2024 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner in "Religion / Spirituality of Western Thought" CategoryWinner of the Living Now Book Award, Church of the Wild reminds us that once upon a time, humans lived in an intimate relationship with nature. Whether disillusioned by the dominant church or unfulfilled by traditional expressions of faith, many of us long for a deeper spirituality. Victoria Loorz certainly did. Coping with an unraveling vocation, identity, and planet, Loorz turned to the wanderings of spiritual leaders and the sanctuary of the natural world, eventually cofounding the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild. With an ecospiritual lens on biblical narratives and a fresh look at a community larger than our own species, Church of the Wild uncovers the wild roots of faith and helps us deepen our commitment to a suffering earth by falling in love with it--and calling it church. Through mystical encounters with wild deer, whispers from a scrubby oak tree, wordless conversation with a cougar, and more, Loorz helps us connect to a love that literally holds the world together--a love that calls us into communion with all creatures.

A religious studies scholar argues that in antebellum America, evangelicals, not Transcendentalists, connected ordinary Americans with their spiritual roots in the natural world. We have long credited Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists with revolutionizing religious life in America and introducing a new appreciation of nature. Breaking with Protestant orthodoxy, these New Englanders claimed that God could be found not in church but in forest, fields, and streams. Their spiritual nonconformity had thrilling implications but never traveled far beyond their circle. In this essential reconsideration of American faith in the years leading up to the Civil War, Brett Malcolm Grainger argues that it was not the Transcendentalists but the evangelical revivalists who transformed the everyday religious life of Americans and spiritualized the natural environment. Evangelical Christianity won believers from the rural South to the industrial North: this was the true popular religion of the antebellum years. Revivalists went to the woods not to free themselves from the constraints of Christianity but to renew their ties to God. Evangelical Christianity provided a sense of enchantment for those alienated by a rapidly industrializing world. In forested camp meetings and riverside baptisms, in private contemplation and public water cures, in electrotherapy and mesmerism, American evangelicals communed with nature, God, and one another. A distinctive spirituality emerged pairing personal piety with a mystical relation to nature. As Church in the Wild reveals, the revivalist attitude toward nature and the material world, which echoed that of Catholicism, spread like wildfire among Christians of all backgrounds during the years leading up to the Civil War.

Using Lady Gaga as a symbol for a new kind of feminism, this “provocative and pleasurable romp through contemporary gender politics . . . is as fun as it is illuminating” (Ariel Levy, New Yorker) Why are so many women single, so many men resisting marriage, and so many gays and lesbians having babies? Gaga Feminism answers these questions while attempting to make sense of the tectonic cultural shifts that have transformed gender and sexual politics in the last few decades. This colorful landscape is populated by symbols and phenomena as varied as pregnant men, late-life lesbians, SpongeBob SquarePants, and queer families. So how do we understand the dissonance between these real experiences and the heteronormative narratives that dominate popular media? We can embrace the chaos! With equal parts edge and wit, J. Jack Halberstam reveals how these symbolic ruptures open a critical space to embrace new ways of conceptualizing sex, love, and marriage. Using Lady Gaga as a symbol for a new era, Halberstam deftly unpacks what the pop superstar symbolizes, to whom and why. The result is a provocative manifesto of creative mayhem—a roadmap to sex and gender for the twenty-first century—that holds Lady Gaga as an exemplar of a new kind of feminism that privileges gender and sexual fluidity. Part handbook, part guidebook, and part sex manual, Gaga Feminism is the first book to take seriously the collapse of heterosexuality and find signposts in the wreckage to a new and different way of doing sex and gender.

This innovative and imaginative resource offers learning and worship activities and whole service outlines to help churches engage with the outside world and increase connectedness with the communities where they are placed, whether rural or urban. Current trends encourage us to reconnect with nature – schools are building outdoor classrooms, 11,000 organizations belong to the Wild Network which encourages children to get outside, while Forest Church, the Eco-congregation and the rewilding spirituality movements reflect this trend in the church. Definitely not just for energetic outdoorsy types, it creatively blends the Christian year with the natural seasons – such as an all-age Advent outdoor adventure, creating an outdoor Easter garden, kite flying at Ascension, building life-size David and Goliath, going on a prayer pilgrimage, autumn leaves and tree ribbons for remembrance, and much more.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. As seen on All There Is with Anderson Cooper Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.

In all your boyhood dreams of growing up, did you dream of being a "nice guy"? Eldredge believes that every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. That is how he bears the image of God; that is what God made him to be.

Brent Alan Henderson understands what makes men tick, how to capture and hold their attention, and how to move them to action. Bunk next to Brent as he’s stranded in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness with hungry brown bears circling his tent. Ride along as storms and riptides thrash his rubber Zodiac, trying to dump you both into the icy depths of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Sit at his campfire on the remote African plains, listening to roaring lions on the hunt. Become marooned in the North Pacific Ocean, almost drown multiple times, risk hypothermia, and somehow survive the trip back to the home front—only to face new challenges. Throughout these adventures, Into the Wilds will help you to discover who you really are at your core, while also providing the necessary tools to enable you to break free from unhealthy thoughts, emotions, and actions. It’s all about identity. Brent’s firsthand collection of hard-to-top guy stories, along with the lessons he learned from surviving his own personal failures and struggles, make Into the Wilds a book you will read from cover to cover. It will awaken your heart, guide you through the wilderness, and equip you to overcome the harsh realities of the unseen and overwhelming forces of life.

The Book of Numbers is a story of identity, wilderness, and God. Numbers continues the historical narrative begun in Exodus, the story of God's people newly freed from Egypt's shackles and wandering toward the promised land. While Numbers accounts for the next 39 years of their wilderness wandering, it's also a story of God's presence among His beloved. Even when they rebelled--and this book tells of many rebellions--God's love and promises remained. It's in that love and those promises the children of Israel found their identity and where we must find ours today. (7 sessions) Features: Leader helps to guide questions and discussions within small groups Personal study segments to complete between 7 weeks of group sessions Interactive teaching videos, approximately 15 minutes per session, for purchase or rent Benefits: Leverage Old Testament truths for your life today. Recognize God's faithfulness in keeping His promises. Discover your identity as His beloved even in seasons of wilderness wandering.