Sometimes a book becomes like a trusted friend – you keep it nearby, never leaving your favorite travel bag, or always on your
nightstand. You can rely on the book to inspire, or amuse, or comfort. The first time you give a gift to a new friend, it is this book. The book – and your love of it – provides a little insight into you for that friend. You are connected to it, and it helps you make connections.
Below are some books that our team always keeps nearby, with selective annotations:
A personal journal.
Writer Mama – an encouraging reflection on being a parent and a creator.
A short story collection. Perhaps one by Eudora Welty, Lee Smith, Flannery O’Connor, or Joy Williams.
Between the World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s incisive, beautiful lament written as a letter to his son.
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. A memoir of embracing your own story
A Timbered Choir: Sabbath Poems. Wendell Berry’s classic collection.
A Theology of Black Liberation. James Cone’s masterwork of “theology from below.”
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paolo Freire’s classic work on movement-building.
New Seeds of Contemplation. Thomas Merton reflects on monastic life.
The Quotidian Mysteries. Kathleen Norris writes on patient endurance and the transformational power of tending to the small, daily things of human existence – cooking, laundry, conversation, silence.
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