Sparkhouse

Dimming the Day: Evening Meditations for Quiet Wonder

The moon is out, the air has cooled, you are ready for bed. You know that scrolling on your phone does not draw you toward sleep. Power down your phone, take a breath, and begin to dim the day. Author Jennifer Grant offers gentle meditations that help you direct your gaze away from screens and toward the natural world. Replace anxiety with awe, distraction with focus, and worry with true rest.

9781506471198

Breath Prayer: An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred

Christine Valters Paintner, abbess of Abbey of the Arts, introduces us to the spiritual practice of breath prayer and offers beautiful poem-prayers for walking, working, dressing, cleaning, sitting in silence, doing the dishes, living in community--breathing the divine into our daily lives. Over time these recitations become as natural as breathing. We don't so much recite the prayers as the prayers recite us, guide us, and open our hearts to the everyday sacred.

9781506470672

We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People's Campaign

In We Cry Justice, leaders of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival uncover what the Bible really says about justice and poverty. Liz Theoharis is joined by pastors, organizers, scholars, low-wage workers, and people in poverty in interpreting sacred stories about the poor seeking healing, justice, and freedom. Find in the pages of Scripture God's persistent call to repair the breach and fight poverty, not the poor.

9781506473642

Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred

Like many who feel unfulfilled by traditional faith expressions, Victoria Loorz went in search of a spirituality strong enough to reckon with the unraveling of her vocation, identity, and planet, and found herself in the wilderness. As cofounder of the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild, Loorz invites us to reimagine our relationship with and deepen our commitment to a suffering planet by falling in love with it--and calling it church.

9781506469645

A Simple Christmas on the Farm

Warm and heartfelt, this story invites readers to imagine an inclusive, generous Christmas, focusing on the simple pleasures of family, community, and making things by hand.

9781506471365

Squirrel's Sweater

As Winter Warmup approaches, all but one of the woodland friends are bundled up for the snowy season ahead. When Squirrel discovers that her favorite sweater no longer fits, her friends help her navigate this change and turn her sweater into something new.

9781506472850

Feed the Wolf: Befriending Our Fears in the Way of Saint Francis

Turn from fear and find peace.

Each spiritual lesson from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi begins with an invitation to embrace the wolf--to consider another viewpoint, befriend our fears, and discover something new. In Feed the Wolf, author and Saint Francis scholar Jon M. Sweeney explores fifteen spiritual practices from the essential wisdom of Saint Francis for us to apply to our twenty-first-century lives.

9781506470733

Our Fair Share: How One Small Change Can Create a More Equitable American Economy

Over the past fifty years, our economy has been pulling us apart at unprecedented rates by allowing the richest Americans to hoard wealth like almost never before. In Our Fair Share, Brian C. Johnson combines accessible scholarship on wealth and income inequity with stories of real people struggling to survive and thrive in America today. Ultimately, Johnson lays the groundwork for a reasonable and actionable solution, drawing us together to build a common American future.

9781506470757

Portraits of Peace: Searching for Hope in a Divided America

Frustrated with an increasingly polarized society, award-winning photographer John Noltner set out on a road trip across the US to rediscover the common humanity that connects us by asking people the simple question "What does peace mean to you?"

9781506471211

A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community 

America is at a spiritual and political crossroads. A new narrative is needed to counter the discord in her politics and culture, a new way forward rooted in Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of community. A More Perfect Union calls for a shared vision that transcends partisanship to live out America's best ideals and realize a more perfect union.

9781506464534

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

The Girl with Big, Big Questions

In a world that doesn't always welcome big questions, a persistent and inquisitive girl keeps asking them anyway--because asking questions is how we learn and grow.

9781506473789

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

Poet, Pilgrim, Rebel: The Story of Anne Bradstreet, America's First Published Poet

This charming picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Anne Bradstreet, a gifted Puritan writer who overcame barriers to become America's first published poet.

9781506463063

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.

9781506471853

Mightier Than the Sword: Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries Who Changed the World Through Writing

Interactive and inspiring, Mightier Than the Sword celebrates the stories of over forty diverse, trailblazing people whose writing transformed history.

9781506466408

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

Bella's Recipe for Success

Bella has talented siblings, but she isn't sure what she is good at herself. When she attempts to discover her own talent, Bella learns the importance of trying again and again and never giving up.

9781506468105