Sparkhouse

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

Inkwell: Simple Writing Practices to Restore Your Soul

Tired. Uninspired. Emotionally exhausted. Overwhelmed. Burned out. In a world where the pace seems to get faster and the problems seem intractable, more and more people feel they just can't go on as they have been doing. The truth is, we're much better at caring for our bodies than caring for our spirits. In Inkwell, writing instructor and professor Anne Whitney shows how writing can be a powerful tool for your spiritual self-care.

9781506464794

Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story | An Illustrated Memoir

An artist's captivating and quirky illustrated coming-of-age memoir of surprising first love, coming out, and coming to embrace her identity as a gay Christian woman.

9781506469515

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

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

Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11

In this powerful book, Dr. Maha Hilal tells the story of two decades of the War on Terror, through both an overview of the policies created under its umbrella and the lived realities of Muslim Americans who have experienced hate and discrimination as a result. Twenty years after the tragic events of 9/11, we must look at their full legacy and move toward a United States that is truly inclusive and united.

9781506470467

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

The Lightmaker's Manifesto: How to Work for Change without Losing Your Joy

Many of us want to advocate for causes we care about--but which ones? We want to work for change--but will the emotional toll lead to burn out? In The Lightmaker's Manifesto, activist Karen Walrond shares strategies to help you define the actions that bring you joy, identify the values and causes about which you are passionate, and put them together to create change. Includes conversations with changemakers Valarie Kaur, Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Zuri Adele.

9781506469942

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

All Who Are Weary: Easing the Burden on the Walk with Mental Illness

We live in an age uniquely attentive to the problem of mental illness. More than half of us will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in our lifetime. All Who Are Weary is not a map to a cure, nor a perfectly restorative prayer. Rather, Emmy Kegler joins the reader on the long walk of reflection, understanding, and compassion, trusting in the promise of a lighter load for us all.

9781506467801

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

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

Brave: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Grief, Mercy, Folly, Joy, Sex, and Redemption

Following the success of Fierce, Alice Connor returns to introduce a new group of women from the Bible, some whose names we know, others who go unnamed. Connor invites us to see them not as players in a man's story, but as foremothers of the faith.

Skillfully drawn by the author, these women's stories are challenging and beautiful. When we read their stories, we see not only their particular, formidable lives but also our own.

9781506463964

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

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

Seeing Jesus: Visionary Encounters from the First Century to the Present

Jesus ascended to heaven. End of story. But then how do we explain the Christians, in nearly every century since, who claimed to have seen, heard, met, and touched Jesus in the flesh? In Seeing Jesus, Robert Hudson ponders characters throughout Christian history who have encountered the actual face of the resurrected Christ.

9781506465753

The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life's In-Betweens to Remake the World

Women who don't fit in amid cultural expectations, because of life transitions or changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. Drawing on the wisdom of women mystics, this book explores how transitional eras can be both spiritually challenging and excitingly freeing. Ultimately, we see how these in-between times lead us to reinvented ways of seeing ourselves and changing the world.

9781506467689

Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear

The height of the AIDS crisis in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left many profound stories that remained untold. In Hidden Mercy, gay Catholic journalist Michael O'Loughlin uncovers the stories of Catholics who at great personal cost chose compassion. A compelling picture of those who responded to human suffering with mercy, offering insights for LGBTQ and other people of faith struggling to find a home in religious communities today.

9781506467702

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