Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color

Liturgies for Resisting Empire with Kat Armas

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month they sit down with Kat Armas to discuss her book Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World.

In Liturgies for Resisting Empire, Cuban American theologian and writer Kat Armas provides a roadmap for Christians seeking a countercultural way of living that prioritizes community and humanity over dominance and power.

Armas combines spiritual practices and biblical theology to help us create authentic belonging to God, ourselves, each other, and creation. She begins by examining how empire affects us daily through its pervasive ideologies and systems of control. Drawing from decolonial and postcolonial biblical interpretation, she explores how the New Testament church resisted Roman imperial power while building communities centered on God’s kingdom values rather than worldly dominance.

This book offers hope for Christians struggling to live faithfully within systems of exploitation and oppression. Armas provides practical spiritual disciplines, community-building strategies, and theological frameworks that empower readers to resist empire’s dehumanizing effects while cultivating spaces of authentic belonging and liberation.

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Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving with Lydia Sohn

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month they sat down with Lydia Sohn about her book Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving.

Lydia Sohn was a serial burn-it-down-and-make-a-fresh-start girl until, when in her late twenties, she encountered the Rule of St. Benedict with its vow of stability, and her world was transformed. Sohn took a pause to consider what she wanted out of life—identity, purpose, community—and had a lightbulb moment: Everything she needed to live the life she desired was already within her reach.

Here pushes back against our age of constant reinvention and the cultural message that we should do whatever it takes to get wherever we want to go. Instead, Sohn’s message is the opposite: stay. Stay and cultivate the immense potential and beauty that currently lies dormant within your circumstances.

Sohn understands the allure of nomadism. A nomadic life would protect us from the stress of relational conflicts that inevitably arise when we’re caught in the intricate web of commitments. But the restlessness, FOMO, and disappointment we’re trying to escape always come along for the journey. That’s because they’re not the result of our circumstances; they reside within us.

Braiding personal narrative and spiritual reflection, Here inspires readers to both embrace and transform their circumstances through commitment and stability—in order that they might find true contentment right where they are.

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You Mean It or You Don't by Jamie McGhee and Adam Hollowell

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month they sat down with Jamie McGhee about her book co-authored with Adam Hollowell You Mean It or You Don’t: James Baldwin’s Radical Challenge.

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: “You said that the liberal façade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?” Baldwin responded, “Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don’t.”

Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don’t will spur today’s progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin’s radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it.

Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/lift-every-voice/you-mean-it-or-you-dont/

Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation with Roberto Che Espinoza

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month they sat down with Rev. Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza about his book Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation.

The body that Roberto Che Espinoza inhabits is a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races–and a body continually in discovery. Theirs is also a body on sojourn invested in experience, body understanding, and engagement in and for human thriving. Espinoza relates coming into a new body story, beginning with the deep emotional work of connecting the abstract intelligence of their mind with their body’s intelligence, to explore the relationship between living and becoming, doing and listening.

Combining that deep listening and living with their work in activism, Body Becoming offers us a way of understanding the body beyond constructions–political or medical-industrial-complex defined–toward cultivating the body as important in our endeavors to build a more inclusive vision for democracy. Mixing memoir and faith, somatics theory and body practice, Espinoza steers us through territory both familiar and difficult–as we discover embodiment as the primary place of deep wisdom, where culture shifts originate and materialize–and a better world becomes, as we too become.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/lift-every-voice/body-becoming

The Spirituality of Transformation, Joy, and Justice: The Ignatian Way for Everyone by Patrick Saint-Jean

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month they sat down with Patrick Saint-Jean to discuss his book The Spirituality of Transformation, Joy, and Justice: The Ignatian Way for Everyone.

Discover how rooting our beliefs and practices in relationship–with each other, the natural world, and the Source of All Life–leads us to transform ourselves and the world.

At its heart, Ignatian spirituality is practical and experiential, offering modern readers a structure for pursuing inner growth that results in transformed action. While it is a deeply contemplative practice, Ignatian spirituality appeals to many of us who are looking for purpose and meaning, and who are wondering how to live out that purpose in a way that addresses the brokenness of our world.

At the heart of this thoughtful introduction to Ignatian spirituality are the Spiritual Exercises, developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola of Spain. Using ordinary language, these meditations point to the ways in which this spiritual path not only “grows our souls” but also inspires us to defend human rights, respect and listen to other cultures, find common ground between science and religion, struggle for justice, and honor a Divine Spirit who is actively at work in each aspect of our world. As twenty-first-century spiritual seekers, we do not need to be Jesuits, Catholics, or even Christians to make use of Ignatius’s methods; some of history’s most important thinkers–from René Descartes to Carl Jung–were influenced and inspired by the Spiritual Exercises. Let them guide you to transformation in the ordinary, everyday world.

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Glory, Too: Poems by Nikki Grimes

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations on a book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month we sat down with Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, and New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes about her book Glory, Too: Poems, a soul-stirring collection of poetry that delves into the depths of faith, hope, and the human experience by one of America’s preeminent black poets.

In a marriage of poetry, faith, and worship, Ms. Grimes’ poems illuminate the Scriptures that grace every Sunday of the year. Her inimitable voice and imagination offer glimpses of glory we might not otherwise see, throughout the seasons of the year.

With lyrical precision and spiritual insight, she invites readers on a journey of reflection, weaving together themes of grace, redemption, and the enduring power of God’s love throughout the year.

As the companion volume to her previous book Glory in the Margins: Sunday Poems, Glory, Too resonates with authenticity and depth, giving testimony to the transformative power of poetry and the enduring hope found in the embrace of God’s eternal grace.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/lift-every-voice/glory-too-poems/

And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either Or World by Felicia Murrell

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations on a book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month we sat down with Felicia Murrell to discuss her book And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World.

While others often respond to the cares and concerns of our day through anger, And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World attempts to offer a response steeped in the heartbeat of Love.

This book is an invitation to encounter the lived experience and philosophical musings of another as a human, not as a project or agenda to conquer. Without apology, it embraces humanity and all the emotions, back stories, and history that come along with who we are and who Love is inviting us to be. This book is for those who want to think more deeply, those who are asking questions of how, what, and perhaps even why, and those who want to engage in deep listening and empathy.

And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World is an invitation to move beyond binaries, beyond hierarchy and comparison to embrace the concept of “AND,” with inclusion and generativity that allow for more than one perspective and/or way of being.

Touching on issues of race, body, motherhood, church, and wonder, these writings are from the stirrings of the author’s own soul, extending an invitation to sit with Spirit in the process of mindful meditation, to humbly sit with compassion and curiosity in ways that evoke honesty and healing so that one might move beyond either/or and discover how the restorative power and uniting thread of Love might be stitching each of us to the world and to each other.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/lift-every-voice/and-the-restorative-power-of-love/

The Holy in the Night by Shannon Dycusa

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations on a book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month we sat down with Shannon Dycus to discuss her book The Holy in the Night: Finding Freedom in a Season of Waiting.

Listen for the voice of God.

If you approach this Advent season waiting for something–in your life, in your family or community, or in a fractured world–you are not alone. This season reminds us that our waiting is not wasted. Even in our longest nights, divine work endures. What if we were free enough to do the same?
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Drawing on lectionary scripture readings from the Old and New Testaments and the voices of Black and Brown modern-day prophets, author Shannon Dycus offers reflections for each day of the season. Her meditations stretch open possibilities for faithfulness during silence, ambivalence, doubt, and unknowing. This Advent, accept the invitation to witness and know the presence of God amid waiting. Give voice to freedom, grace, struggle, and beauty–to see again the ways that God emerges in this inward season.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/Lift-Every-Voice/The-Holy-In-the-Night

Hurting Yet Whole by Liuan Huska

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month we sat down with Liuan Huska to discuss her book Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness.

What if the things we most fear about our bodies–our vulnerability to illness and pain–are exactly the places where God meets us most fully?

As Liuan Huska went through years of chronic pain, she wondered why God seemed absent and questioned some of the common assumptions about healing. What do we do when our bodies don’t work the way they should? What is healing, when one has a chronic illness? Can we still be whole when our bodies suffer?

The Christian story speaks to our experiences of pain and illness. In the embodiment of Jesus’ life, we see an embrace of the body and all of the discomfort and sufferings of being human. Countering a Gnosticism that pits body against spirit, Huska takes us on a journey of exploring how healing is not an escape from the limits of the body, but becoming whole as souls in bodies and bodies with souls. As chronic pain forces us to pay attention to our bodies’ vulnerability, we come to embrace the fullness of our broken yet beautiful bodies. She helps us redefine what it means to find healing and wholeness even in the midst of ongoing pain.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/Lift-Every-Voice/Hurting-Yet-Whole

Hope is Here by Luther E. Smith Jr.

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Every other month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.

This month we sat down with Luther E. Smith Jr. to discuss his book Hope is Here!: Spiritual Practices for Pursuing Justice and Beloved Community. 

Joyful and daunting opportunities to live into God’s dream of justice and beloved community are compelling and available. Hope, says Luther Smith Jr., is essential to the needed personal and social transformations that prepare us for such sacred opportunities. Yet genuine hope is often confused as merely wish fulfillment, optimism, or perceiving better tomorrows. In Hope Is Here! Smith describes how we truly perceive and join “the work of hope,” enlivening us to a life that is oriented toward immediate and future experiences of personal fulfillment, justice, and beloved community. Interpreting five spiritual practices for individuals and congregations to experience the power of hope, this book prepares us to engage racism, mass incarceration, environmental crises, divisive politics, and indifference that imperil justice and beloved community. It delivers the inner resources necessary to work for change through its interpretation of hope. Additionally, each chapter ends with questions that prompt readers to examine their experiences and their readiness to journey with hope. Written for Christians who want to commit themselves to justice and beloved community, this book will provide helpful guidance for a life sustained by God’s gifts of hope and love. Hope is here for our “responsibility” and “response-ability” to live the fulfilling life that God dreams for us.

AbbeyoftheArts.com/Lift-Every-Voice/Hope-is-Here