All Church Read 2024: Sacred Self Care and Black Liturgies

If you are like us, you are living daily with the awareness that 2024 is an election year and feeling the weight of the conversations and choices that await us. Perhaps you too, are witnessing the ways this moment is moving some people to embrace divisive rhetoric and threatening language and behaviors toward our siblings nationally and globally.  Maybe you are noticing in your body how this is all happening in the midst of multiple devastating global crises.  It could be you find yourself wondering, how do we stay faithfully engaged politically, grounded in our justice commitments, and present to global struggles for peace, justice and freedom without burning out, checking out, or opting out?

We know we can only stay on the journey toward racial justice, healing, and building a just world for all if we understand how to care for our whole selves and nurture our souls. So this year, Join the Movement and Racial Justice Ministries are inviting all of us to deepen our capacities and commitments to healing, wholeness and care through our 2024 All Church Read.  We will journey with Chanequa Walker-Barnes and Cole Arthur Riley and their books Sacred Self Care and Black Liturgies to discover ways of tending ourselves while we are tending the world.

Buy Sacred Self Care: Daily Practices for Nurturing Our Whole Selves here

Buy Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems and Meditations for Staying Human here.

We will be offering lots of accompaniments and entry points for this journey, including:

• A discussion/engagement guide for groups
• Videos to deepen your understanding biblically and theologically from Rev. Dr. Cheryl Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology
• Webinars
• Online convenings
• And more!

We know this journey can feel lonely sometimes, impossible sometimes, and downright exhausting sometimes.  May this complex time also be a moment to lean into the connective work of healing and nourishing, restoring and reviving your spirit.  We hope you will join us and so many others on this sacred journey of staying human for such a time as this.