Sparkhouse

Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children's Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls

Can you love a classic novel from childhood and also name its flaws? Mitali Perkins helps us do both as she explores seven timeless children's novels. Through works by Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, Francis Hodgson Burnett, and other literary "uncles" and "aunts," Perkins unpacks wisdom to help adults thrive in uncertain times.

9781506469102

The Peacemaker's Path: Multifaith Reflections to Deepen Your Spirituality

Now more than ever, people are painfully divided politically, religiously, and culturally. And yet, there is a commonality in our faith traditions that can help us create a greater sense of community in which our differences are honored. Through daily readings that explore the tenets, teachings, writings, and prayers of the world's major religions, The Peacemaker's Path shows us that we have much more in common than what divides us.

9781506469126

Thy Queendom Come: Breaking Free from the Patriarchy to Save Your Soul

Telling the stories of some of the strongest women in all of Scripture, Thy Queendom Come offers Christian women a new path forward - a revolutionary new spirituality, and a revolutionary word to describe it: queendom. We can leave the narrow kingdom behind and embrace a more vibrant and just spiritual life.

9781506469140

Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist

In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd invites readers to experience her transformation from what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "the white moderate" into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist. Like in baptism, this alteration requires parts of us to die--our tone policing, white niceness, respectability politics--so that we may be reborn. Through the Uprising in Ferguson, God made Elle into something new. Now it's our turn.

9781506470429

Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for an Elusive Saint

In the dusty corner of a library, journalist Amy Frykholm discovers a footnote that leads her on a decades-long search for Mary of Egypt--runaway, prostitute, holy desert dweller, saint, and archetypal wild woman. As their storylines crisscross maps and centuries, the saint and the author meet at various thresholds, and both become more fully revealed as they enter the desert wild and wildly--in the embrace of the sacred.

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Our Angry Eden: Faith and Hope on a Hotter, Harsher Planet

The planet we will pass on is different than the one we inherited. Living with our angry Eden will involve a period of sustained difficulty and disruption. David Williams, author of When the English Fall, spells out how we will be morally tested, outlines nine virtues key to human thriving in the decades to come, and beckons readers toward a faith and a hope resilient enough to face the effects of the climate crisis.

9781506470443

You Should Leave Now: Going on Retreat to Find Your Way Back to Yourself

Sometimes you have to leave, in order to come back to yourself. It is time to go on retreat.

Written as if by a wise and cherished friend, You Should Leave Now is a gentle, practical guide to drawing rich benefits--mental, emotional, and spiritual--from a personal retreat. Brie Doyle helps us discover the ideal focus, setting, and approach to rest, restoration, and transformative retreating.

9781506466958

Eternal Heart: The Mystical Path to a Joyful Life

Eternal Heart brings mysticism as near as our beating hearts through a set of profound, practical spiritual exercises aimed at opening the heart. Through this everyday mysticism we begin to experience the center point of spirituality: Love. Carl McColman, author of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, weaves together teachings from the biblical tradition, literature of the mystics, and insights from contemplative spirituality to reveal how ancient wisdom offers us deep transformation today.

9781506464619

Reclaiming Rest: The Promise of Sabbath, Solitude, and Stillness in a Restless World

What does pressing pause look like? In Reclaiming Rest, Kate H. Rademacher explores the gifts of solitude, stillness, and Sabbath rest in a world of motion and noise. Ultimately, Rademacher claims, pausing for sacred rest pierces our illusions of self-reliance and control--and that's good news. What if keeping the Sabbath is not only a command to obey but a gift to reclaim?

9781506465999

Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story

In Outlove, Julie Rodgers details her deeply personal journey from a life of self-denial in the name of faith to her role in leading the take-down of Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization in the world, to her marriage to a woman at the Washington National Cathedral. Rodgers's story sheds light on the debate between Evangelical Christians and the LGBTQ community, ultimately casting a hopeful vision for how the church can heal.

9781506464046

The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters

In the 1960s and '70s a more personal, subjective, voice-driven journalism emerged, known as New Journalism. In the new century, those same tropes are used by religion writers who similarly scrutinize questions of faith and doubt while taking God-talk seriously. The God Beat brings together significant and characteristic samples of this emerging genre, helping us understand how we talk about God in public spaces--and why it matters--in a whole new way.

9781506465777

A Journey of Sea and Stone: How Holy Places Guide and Renew Us

In A Journey of Sea and Stone, spiritual director Tracy Balzer takes us along as she journeys to the revered Isle of Iona in Scotland. She carries with her key questions of the spiritual life: Where is God? Who am I? What can I offer the world? With Balzer as our guide, and through the storied history of Iona, we see that all sacred spaces can offer us a unique path to God.

9781506464596

Wild Belief: Poets and Prophets in the Wilderness

Wild Belief brings together a diverse and unique set of writers who span literary styles, genres, and time periods--but who are united in their search for spirit in the wild.

Through them we discover the tension between our understanding of the wilderness as both a fearful and a sacred space, which makes it particularly apt for capturing the unknown and surprising elements of belief.

9781506464633

You Can Talk To God Like That: The Surprising Power of Lament to Save Your Faith

In You Can Talk to God Like That, pastor Abby Norman shows us that we can talk honestly to God, despite what we may have been told. You'll be encouraged to express your anger and pain to God and feel relief that you can be honest even when things are not okay. Learn to reclaim this ancient practice of lament and refresh your relationship with a God who has always wanted your whole self.

9781506469065

Chronically Fabulous: Finding Wholeness and Hope Living with Chronic Illness

In Chronically Fabulous, Marisa Zeppieri, the founder of LupusChick, provides helpful principles, personal stories, and occasional recipes that support whole-life thriving with the depth, smarts, and helpful spiritual advice that her dedicated blog readers have come to expect. For anyone looking for hope and resources when your body's immune system is compromised, this is the perfect start to a chronically fabulous you.

9781506464114

How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying

Fight, flee, or freeze: are these our only options for responding to fear? In How Not to Be Afraid, Gareth Higgins addresses seven common fears and invites us to change the course of our stories through seven habits of hope rooted in Celtic spirituality. Pointing us toward tenderness, empathy, and gentle encounter with others and with our deepest fears, Higgins helps us discover that peace is the path to itself.

9781506469034

The Wild Land Within: Cultivating Wholeness through Spiritual Practice

Spiritual practices are wildly popular today--and for good reason. But they can lead to distressing encounters with wounds we didn't even know we had. In The Wild Land Within, spiritual companion Lisa Colón DeLay helps us consent to God's healing in wounded places so we are able to fully receive the fruits of our spiritual practices.

9781506465081

In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World

From master storyteller and host of On Being's Poetry Unbound, Pádraig Ó Tuama, comes an unforgettable spiritual memoir of peace and reconciliation, Celtic spirituality, belonging, and sexual identity. From the heart of a poet comes a profound look at the landscapes we all try to inhabit even as we always search for shelter, a place we can call home.

9781506470528

The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton

In The Seeker and the Monk, Sophfronia Scott mines the extensive, private journals of Thomas Merton, one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past, for guidance on how to live in fraught times. Race, ambition, faith, activism, nature, prayer, friendship, love: with intimacy and a refusal to settle for cliché, Scott invites readers into the themes that occupied Merton and that still command our attention today.

9781506464961

Fulfilled: Let Go of Shame, Embrace Your Body, and Eat the Food You Love

Today's culture has distorted how women view our bodies. But God longs for you to embrace your body, eat with freedom, and live with a deep confidence that you (and your body) are loved exactly as you are. In Fulfilled, nutrition expert Alexandra MacKillop explores physical, mental, and spiritual health through a non-diet lens, encouraging you to respect your body, honor your hunger, and embrace the unique size and shape that God created for you.

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