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We Need Everyone
This book affirms that everyone has a gift, something worth sharing with others that helps build strong community. Designed for children ages six to eight, it offers three easy steps to find your gift:
"1. Make a list of three things you like doing. ...
2. Choose one thing on your list you are good at. ...
3. Practice and share your gift!"
Whether gifted with singing, listening, giving hugs, befriending people, gaming, storytelling, or half a dozen other talents the book mentions, children can use their gifts to solve problems together and "accomplish so much more than we could on our own." We were impressed to see gaming included, with an array of skills that include strategizing, risk-taking, and organizing teams. In sum, "Gamers help us get to the next level and overcome our challenges so we can find success no matter how many times we have to try."
This is Michael Redhead Champagne first children's book. A community leader from Winnipeg's North End with family roots in Shamattawa First Nation, Michael is host, helper, published author, on-screen personality and sought after public speaker. Whether it's eliminating poverty, ending homelessness or increasing supports for children, youth and families, he is relentless in his pursuit of a more compassionate world.
Illustrator Tiff Bartel is an award-winning Viet-Canadian multimedia artist based in Winnipeg. Her bold, energizing pictures emphasize the joy of sharing while doing what we love.
Discovering our gifts to build strong community.
Thank You, God
In an anxious world, nothing will bring us closer to sanity than gratefulness, which is, as Br. David Steindl-Rast puts it, an embrace of life's great fullness. This embrace can go as far as appreciating an opportunity to help amid a crisis or as near as thanks for sunshine and family.
Those nearby aspects of gratefulness — naturally the best place to start with young children — are exactly what this inspiring board book offers. It's made up of brief, lyrical prayers of thanks for sunrise, family and friends, the beauties of the natural world, home, time together, night, and the twin gifts of life and God's love that holds us. An extended, diverse family gathers around a campfire with two dogs and a guitar, for instance, and we read:
"Thank you, God,
for time together,
for meals shared and songs sung,
for love whispered."
Author J. Bradley Wigger is currently a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary in Kentucky. He specializes in children's studies, and is currently doing field research interviewing children about their religious beliefs and practices. The illustrator, Jago, has won multiple awards and produced work for nearly 60 books and a few magazines, as well as a TV show or two. His vibrant pictures here are like visual prayers for peace and harmony.
When the unabridged hardcover version of this book came out in 2014, it won an S&P Best Spiritual Books Award. Children ages one to four will find this new board book soothing and uplifting (and, for the littlest ones, less destructible than the hardcover version!).
Lyrical prayers of thanks for what is nearest and dearest to us.
Someone Just Like You
"We have more in common than that which divides us," activist and humanitarian Jo Cox wisely observed. But how can we discover those common threads? That's the quest Someone Just Like You offers in its 32 colorful, buoyant pages.
On a page showing 20 kids with names ranging from Dyal to Zahra, readers discover that even if you and others speak different languages and have different names:
"On the outside you look different,
but your feelings are the same."
New York Times bestselling illustrator David Roberts has gone all out to make these kids delightfully different. One sports a purple crab hat. A shy kid sits, knees akimbo, holding a stuffed lion. One kid does ballet leaps with a prosthetic leg. The clothes and skin tones are an array of possibilities.
It's not unusual for a children's book to remind readers that others share the same fears and joys they do. What makes this book stand out is where it goes next: "But you'd both feel so much better if you knew that someone cared." It then takes on some hard topics in a way that a four-to-eight year old child can grasp without being traumatized. Fleeing war, for instance, enters the picture as a child who had "to leave their home / because they didn't want to fight."
Effortlessly rhyming, the book asks the reader questions that encourage compassion. Would you share with a child in need and help them feel at home, for instance, or listen to their story and tell them yours, or "help them to feel safe again / and chase their fears away?" This sharing just may lead to finding a friend "just like you" — even if they look quite different.
Author Helen Docherty has been writing stories since she was six. Most of her career has been devoted to being a language teacher, which has allowed her to experience many different countries and cultures. Now she loves going into schools to tell her stories to children and inspire them to write stories of their own. We hope that a warm and welcoming compassion informs their stories, as it has hers.
A child's guide to empathy, compassion, and bonding with new friends.
A Summer Evening on Skagen's Beach
See the full painting.
Peder Severin Kroyer (1851-1909) was a talented painter and the most well-known of a community of artists who harvested the sights of Skagen, a remote fishing village on the northern tip of Denmark.
Summer Evening on the Skagen's Summer Beach (1893) is one of his most astonishing creations. It shows two women walking the beach at that magic time of the day called "the blue hour" when the sky and the sea seem to embrace each other in a new blend of blue.
Reflecting on this painting, I first found myself acknowledging the universality of the image of two people savoring some private time together. When have I – when have you – had such an intimate moment with a close friend, a sibling, or a lover? The painting heightens our appreciation of the gift we receive when someone offers his or her complete presence to us. It doesn't matter what they are talking about; we will never know, and that is how it should be whenever we are witnesses to this kind of conversation.
Besides the spiritual nature of the women's togetherness, the painting conveys the transition between day and night. This is a time when wonders, surprises, and epiphanies can overtake us and renew our bodies, minds, and spirits. These two women seem quite at home in this twilight zone.
In her wonderful book Landscapes of Prayer, Margaret Silf writes about the varied energies and spiritual potentials of places. She describes a walk along the beach as a "prayer stroll" and then clarifies what she means:
"The seashore is a moving boundary between the predictability of dry land and the restless mystery of the ocean. To walk the seashore is to allow the mystery to touch the edges of our everyday life." Summer Evening on the Skagen Southern Beach with Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer by P.S. Kroyer is a prayer stroll par excellance!
Reflections on a painting of a prayer stroll at the transition between day and night.
Toward a Theology of Onions
A first step in developing a theology of onions is to recognize how beautiful they are. When I watched the video above from the Spiritual Literacy DVD series, using the words of Mary Hays Grieco to help me find God in an onion, I saw this clearly. I, too, believe that we can experience the beauty of God in the beauty of the world, onions much included.
At the same time as I saw this video, I received a meal from Blue Apron meal delivery service that included onions to be used in a salad. I watched the videos on dicing onions (shared at bottom of post) and thought to myself: "Well that's interesting, but it's not exactly mystical or spiritual, you can't chop God up with a knife."
A first step in developing a theology of onions is to recognize how beautiful they are. When I watched the video above from the Spiritual Literacy DVD series, using the words of Mary Hays Grieco to help me find God in an onion, I saw this clearly. I, too, believe that we can experience the beauty of God in the beauty of the world, onions much included.
At the same time as I saw this video, I received a meal from Blue Apron meal delivery service that included onions to be used in a salad. I watched the videos on dicing onions (shared at bottom of post) and thought to myself: "Well that's interesting, but it's not exactly mystical or spiritual, you can't chop God up with a knife."
Mindsharing
The myth of the self-sufficient person still stands tall in the American imagination. He or she never asks for help but finds a way out of difficulties without bothering anybody else. But in the digital world where nearly half of all Americans are using Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, more and more people are turning to crowdsourcing to find information about relationships, careers, finance, and consumer goods.
Lior Zoref is a crowd wisdom researcher (now there's a new career path for ambitious souls), an international speaker, and consultant. He worked for 14 years at Microsoft, most recently as vice president of marketing or consumer and online services.
Zoref defines crowdsourcing as "the process of outsourcing a task to a large group of people rather than a professional or a single organization." Mindsharing is one form of it that emphasizes cooperation with others and collaboration. It makes the most of social technologies, asks questions, taps into creativity, and reaches a decision based on the collective wisdom of the crowd.
The book covers Mindsharing for your career and your success; the art of Mindsharing; Mindsharing your personal life; and Mindsharing your dreams into reality. Zoref gives personal examples of how this process has worked for him and others. He concludes:
"Vulnerability may be our greatest strength in the age of Mindsharing. When we acknowledge our true interdependence, and the profound connection we have with one another, and embrace the technology that allows this connection to flourish — we can do absolutely anything."
Times when following the crowd may be the right thing to do.
J. Brent Bill, Mind the Light
Do I set aside times of deep looking for God?
Where do I see God at work (or play) today?
How is the Light of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of my daily life?
Where have I seen creation imbued with God's spirit?
In what ways do I look for that of God within every person?
How have I gained a greater awareness of God's Light that is in us all?
Do I regularly read the Bible and other spiritual literature, looking for God's Light?
Do I see my time, talents, energy, money, material possessions, and other resources as gifts from God, to be held in trust and shared according to the Light I've been given?
Do I take time to talk with others about their experiences of the Light?
Do I heed the promptings of Light in my life?
Am I open to new light, from whatever source it may come?
Do I live adventurously, following the Light?
Do I set aside times of deep looking for God
The Zero Marginal Cost Society
In his brilliant and prophetic 1970 book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler wrote about a new situation in American society: "the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future." People were having problems adapting to the pace of change and to the social experience of transience. Job jockeying was creating nomadic families; adhocracies were about to replace bureaucracies; information was overloading our heads; and science was bringing more novelty with organ transplants, laser beams, and cyborgs. Toffler called for support systems for those overwhelmed by change, including a future-facing education system that would enable individuals to better imagine and cope with the transformations afoot in society.
Now Jeremy Rifkin has written a landmark work that can help us cope with the changes that are happening today, whose meaning most of us have been too busy to grasp. As a social theorist Rifkin makes it clear that advanced technology is already revising our allegiance to private property, our traditional notions of work, our reverence for privacy, and our understanding of education, while moving us along in transition to a global sharing economy. Rifkin, along with others, predicts that capitalism will be irrevocably changed by the middle of the 21st century.
With an impressive intensity and sense of purpose that comes across to the reader, the author presents a short history of economics before launching into an explanation of "the Internet of Things" which will "connect everything with everyone in an integrated global network. People, machines, natural resources, production lines, logistics networks, consumption habits, recycling flows, and virtually every other aspect of economic and social life will be linked." This deluge of Big Data will propel productivity and give people more free time to pursue what they want.
Of course, the downside of this projected Third Industrial Revolution is that the Internet of Things will make it possible for corporations to use all the information they have mined from your online and connected activities to generate a continuous stream of ads. With human behavior being tracked by so many devices, it will be much easier to expand the surveillance state.
Rifkin pays tribute to the emerging sharing economy (getting a car through Zipcar or renting out your spare room on Airbob). The sharing economy puts the accent on access rather than ownership. The use of Craig's List to sell things and the use of Kickstarter to fund new products and organizations are two successful models of this transition into the commons era. Rifkin sees two major obstacles: climate change and cyberterrorism.
We were especially interested in the changes already underway in education from classes in school rooms to courses online. Also there is a spiritual dimension to the structural model of unemployment where individuals will be liberated from factory jobs by robots and other technological wonders. All of us will be prosumers involved in the creation, production and sharing value of our labors. What will we do in our leisure time? This question has no meaning for us now in a 24/7 economy where we are busy all the time. Rifkin imagines a better world where conversation, collaboration, and service of others will emerge.
A map of the changes that are opening the doors to the Third Industrial Revolution.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
"Simple acts of kindness . . . are the tiny, flickering candles in a cavern of darkness that sustain our common humanity."
— Chris Hedges, cultural writer
Love has been described as a power that can miraculously move mountains, and many spiritual people see it that way. Others experience love as little things, tiny gestures, or small acts that stir the heart.
Andrew (Cooper Raiff) is a bright, amiable, recent college graduate who has not yet found his vocational calling. He’s living at home in the same room with his thirteen-year-old brother David (Evan Assante). His mother (Leslie Mann) and stepfather (Greg Garrett) are worried about him and disappointed that his plans consist of a part-time job at a hot dog stand followed by a trip to Barcelona where his girlfriend is studying.
Things seem to be turning around when he lands a position working as a bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah party starter. With his charm, humor, and easy-going nature, he is able to get everybody out on the dance floor, even the shy boys. David, who wishes he had some of his brother’s spunk, asks for advice on handling his first kiss.
"All that matters now is to be kind to each other with all the goodness that is in us."
— Etty Hillesum quoted in The Cup of Our Life by Joyce Rupp
Small intimations of love can surprise us with their magic. At one bar mitzvah dance, Andrew looks across the room and meets the gaze of Domino (Dakota Johnson), the pretty mother of Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), an autistic teenager who is socially awkward. Domino is impressed with the emotional literacy of the dance host who draws her daughter out of herself and on to the dance floor. Andrew's kindness to her comes across as a healing balm.
Soon Domino and Andrew are friends, and he is babysitting for Lola. Domino, a single mother who is engaged to marry a lawyer who is often away on a case, finds Andrew is easy to talk to about everything from the challenges of raising Lola to her own depression. His empathetic nature is activated when she says, “All the things I’m really scared of doing are probably the things that will help me the most but I just can’t do them.”
"Kindness is the secret password whereby we recognize our connection to one another."
— Editors of Random Acts of Kindness in The Community of Kindness
The spiritual practice of kindness frees us from the isolation and the alienation that is so rampant today. When we reach out to others, we open their hearts and theirs as well. Cooper Raiff, who wrote and directed Cha Cha Real Smooth, brilliantly illustrates this process.
As the characters of Andrew, Domino, and Lola connect, interact, and influence each other, new possibilities begin to bloom in their lives.
A touching dramedy about a twenty-something college grad who demonstrates a remarkable gift for empathy and kindness
Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World
One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, his "partners in the work of creation". The God who created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to use it to honour and enhance the freedom of others. God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out to the human other. More than God is a strategic intervener, he is a teacher. More than he does our will, he teaches us how to do his. Life is God's call to responsibility. . . .
More than any previous generation in history, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning. The gossamer filaments of connection between us and others, that once held together families, communities and societies, have become attenuated. We have become lonely selves in search of purely personal fulfillment. But that surely must be wrong. Life alone is only half a life. One spent pursuing the satisfaction of desire is less than satisfying and never all we desire. So it is worth reminding ourselves that there is such a thing as ethics, and it belongs to the life we live together and the goods we share — the goods that only exist in virtue of being shared.
The life we live together