diversity of perspectives. Byrd is fascinating to me as she was one part of a denomination that does not ordain women and has written thoughtful books of theology for thoughtful evangelical women. Here she studies Scripture and church history to critique a specific movement among conservative evangelicals that have strict gender roles which she shows is not necessarily Biblical or faithful.

Scot McKnight says she offers “enduring wisdom and wit…”

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Liveright) $18.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

We, of course, were early fans of this best-selling and much discussed book (back when it was still only in hardcover) and have appreciated historian (and beloved Calvin University professor) Du Mez’s rigorously researched history and really engaging style. This is a study of muscular sorts of masculinity that were promoted in the last half of the 20th century within the evangelical movement in ways that, to some, were seemingly benign but that ended up being harmful in and of themselves and, further, became linked to right-wing movements of extremist patriarchy, white supremacy and more.

Simply a must-read for the riveting social history and powerful Christian insight.

Man Up: The New Misogyny & the Rise of Violent Extremism Cynthia Miller-Idriss (Princeton University Press) $29.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

Du Mez’s fans will say “we told you so” when they see this incredibly well-researched, very thoughtful book — called luminous and disturbing — which explores the relationship of women-hating and far-right extremist. It is known that most mass shooters are misogynists and virtulantly homophobic. One can no longer avoid the facts she shows about the ugliness against women deeply embedded in movements of violent extremists, from neo-Nazis down to Proud Boys and local militias and even less dramatic groups. Think of Andrew Tate. (That our tax-funded Department of Justice just ran an except of a song favored by neo-Nazis and skinhead types to recruit ICE agents may not be related, but, geeze…) These sorts are among the people who are involved in the MAGA movement and it is frightening. That some purport to be religious (like the KKK, or, more mainstream, like the ministries of theobros like Mark Driscoll ) is preposterous, but there it is. The data is clear and both gendered violence and hate groups are on the rise. This book is important to expose real-world connections.

Importantly, Dorothy Greco does not focus (in her book) on the extremes of this ideology as she is rightly concerned that it could minimize our concerns about more ordinary, daily encounters of systems biased against women — in healthcare or the work-world or church, say. Still, this increasing radicalization is important to understand and it would make an important follow up on For the Love of Women.

Complicit: How Our Culture Enables Misbehaving Men Reah Bravo (Gallery Books) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

This recent work has gotten great praise; it has been called “fiercely vulnerable and impressively researched.” Complicit (a great, provocative title) is honest and grave and (as Kate Block puts it) “a text that imbues #MeToo-era discourse with a fresh voice.” Reah Bravo worked for Charlie Rose and obviously has some first hand stories of workplace discrimination and pretty toxic stuff; she is self-aware and a good writer. It got outstanding reviews, noting it’s balance and nuance. Read Greco’s stories in For the Love of Women and then come back to this and read about “soldiering on in stilettos.” Whew.

The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct Ruth Everhart (IVP) $19.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

An exceptional read by a women who has told in an earlier book about her own experience of rape (while a student at a Christian college years ago) and her later leaving her denomination so she could, without barriers, become ordained into the ministry of Word and Sacrament. (She is a PC(USA) minister. With that deeply personal care and great empathy, Everhart wrote this groundbreaking book in 2020 and it is a must-read. Kudos to her and to IVP.

By the way, although sexual abuse in the church is legendary and evil, that particular sin is not the only manifestation of misogyny in the church; Greco’s For the Love of Women looks at this topic (sexual abuse and cover-ups, toxic male power mongering in the church) but gender-based misconduct and harm from patriarchy is broader then this egregious sort of violence.

Prey Tell: Why We Silence Women Who Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up Tiffany Bluhm (Brazos Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This deserves a longer review (and I did write about it when it came out in 2021.) For now, just know it is exceptionally important, exploring the dynamics of power and the lack of accountability that occurs within many church and ministry contexts. One reviewer called it “devasting” while Belinda Bauman (co-founder of #SilenceIsNotSpiritual) says it is “an absolutely must read book for our age, breathing courage into survivor and ally alike.” Action is not optional.

When the Church Harms God’s People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded Diane Langberg (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Dr. Langberg is a recognized theologically-trained psychologist and trauma scholar so she has seen “the crushing trauma of sexual abuse, trafficking, domestic abuse, and rape — and it’s cover-up.” Yes, there are cover-ups, some of them obvious and gross. Gulp. We really need her  several books, about suffering, about power, and more. When the Church Harms God’s People is concise and powerful.

I think of a very powerful page or two in Greco’s For the Love of Women on the death threats and abuse faced by Anita Hill when she charged (Supreme Court Judge) Clarence Thomas with his creepy abuse. I wept when reading that small bit, especially knowing some of my more conservative friends admire him. Hurting women are too often ignored, their stories disbelieved, abuse minimized. (Think of how President Trump survived his disgusting stories about abuse.)  People and systems collude and churches and ministries fail to reflect the love and care of Christ. Langberg is very helpful giving very good advice to church leaders.

Abuse-survivor, whistle-blower, advocate, lawyer, and Christian leader Rachael Denhollander says it is “a book for anyone wounded in the name of Jesus or seeking to understand who Jesus is and what the church is designed to be.” Very nicely done.

Safe Church: How To Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities Andrew J. Bauman (Baker Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

As we’ll see in our on-line author discussion Tuesday night with Dorothy Greco, she wants to not only name and diagnose the problem of misogyny but wants to offer helpful on-ramps to new efforts and practices of hope and healing. She affirms this author and cites this book.

Sheila Wray Gregoire (author of the important The Great Sex Rescue) says it will “haunt you — and it should.” But then says it inspires us to “go and do something about it.” Exactly.

Dan Allender says Bauman “has with immense wisdom and humility addressed the exegetical, theological, cultural, and traumatic bonds that need to be broken to create not only equity and safety but flourishing for both men and women. This book is a tour de force…”

We Should All Be Feminists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Anchor Books) $10.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.00  //  OUR SALE PRICE = $6.40

I have often highlighted this short essay, made as a pocket sized but handsome paperback, and wanted to mention it again. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a world-renowned African novelist who lives part time in the US and in her homeland of Nigeria. This is a piece written to her good friend, a Nigerian pal who recoiled at the notion of Adichie saying she was a feminist.
Not unlike some contemporary religious folks, the word seems to seem needlessly divisive, carrying negative baggage, for some, almost a curse word. And that is inaccurate and needless, I’d say. We all should be feminists.

She pleasantly shows that there is no intended hatred for men implied (as Dorothy Greco says herself; to resist hatred of women does not mean we hate men.) Chimamanda uses her lovely gifts as a prose writer and her incisive insight about discrimination (in traditionalist African cultures and in modern Western cultures) that good people should all resist.  Can we “dream about and plan for a different world,” she says. “A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves.”

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