In ‘Love Your Mother,’ Mallory McDuff brings us 50 women from 50 states urging climate justice

August 7, 2023 by David Crumm

Mallory McDuff, at left, leads a class. (Photo from Warren Wilson College, used with permission of the author.)

Good People Are at Work Everywhere! Want to Help?

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Empathy for each other and for our world as a whole is a value shared by our entire global network of authors and writers who have been contributing to our weekly online magazine since 2007. Our regular readers will recall our recent conversation with Barbara Mahany about discovering spiritual wisdom in the natural world, our story about Anita Nowak’s research into how “purposeful empathy” could save our planet, our ongoing coverage of Laura Elizabeth’s mission to highlight her beloved Daufuskie Island, our interview with Daneen Akers about bringing these lessons into our daily interactions with our children—and our conversation with Ann Byle about how much we can learn from … chickens.

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Did you notice?

All of five of those recent columns highlight the remarkable, creative work of women.

This column is a sixth example of the strength of women in connecting all of us with our ultimate Mother, the world on which we live—and on which we hope to continue living for generations. That’s the major theme in environmental educator Mallory McDuff’s new book, Love Your Mother: 50 States, 50 Stories and 50 Women United for Climate Justice, which is available from Amazon and other booksellers.

Mallory is a person of faith, active in the Episcopal Church, but—like the other authors we continue to feature—she envisions a caring circle of men, women and children as big as the planet in all of our religious and cultural diversity.

‘How Can I Become Involved?’

In a Zoom interview about her new book, Mallory told me: “In this new book, there are stories of farmers, community organizers, elected officials, students, scientists of all different kinds, artists, sculptors, poets. I hope readers will find stories they identify with either by vocation or geography or by theme. And I hope that connecting with these stories might be a way for readers to take a next step to find out: How can I become involved?”

I completely agree with Mallory’s mission and her approach as an author. If we are going to get out of this climate crisis alive, and our grandchildren are going to have a shot at a healthy life, then we all need to help—whatever our faith or motivating principles may be.

Mallory and I both are people are faith as are many of the women you will meet in her book. However, as we talked over Zoom, I told Mallory that some of the most impressive allies in this cause who I have met and interviewed over my decades as a journalist are secularists, including self-described atheists and humanists. I have been impressed, over the years, with direct appeals that secularists such as James Gustave Speth and E.O. Wilson have made to people of faith. Both Speth and Wilson have published pointed invitations to people involved in religious movements to join hands in helping to preserve our planet. Readers who respond to such appeals by Speth and Wilson will feel right at home in Mallory’s appeals to the moral conscience of everyone—whatever our faith or secular practice may be.

I am spending this much time introducing Mallory in this week’s Cover Story, because that point needs to be stressed: We can’t allow boundaries of faith, culture or politics to keep us from recognizing the core of our shared community on planet Earth.

A Connective Prophet in Perpetual Motion

Mallory McDuff is a connective prophet who seems to be in perpetual motion, linking lives wherever she goes. I have followed Mallory’s work for a decade, since I first read her 2013 book Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God’s Earth, published by the prestigious Oxford University Press. For that book, Mallory made a pilgrimage to 50 faith communities “with two daughters in tow,” as she puts it.

In my earlier Cover Story about Anita Nowak’s book Purposeful Empathy, one of the central findings in Anita’s research into empathy is that empathic adults usually are formed by the experiences they had as children. So, kudos to Mallory for taking her daughters on the road with her. That’s a theme echoed throughout the work of Daneen Akers and so many other colleagues.

Can you see how this circle of creative prophets connects around our world—whatever our gender or our age may be?

I mention Natural Saints, among Mallory’s many books, because Love Your Mother springs from a similar concept of searching the landscape and reporting on good news from 50 corners of the U.S. The subtitle of Love Your Mother is 50 States, 50 Stories and 50 Women United for Climate Justice.

“For this book, I did not go back out on the road again. I worked on this in the middle of COVID and I wasn’t able to go to all 50 states,” Mallory said in our interview. “I researched this book using information from sources I could access online, interviews with people by phone and Zoom. To complete the majority of this book, I was able to send each story back to the person for them to check over. Even in the research and writing, this was a case of women working collectively to share these stories.”

Finally, there is no list of 10 things Mallory expects readers to do at the end of her book. Her book has far too many suggestions to count! She gives us hundreds of things we could read, places we could visit, ideas we could pursue, people we could contact and ask to talk in our communities.

I said to Mallory, “I like that you leave us with so many choices. You’re not insisting on 1 thing everyone should do or even 10 things.”

“That’s because I really believe that it’s going to take thousands of different solutions,” she said. “The take-home message of this book for me is an awareness of so many individuals who are working in community—and that’s how this is going to change. Lots of people. Lots of solutions.

“My job as a writer and educator is to show people where they can plug in. If you’re feeling anxious about this as an individual, or if your local community is worried, then the question I hope readers of this book will be asking is: Where can we plug in with other people for collective action?”

And, ultimately, that’s the huge gift of this book: Wherever you live and however deeply connected you may be to environmental causes, I guarantee you will be surprised by some of the women you will meet in these pages. And, Mallory makes it easy to dig deeper into their work with a big resource section in the back of her book. Wherever you may be reading this column in our world, today, Mallory and I are pretty sure you can find similar good news stories by connecting with activists you could lift up as simply as sharing their social media with your network of friends.

Please, if you feel like doing a good deed in the world today, order your own copy of Mallory’s book and dig in! If you’ve got a similar story to share, we’d like to hear from you at [email protected]

If you’d like to connect with Mallory, please visit her website: https://mallorymcduff.com/

The Rev. Daniel Kidder-McQuown shares an idea to encourage college students to share their religious traditions

July 24, 2023 by Daniel Kidder-McQuown

Photos courtesy of the Rev. Daniel Kidder-McQuown

‘Faith in Transition’ Strengthens Religious Affiliation

By DANIEL KIDDER-McQUOWN
Contributing Columnist

Religiously affiliated colleges and universities often struggle with their denominational relationship. What follows is a program idea for schools that seek to grow this relationship.

I have always served as an institutional chaplain (primarily in health care). In the past, I served for many years as chaplain of a small, private liberal arts college. Part of my responsibility was maintenance of the college’s church relationship. At the beginning of my time there, this responsibility entailed representing the college at denominational meetings and occasional alumni functions. There was no direct tie to campus life, nothing that involved current students, faculty, and staff in the church relationship. Even the local church adjacent to the college was excluded from campus daily activities.

After building relationships, I realized that below the surface, there was interest in change. Faith-affiliated students wanted a more tangible church relationship. They had come to the college in part because of its historic denominational ties. They wanted to see something in campus life that was tangible. In an effort to listen and respond to these students, the Office of the Chaplain started hosting conversations about tangible goals.

As the conversations progressed, student leadership was built, and faculty and staff began to take interest. We capitalized on this growth and were able to make significant small steps that served as building blocks. Perhaps the most notable step for the purposes of this reflection was the creation of paid student minister interns in the Office of the Chaplain, focused on the college-church relationship. Under my supervision, these interns helped us host ongoing dialogues with students, as well as leaders from the affiliated tradition.

These conversations led us to further insights. My student interns and I realized the affiliated tradition was lacking the same thing as our college—tangible ways to be related. We realized that we needed to look both ways. We needed to look inward at campus life, while at the same time doing something that positively impacted the affiliated religion.

At this point, the conversations could have ended in any number of outcomes. We discussed many possibilities, including service projects, mutual visits, conferences and retreats, the list was quite long. We tested some of these ideas, like taking our worship team out into churches in the region.

Eventually, though, we settled on nurturing youth as a focus. This seemed to make the most sense, as it was a core shared value of both the college and the church.

We decided to create a faith-enrichment opportunity on campus, designed for youth from our affiliated tradition. This would benefit the college overall by giving visiting youth and youth leaders a positive experience, and thus create a potential recruitment pipeline. This would benefit campus spiritual life, as students would become mentors for a weekend, and work together to fashion the overall experience. The hopes were also that interest would grow among faculty and staff. And the program would benefit affiliated churches. Youth would have an enriching experience designed for them, by college student mentors under my office’s supervision.

We decided the name of the program would be “Faith in Transition” (or FIT for short). I had talked with our student team about framing the program in developmental psychology theory. As studies continue to show, adolescence is often a crucial period of spiritual development.

Invitations were sent out by letter to affiliated churches in the region. Student leaders were asked to contact their home churches. I made phone calls to key youth group leaders and denominational representatives.

Each time we held the program, we used a fairly consistent format. Participating high school students arrived on Saturday and were welcomed by our college student leaders. We gathered participants together for an icebreaker, split them into mixed groups, and had them do fun activities with college student mentors around campus. They ate in the cafeteria, then returned to their mixed small groups for dialogue, followed by a combined campus worship service. After that, participants had a menu of options: Gaming, a live music café in the campus coffee house (with alumni performers), dialogue and activities with college student leaders, and other options. Participants left with their assigned college student host to sleep. Adult chaperones were lodged in college guest housing. Sunday morning was left flexible. All were invited to attend worship service at the adjacent affiliated church, eat breakfast in the cafeteria, and/or leave when their chaperones were ready.

In our debrief and evaluation, the student ministry interns and I pointed to a number of positive results. We had been successful in providing a safe, fun, and nurturing space for visiting high school students to consider what it might look like for them to stay active in their religion. We had provided a transformative ecumenical experience for our campus, most especially for the dozens of college students who helped lead the program. We had provided the affiliated religion with a substantial program that served their mission. From the feedback we received, FIT had been a great success, accomplishing all the goals we had set forth.

As I’ve reflected on FIT as a program model, there were areas for growth. While we involved a handful of faculty, staff, and alumni/a in the program, we did not integrate the program into faculty and administrative culture. While we involved a handful of leaders from the affiliated religion, we did not integrate the program into the religion’s culture. We made progress in both areas. But sustaining this program model would take a much wider effort.

For colleges and universities that might consider FIT for themselves, I would raise a key area of discernment. As you have read, I chose to base this program on students, especially my student leaders. This had the desired effects of empowerment, ownership, and creativity. However, this choice came with consequences. The rest of campus culture was not integrated, though seeds were planted within faculty and administration. I have often wondered if there were more ways to integrate these other parts of campus into FIT, whether in the planning, implementation, or evaluation phases.

I have also wondered if FIT could be a model for colleges and universities that are not affiliated with a religion. I think the answer is yes, and already happens to some degree with religious organizations that have existent, integrated ties with the college or university. FIT could easily be adapted for interfaith and intercultural purposes.

The Rev. Daniel Kidder-McQuown serves as Board Certified Chaplain (APC) with Trinity Health Ann Arbor, Michigan. He can be reached at [email protected].

Larry Buxton on: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

July 2, 2023 by Larry Buxton

Larry Buxton reading with his lifelong friend.

By LARRY BUXTON
Author of 30 Days with King David: On Leadership

I’m in the 7^th grade, soon to be 13 years old. I get up from bed just a little after 10:00 and go outside in the dark. I walk to the edge of the front lawn, just by the street, and I look up. It’s a mid-April night, the skies are clear, stars are visible, and the air is cool. I stare into the infinite darkness, and I ponder, as best as my pre-adolescent wisdom will allow, the scope of 100 years.

Larry Buxton works as a consultant with a wide range of leaders. Click on this cover to visit his book’s Amazon page.

I would have to live my same life over and over, eight times, to fill 100 years. Once, twice, three times, four … I can’t fathom this. The year 1865 was decades before all the oldest people I know were even born. My father’s father, “Pop,” is the oldest of my grandparents, and he seems the most like Abraham Lincoln of the family: He’s quiet, thoughtful, dignified, and good with his hands. I wonder if Pop, like Lincoln, had had rough and tumble experiences in his growing up or in his working as a machinist at the Shipyard. But he’s quiet and gentle with me, as I know Father Abraham would have been too.

The moonlight helps me read my watch: 10:15. In just a few minutes it will be one hundred years. My father will be 50 in a few months, I realize. He’s hardly a young man, and yet the time from 1865 until his birth is the same length of time that he’s been alive. I’m amazed. I can’t begin to grasp what 100 years is like. Images of horses and carriages, fields and plows, cowboys and lawmen, roadsters and bi-planes, flappers, Depression lines, a jumble of images from television and books and movies all race through my mind.

Then it’s 10:20. I look up. I listen for a sound, an echo, even an echo in my imagination, sounding from deep within the abyss of years. It was at this very moment that a shot was fired in Ford’s Theater, 200 miles north of where I’m standing, a shot that ended my hero’s life. This exact moment, 100 years ago to the second. Now!

I listen. I hear just the sounds of a spring night, nothing more. But I’ve marked the moment. I’ve stood and remembered and listened. Maybe God knows I’ve been out here. Maybe God will tell Mr. Lincoln about this boy standing outside in the dark, in April, remembering him and missing him, too.

I walk back up to the front porch and slip inside. I go back into my room, where above my bed hangs another framed poster of the man. Dad knows of my fascination with this wise, tender President, and he frequently writes the Lincoln Life Insurance Company in Indiana asking for posters. Occasionally a brown cardboard tube will arrive with Dad’s name on it, and I get excited. I know what it is, and I’m eager to see the new print. Mom will frame it for me and position it right above my headboard. It’s always the first thing I see when I walk into my bedroom.

He is a silent, comforting presence in my life. Mom and Dad are good parents, for sure, and I know I’m fortunate. But life is still hectic and confusing, putting up with two noisy brothers, a big furry dog and a skittish cat, plenty of chores, and endless homework. At school I’ve been one of the new kids this year, and I’ve noticed that 7^th grade girls are different from 6^th grade girls. They whisper more and giggle more, and I worry sometimes that it’s about me–when my voice cracked in science class, or when I stumbled off the bus and dropped my books in the mud. Or when I lost my wrestling match because the head cheerleader’s brother twisted me like a pretzel in gym class. It’s been an awkward year.

But at home, in my room, there is this quiet understanding. Abraham Lincoln had known awkwardness and embarrassment, too, but he radiates serenity and acceptance. He tells me that my future will hold something deep and important that I can’t see yet. His eyes show kindness, which I crave. His gaunt cheeks and dark beard promise me wisdom to come, something I can’t locate at all in my chubby body and facial fuzz. His steady expression speaks of his determination to forge peace in a violent, hate-filled country. I love having Lincoln’s face watch over me at night, see me off to school in the morning, and welcome me home each afternoon. He is part of my private family.

Now 50 years have passed since that April night. A half-century again divides then and now. I’ve learned a lot about Lincoln as a father and husband. I’ve also learned about he led our bitterly-divided country as the President.

I have boyhood memories of “The President” being a noble and impressive job, held by men of character. But from those days til now, our nation’s Presidents have been men who’ve been shot, ridiculed, lampooned, embarrassed, impeached, disgraced, impeached, vilified and impeached again – on and on. Some commentators consider our era now heading towards “another civil war.”

But I cultivate an odd dream. The dream is that in April of 2015, 150 years after that night in Ford’s Theater, some young adolescent also captivated by the soul of Abraham Lincoln kept a brief nighttime vigil under the stars. Some young girl or boy noted the hour and the minute and slipped outside. That teenager listened carefully for an echo from the past and tried to bring something of that moment into ordinary life.

That adolescent would be 20-something now, maybe finishing school or entering the working world. I dream that Lincoln’s kindness and compassion, his strength and determination, his character and wisdom are deepening the heart of another human soul. I dream that that person will emerge in the years to come ready to offer Lincolnesque leadership to a family, a community–even to our own weary nation.

The Rev. Dr. Larry Buxton has been an ordained United Methodist minister since 1975. His book, 30 Days with King David: On Leadership, is a character-focused study of the historical King of Israel. Larry began Larry Buxton Coaching in 2012 and holds the ACC credential from the International Coach Federation and the BCC credential from the Center for Credentialing & Education.  He is also a certified Resilient Leadership coach. To learn more about his work, please visit his professional website.

Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer’s introduction to this series includes a salute to Braver Angels, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to de-polarizing American politics that is gathering from across the country for a major conference at Gettysburg this week.

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

Martin Davis on: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

July 2, 2023 by Martin Davis

Wilderness Church at Chancellorsville was the center of a stand made by some Union forces after Confederates under Stonewall Jackson made a surprise flank attack. (Click on the photo to learn more about the battle from Wikipedia.)

By MARTIN DAVIS
Author of 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches

In Spotsylvania, Virginia, a sign reading “Crossroads of the Civil War” greets visitors driving into the county from the west on State Route 3.

They are driving through land that Gens. Robert E. Lee and Joseph Hooker would still recognize, as it is little changed since they clashed in April 1863 at Chancellorsville, from which Lee turned north and toward his fateful battle at Gettysburg.

There is no such sign to greet visitors traveling north or south through the county on Interstate 95. And while Lee and Gen. Ambrose Burnside—who collided in Fredericksburg in December 1862—would recognize the general terrain along the interstate, they certainly wouldn’t recognize the region.

As a journalist, Martin Davis is an expert at inviting Americans of all political and cultural backgrounds to speak honestly about their lives. That’s what he did in his book 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches. Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

This is the area that I call home. In local-government speak, it’s Planning District 16. In everyday speak, it’s the embodiment of a divided America.

Travel five miles east and west of I-95, and you’ll find highly educated, well-paid, professionals; as well as college-educated middle-class citizens. Many travel 50-or-more miles north to work every day. They settled here for plentiful land and relatively inexpensive homes. They were also attracted to good school divisions, the beautiful Rappahannock River, and the city of Fredericksburg with its arts and food scene.

The explosion in growth, the accompanying money, and the educational pedigree created a class of people unsympathetic to the Lost Cause. Their economic and social dominance also created a veneer of peace over the land that once played host to the battles of Chancellorsville (31,000 casualties), Wilderness (29,000 casualties), Fredericksburg (18,500 casualties), and Spotsylvania Courthouse (30,000 casualties).

The foes of Union, however, never went away. A small percentage of residents still fly confederate flags, and a larger percentage—through either quiet affirmation or silence in the face of pro-confederate propaganda—ensured the county remained a welcome locale for the very people who split Lincoln’s beloved Union in 1861.

Alongside these neo-confederates have risen the Christian Nationalists, the evangelical fundamentalists and the Trumpists. Donald Trump carried both Spotsylvania and Stafford counties in 2016. He carried Spotsylvania again in 2020, but by a smaller margin, and he lost to Biden—barely—in Stafford. Fredericksburg went Democratic in both races. (See here and here for a closer look.)

And the tensions that have erupted match those leading up to the Civil War in tone, if not in ferocity. I’ve spent the past two years reporting on these controversies—mostly in local school boards.

In the midst of such battles, I often wonder where the next Lincoln will come from—that one voice that can craft a vision forward to put down the forces opposed to freedom, and lead those who believe in the ideals of America.

That Lincoln, however, never existed.

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest moments were great in retrospect only. The Gettysburg Address, for example, was so short that most who were there didn’t even hear it. His rise to the presidency in 1861 brought not a unified Republican Party, but rather a divided body politic and a ferocious “team of rivals,” as Doris Kearns Goodwin described in what is surely the best biography of Lincoln over the past 50 years. (With all due respect to David Herbert Donald, and his magnum opus on the 16^th president.)

Lincoln doubted himself. He was prone to fits of depression. And the office rarely took as great a toll on any one man as it did him, as side-by-side photos from 1861 and 1865 make clear.

So how did this flawed, frequently politically weak, Lincoln become the Great Man we pine for today in places like my home? The answer lies in understanding what Lincoln had that too many have missed–his Quiet Fire—a side of Lincoln it took scholar Duncan Newcomer to unearth. This quiet fire was a spiritual compass born not of orthodox religion, but an awareness of his own finitude. And his connection to a higher power.

This is the Lincoln we need. And that Lincoln exists.

He lives in the collaborative spirit of The New Dominion Podcast, where the former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia sits weekly with a card-carrying progressive – the author – and interviews people in our community who understand the glue that is our local Union, and work daily to strengthen it.

He lives in the committed spirits of Nicole Cole, a member of the Spotsylvania School Board who caucuses with Democrats and has been stripped of power by a board majority of Christian Nationalist extremists, and Rich Lieberman, a parent who self-identifies as a conservative. Together, they are addressing issues related to student hunger, and challenging in court the many acts of questionable legality the board majority perpetuates.

And he lives in the life of Scott Mayausky, a Republican Commissioner of the Revenue in Stafford County who is committed to expanding our understanding of those not like us, and finding innovative solutions to taxing problems that unfairly burden the poor.

America the ideal is about e pluribus unum. From the many, one.

But the hard reality of America is that we are forever defined by the roads that we travel through our lives. Roads that bring change, and that remind us of who we once were.

Roads that once carried armies to battle, and that now carry children of all races and classes to school. Roads like Plank and Old Plank roads in Spotsylvania.

Lincoln still travels these roads today. In the lives of those who burn with quiet fire, and a commitment to union. A union of shared humanity.

Martin Davis is an award-winning journalist, founder of F2S, and co-founder of the New Dominion Podcast. His first book, 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches, examined how coaches are raising the next generation of leaders. His next book will explore the disconnect between education policy, and life in the classroom. Visit him at https://www.martindavisauthor.com.

Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

Bill Tammeus on: Lincoln’s hope for ‘this split nation’s uncertain future’

July 2, 2023 by Bill Tammeus

Can you spot him? This is a rare photograph of Lincoln from Gettysburg.

By BILL TAMMEUS
Author of Love, Loss and Endurance

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln looked not just to the appalling carnage of the still-unwon Civil War but also to this split nation’s uncertain future.

Click this image from Bill’s cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

“It is,” he said, “for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work” of freedom for which Union soldiers fought.

Lincoln’s charge still is our charge. But freedom for and from what?

In many ways the answer continues to be freedom from evils America’s slaves experienced for so long—the terrorism and extremism of white supremacy, of injustice, of economic, educational and spiritual degradation.

In my book, Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety, I describe the murder of my nephew in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but I also explore the roots of radicalism and suggest a few ways we might try to unplug extremism.

Those suggestions also can help Americans complete what Lincoln called our “unfinished work.”

Bridging Our Divides—Together

Here’s a summary of the recommendations in my book:

1. Respect (and love) others. Simple, right? Well, in my Christian tradition, one of the most difficult tasks we are given is not just to treat others with respect but to love them, which means always having their best interests at heart. But on what basis do we do that? One answer is that Scripture tells us that all people are created in God’s image. One way Christians think about is to say that they’re obliged to see Christ in every human being, Christian or not. And, having recognized Christ in another, the last thing we should want to do is to insult, injure or murder that person.

2. Become more religiously literate because our country is becoming more religiously diverse. Our human tendency is to fear what we don’t know. To break that habit, it’s necessary to commit ourselves to learning about religious traditions and philosophical worldviews beyond our own. There are many ways to do that. One is simply to read some helpful books. I’d start with Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t, by Stephen Prothero. Then get outside your comfortable religious and worldview surroundings. The most obvious way is to travel. Each time you experience a religious tradition beyond your own you gain not only knowledge but also the idea that people very much like yourself have made other religious choices that don’t threaten the safety and peace of their neighbors. That means you don’t need to exterminate them or push them out of town.

3. Engage in interfaith dialogue and cooperation. Many communities have interfaith organizations that promote understanding. The idea isn’t to work for the mashing together of different religions into one broad syncretistic mess. Rather, it’s for people of different faith traditions to know and to be known. It’s to understand the many different approaches to religion that people of goodwill adopt, an understanding that should lead to a bit of humility about whether our own choices are also God’s direction for everyone else.

4. Teach your children and grandchildren well. Specific hatreds must be taught. And children will learn hatred from people around them if they’re not taught respect, love and compassion — and, sadly, sometimes even if they are. At the very least, they must learn tolerance, which is a terrifically low standard but at least is to be preferred to contempt.

5. Deepen your knowledge of both American and world history. A fair amount of global terrorism is tied to the shockwaves that have radiated across the nation and around the globe from historical events about which many Americans seem to know little or nothing. That’s particularly true about geopolitical and religious history in developing nations, including parts of the Middle East. The list of problematic, even if sometimes defensible, actions taken by the U.S. over its history is long indeed, and despite all the great work here and around the world that the U.S. has done, it has made many enemies. I’m not suggesting we forgive acts of terrorism or that we consider American foreign policy simply one disaster after another. That would be both wrong and unfair. But it’s important to know both American and world history to understand what sometimes motivates America’s declared enemies.

6. In this remarkably divisive time in our nation, become competent in civil discourse, which may be next to impossible using social media. The practice of civility can teach us how to listen carefully and to appreciate points of view not our own. That, in turn, can lead us away from any tendency to align ourselves with people who imagine that they know all the answers. For help with this, start with You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

7. Spend time with people who have experienced profound grief. It can open our eyes to the countless ways that death — particularly unexpected, violent death — can affect almost every aspect of the lives of survivors. You may not know anyone who lost family members on 9/11 or in other terrorist attacks, but there are lots of surviving family members of those who died in attacks in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Poway, Charleston, Kansas City and on and on. If there’s an opportunity, meet some of them. Talk with them, if they’re willing to do that, but only if they’re willing. Let them tell you their story.

Now add your own ideas to this list and go be part of the solution.

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website and book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at [email protected].

Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

Laura Elizabeth’s first cozy mystery, ‘All Is Now Lost,’ finds hope and home on a famous little island in the Atlantic

June 17, 2023 by David Crumm

This roadway is known as “Avenue of the Oaks” and is lined with some of Daufuskie Island’s famous moss-draped live oaks. Photo by Laura Elizabeth. (For more images of this island, click on this photo to visit Laura’s website: www.TheIslandMysteries.com.)

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

The island is home.

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Those four words capture the feeling of the new cozy mystery series Laura Elizabeth is launching about the people who live on a little island in the Atlantic. The adventures begin with Book 1: All Is Now Lost, which now is available for pre-order from Amazon.

This series’ fictional island is a fairly small speck off the coast of South Carolina’s southern tip, based on historic Daufuskie Island. Laura has renamed the place Mongin Island, after the name of an actual early settler, to distinguish her characters’ adventures on the island as distinct from the real Daufuskie. Since she is a part-time island resident and wants to encourage visits to her beloved island, that fictionalized name, Mongin, is a signal readers that they need not fear murderers on the very real—and peaceful—Daufuskie.

“I tell people that, just as our family discovered when we first visited Daufuskie, this is not a quick-and-easy place to vacation,” she said this week in an author interview. “Enjoying Daufuskie takes planning and what might seem like real inconveniences to some people, depending on what they’re expecting. This isn’t like going on a vacation to a Hilton resort and having five terrific restaurants to choose from each night. Getting to Daufuskie, spending time there and enjoying the experience takes some planning.”

“So where should prospective visitors start?” I asked Laura.

“I suggest that anyone wanting to visit Daufuskie start at one of these websites: https://daufuskieislandferry.com/ or there’s https://mayriverexcursions.com/,” she said.

Although it takes some effort to reach Daufuskie and spend time there, the island is well worth the effort—as our own publisher John Hile attested after he visited Daufuskie with Laura this spring. “It’s an amazing place,” he said and he came home with his own gorgeous photographs that our online magazine will share in coming months of coverage.

Daufuskie has been a haven for individuals and families for centuries from Native Americans who enjoyed the island’s relatively safe location and rich oyster beds—to former slaves with a rich Gullah culture who stayed on the island after the Civil War. At various times, the tiny islands out-sized reputation spread around the world because of its premium variety of sea-island cotton, its especially delicious oysters and for Pat Conroy’s novel, The Water Is Wide.

Laura Elizabeth and her family were among the countless men, women and children who fell in love with this island and sensed that this was a new home.

Among the Daufuskie friends encouraging Laura’s work is the Daufuskie Rental Group, which has its own vacation-oriented website. The team behind the Rental Group just agreed to give a copy of Laura’s book to some of the island visitors this summer. Those lucky visitors are getting the book even before its official launch date in September.

“And I’m already hearing from people on the island as those first books are going out. It’s really fun to hear some of their reactions,” Laura said.

What’s Cozy about a Cozy?

Fun.

In one word, that’s the whole point of cozy mysteries, a very popular genre that is called cozy for a number of reasons: the small world created in each novel generally is a family, a neighborhood or a small town—so the setting is “cozy” (and often the suspense turns on that isolation)—and the readers fall in love with the characters—because the “regulars” feel like a cozy community.

Wikipedia’s description of the genre neatly describes what readers will find between the covers of Laura’s first book:

The cozy mystery usually takes place in a town, village or other community that is small enough to make it believable that all the principal characters know each other. The amateur detective is usually a well-liked individual who is able to get the community members to talk freely about each other. There is usually at least one very knowledgeable and reliable character in the book who is intimately familiar with the personal history and interrelationships of everyone in the town and who helps the amateur detective solve the case.

Laura’s “amateur detective” is Carr Jepson, who arrives on Mongin Island, ready to start the next chapter of her life. She’s had a successful career in business, so it is easy for her to launch a new business on the island: the Books & Brew bookstore. The “knowledgeable and reliable” friend is called Barb in the novel. In Laura’s ongoing series of public events to launch her book, Laura talks about the ways Carr’s and Barb’s lives parallel her own and that of one of her good friends.

Of course, there also are many differences between these characters and the real people. “As this story starts, Carr has lost her husband so she is coming to the island alone. I still have my husband, thankfully,” Laura says.

Discovering ‘that feeling of home’

Among the many similarities between Laura and Carr is how surprised both of them are by finding a deep sense of home in this unlikely location in the Atlantic.

“Reading that part of the story, where Carr discovers that feeling of home, really describes how deeply I felt about the island myself,” Laura said in our interview. “This is the first place I had really felt that feeling of being at home in all my life. Living in the northeast for much of my life, I was uprooted and transplanted a number of times—and I didn’t always go willingly through those moves. But that day on the island on that tree-lined road was the very first time I had felt that real sense of home—probably forever in my life.

“As you read the book, you’ll find a number of ways and reasons that people are searching for a sense of home, or are trying to preserve their homes.”

If you are intrigued by this theme and might want to talk about this with friends, Laura also provides “Book Club Questions” that are free to download from her website.

An excerpt from the novel

Here is how Laura writes about Carr discovering that feeling of home in the opening pages of her new novel. Our narrator, Carr, has just introduced her Atlanta-based family and her husband Rob to readers. Then Carr explains why they happened to visit such a relatively remote island, called Mongin in the novel:

New to the South, we wanted to explore some of the wonders around us and considered several of the many options the region presented. But Rob and I wanted a place where the kids could freely run around, and we all could enjoy family adventures without crowds or long lines. Then, I took a one-day business trip to Savannah and, on a coffee table in the client’s lobby, I saw a photo taken just as dawn was breaking along an Atlantic shore with an old lighthouse in near silhouette, outlined by streaks of pre-dawn gold and salmon. An empty beach filled with powdery sand was in the foreground.

I picked up the magazine, a regional quarterly called South Carolina Shores, and there was Mongin in all its glory. The story was headlined “Dawn Wakes Up a Sleepy Southern Gem.” It was all about how the nation’s booming real estate market had hit little Mongin Island and featured a full-page photo of a gloriously oak-lined road, plus splashy photos of the recently expanded resort that featured a sixty-room inn and details of the plan to merge “a timeless history of hospitality with modern amenities.” There was even a photo of an oak-and-glass case housed in the island’s lighthouse museum. In the case, I could see some old bottles, clay cookware, and a spectacular looking dinner plate believed to be dated to the 1700s. “This island is so steeped in history, you just have to set foot on our miles of beautiful shoreline to start your own adventure,” the writer boasted.

My mind was racing. I could picture our kids running along that shoreline.

“How about some beachcombing on an island in the Atlantic?” That was all I said at dinner the following evening before unfolding the magazine I had swiped from my client’s lobby. I flipped the pages silently. Nicholas saw that final photo of the shiny treasures in the museum’s display case and, suddenly, all four of us were eagerly awaiting a week on Mongin.

Within days, the computer in our family room was full of bookmarked links to Mongin and that part of the Atlantic coast. We all found images we loved: beautiful beaches, marshes with tall beach grasses, palm trees, and a historic mansion converted to a hotel called the Rosemont Inn. We were ready! Rob and I reserved spots in a few planned activities each day from the resort’s listed amenities, but we kept those from the children, thinking they would enjoy a new surprise each day. This truly would be an adventure of a lifetime. We stuffed the car with suitcases, beach toys, games and golf clubs—and we were off!

We trudged along. As the stops for traffic, food, and breaks piled up, we began to worry about making our reservation on the ferry to the island. Our grand adventure started a little rocky. Tempers frayed. We were hot and tired—and not at all in vacation mode when we pulled into the Mongin Island embarkation station on the tip of South Carolina. With only a few moments to spare, we raced to make the ferry. When we finally stood on the deck, Rob looked at me over the heads of the children and I could tell we were sharing the same thought at that minute: “Maybe now is when our grand adventure begins.”

While living in New England, we had many previous ferry rides from Hyannis to Nantucket and always said our vacation began when our feet left the dock. On those ferries, three hours of salty sprays on your lips and skin and warm sun on your head made it easy to get lulled into a vacation mindset. This ferry to Mongin, however, was fast. It seemed we barely got settled before we spotted some dolphins racing along with our boat and Mongin Island in our sight line. I hadn’t had enough ferry time to fully unwind from the hectic afternoon race toward the docks. Vacation still seemed to elude me.

We moved quickly with the other passengers to the green and white restored trolley waiting for us at the end of the dock. While the bell captains secured all our suitcases and supplies, we boarded and were transported to the resort. I sat on this trolley, thinking about the day we already had—loading the car, the long ride to the ferry, the boat ride, and now this trolley trip, and marveled at how well the kids had both handled it all so far. Something positive was in the air. As we meandered down the main island road, ever so slowly I began to start relaxing the grip I had on my bags and my shoulders started to slide back into their normal position. The air was heavy with humidity, but the palm fronds waved gently as the breeze cooled us down and before I knew it, we were entering the main gate of the resort.

As the trolley turned left into the resort driveway, I realized, in the most unexpected way, that I was home. This place, this magical and mysterious place, was what I had unknowingly been looking for all my life. Through all the places I traveled, I never had experienced any sensation like this. Having never been to this region, all the sights, sounds, and smells were new. It was like having all my senses electrically charged while concurrently feeling like this was the very place I was always meant to be. I was just finding it now for the very first time at thirty-nine years old.

From this point on, we described our life as before Mongin Island, or after Mongin Island.

Care to meet the author?

Laura wants to meet you.

If you already are a fan of cozies, then you understand how strongly loyal readers feel connected to their favorite authors, often meeting them virtually if not in person in public events.

One way Laura is offering authentic hospitality is through her once-a-month email newsletter. And here’s a valuable—and very tasty—tip! If you do visit her website right now in June 2023—www.TheIslandMysteries.com—and sign up for that newsletter, the July issue will include the recipe for the Toll House Cookie Pie that turns up in one chapter of this first book.

“In the book, this pie is described as like a giant chocolate chip cookie wrapped in a pie crust,” Laura said in our interview. “And my July newsletter is the one place where I’m sharing that recipe with readers who sign up to get that newsletter. The pie is so delicious. We make in our family and it originally came from the island many years ago.”

Greg Garrett’s new novel, ‘Bastille Day,’ asks: Can we find spiritual resilience to face the dangers in our world?

June 12, 2023 by David Crumm

Greg Garrett in Paris for the launch of his new novel, Bastille Day. (Photos with this article courtesy of Greg Garrett.)

‘Sometimes the world … breaks our hearts and shakes our hope.’

“It is this Jesus—the Jesus who calls us to dangerous unselfishness, the Jesus who tells us that we love and serve God by coming near to those in distress, the Jesus who teaches that there are no parties or sides, that, beloved, we all stand on human ground—it is this Jesus we meet this morning.”
From a climactic sermon in Bastille Day by Greg Garrett

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Readers who have been enjoying Greg Garrett’s moving and thought-provoking fiction and nonfiction through the years will not be surprised to learn that his dramatic new novel, Bastille Day, turns on one particular broadcast by a cynical TV reporter and one particular sermon by a compassionate pastor.

These are worlds Greg has bridged in his long career as a media personality, theologian, scholar and author.

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

It’s not a spoiler to say that the climactic sermon is so moving that readers are likely to quote from it in the future. The Rev. Dr. George Mason—who we just featured in last week’s Cover Story about his new book The Word Made Fresh—joined in a global Zoom conversation with Greg to make that very point. Greg conducted that Zoom event from the American Cathedral in Paris, where he serves part-time as canon theologian.

As one of America’s master preachers, George joined the conversation and told the global Zoom audience: “As a preacher, I was taken by the sermon at the cathedral in Bastille Day. The theology of evil and suffering in it is unsurpassed.”

George paused then added: “Greg, you made us preachers proud.”

And what about the authenticity of Greg’s main character—a multiply traumatized network-TV war correspondent, Calvin Jones, who is sent to Paris to report on terrorist attacks in 2016?

Greg researched all of his fictional characters’ lives before completing this novel, including talking to friends like David W. Peters, whose own new book, Post Traumatic Jesus, will be featured in a ReadTheSpirit Cover Story next month. Peters served as an enlisted Marine and Army Chaplain and was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Peters’ own experience mirrors some of Calvin Jones’ hard-earned wisdom in the novel.

“Greg and I talked as he was writing Bastille Day,” Peters told me. “And, now that I’m reading the book myself, I can see some of what we talked about reflected here. For veterans I’ve known, myself included, combat trauma opens a much deeper wound inside us that is unable to be healed or medicated or numbed in the normal ways people do. In Bastille Day, he really captures the way that kind of trauma affects relationships and our ability to function in the world.”

So, from expert early readers like these, we know that Greg has believably captured the realities of the main characters who collide as the events in this novel unfold.

On the depiction of journalists, including Calvin, I can add my own affirmation that Greg has nailed a lot of the professional personalities I have known through 50 years as a journalist, reporting from the U.S. and other parts of the world.

This careful attention to authenticity won’t surprise Greg’s regular readers. After all, his career as an author has moved from one grand challenge to another. A restless researcher and writer, his books surprise readers each time a new title is announced. His previous book, which I also highly recommend, is A Long, Long Way—Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation. Now, for summer reading in 2023, he has given us this novel, Bastille Day. Then, in September he will launch a book about one of his mentors: James Baldwin. Stay tuned later this year for an interview with Greg about Baldwin. No question: That’s an astonishing breadth of research for any author!

Three R-words: resilience, renewal and reconciliation are themes that run throughout Greg’s 20-or-so books, because both his fiction and his nonfiction are shaped by his own journey in faith. That journey has led him to ordination as an Episcopal priest and an appointment as the “canon theologian” occasionally in residence at the American Cathedral in Paris.

And that phrase means literally “in residence” at the Cathedral for some weeks each year. As his novel is launching, Greg has enjoyed hosting Zooms with readers and interviewers from an “apartment” in that cathedral where he and his wife Jeanie stayed in May 2023. That apartment, which I enjoyed seeing as I Zoomed with Greg for our author interview, looks more like a stone-walled cell in the Tower of London than what we would think of as a living space. But that same Cathedral tower apartment-space also is one of the many real-life settings in Paris that readers will enter in Bastille Day.

So, what is Greg doing in a cathedral tower in Paris?

“Can you explain for us this unusual appointment you have in Paris?” I asked Greg in our Zoom interview. “I think most of your readers probably know you as a professor of literature and culture at Baylor in Texas.”

Greg said, “In Episcopal life, one of the offices a person can hold is canon and I am the canon theologian for the American cathedral here. Before that I was called the theologian in residence here. So, this is a community I’ve been visiting for about 10 years now for teaching, preaching, writing, research and building partnerships. If I total up my time here, I’ve spent something like eight months here in Paris, staying in one of the apartments here.

“I have spent so much time here at the Cathedral, now, that this has became one of my communities of faith. I mean that, wherever else I might be in the world, I can think of this group of Christians here as friends who care about me and my family and the work that I do—so much so that they help to make that work possible.”

On the reality of trauma from terrorism

“Bastille Day is ‘based on a true story,’ the movie version will say someday,” I said to Greg. “You have deliberately set this novel in 2016. The story opens after the tragedies of the January 2015 Île-de-France attack and the multiple attacks in Paris in November 2015. That’s why Calvin’s TV network has sent him to France, because more violence is anticipated. Then, it’s no secret that, in 2016, Bastille Day was the occasion for a horrific attack in Nice. I would assume readers of your novel in France understand what’s going to happen in this novel the moment they see the title and open to the first page that is dated in early July 2016.”

“Yes, readers here remember that attack in Nice on Bastille Day in a way that Americans may not,” Greg said. “And there’s more to that title reference, of course.”

“Yes, the title makes multiple references, but I don’t want to spoil any of the suspense for readers. Mainly, I want to stress in our interview that you’re taking readers to quite a number of real places.”

“Yes, in researching this novel, I can say that I have spent time in most of the locations myself, carefully taking note of each setting—and that includes all of the locations in Paris and Nice. There’s even that scary winding staircase in the cathedral in the novel and, from where I am sitting right now, I can see those stairs,” Greg said. “I wanted to carefully research these places to really get my head around what happened there, particularly in Nice.”

I said, “Without revealing too much, I can say that Calvin really is not you in this book, but Calvin embodies parts of you. Parts of your personality are spread across a couple of characters, I would say.”

Greg agreed and added, “Well, talking about that staircase—I gave Calvin my own fear of heights, which is very real. And I did experience some of the things Calvin experiences in the novel, like watching fireworks over Paris and hearing the news from Nice.”

On capturing reporters’ habits

“I really enjoyed your authentic sense of how journalists work—and also some of their preferences after a day’s work is done,” I said. “When I’ve traveled around the world with other journalists, I know we collectively like to visit spots our mentors have frequented, like the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem or the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Here, you serve up some vivid scenes at Harry’s in Paris.”

I added, “However, one of the truths we all learn about these places is that some of them don’t exactly stand up to their storied reputations, do they?”

“I will say it this way: My wife Jeanie prefers something a bit more upscale than Harry’s, so she is not eager to go back there,” Greg said. “But, for myself, I go to Harry’s on every trip I take to Paris because of the incredible amount of journalistic history at Harry’s. Last week, I posted online from Mr. Hemingway’s chair at Harry’s. The story is that Hemingway could drink 30 whiskey sours in one visit! I find that hard to believe, but that’s the story.

“I’m a deeply religious person and take the sacred seriously, but I can say that Harry’s feels like a sacred space to me,” Greg continued. “Hemingway felt he belonged here and that’s one of the main things that the characters in my novel are searching for: a space, a community where they feel they belong.”

The authenticity of the final sermon

Finally, we talked about the climactic sermon in the novel. I pointed out to Greg that it may sound odd to potential readers to describe a sermon as a dramatic high point in a suspenseful novel. “But it’s true and it’s not a spoiler to point out that this particular moment—an actual sermon—plays a key role in what unfolds,” I said. “You really elevate the power of preaching by daring to use that format in such an important part of the novel.”

“It fits with what I teach students about public speaking,” Greg said. “I tell students: ‘You have to earn the speech.’ Speeches themselves usually are not dramatic. I’m now 35 years into teaching at Baylor and I keep making this point: ‘You can’t give a speech or deliver a sermon unless you’ve earned it.’ When you reach those places in the novel where someone is talking—Calvin to his TV audience or in that final sermon—they have earned the right to speak.”

I wanted him to continue to explain these choices in the narrative, so I said, “And I hear that you actually delivered a version of that final sermon yourself—so it has that added level of authenticity, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, I was the original preacher of that sermon and I continue to think of that as one of the most important preaching opportunities I’ve had in my life—to speak at a moment like that to a full cathedral about the possibility of finding hope.”

And without spoiling the plot, that’s a good way to explain and authenticate the intriguing format Greg has chosen for those dramatic passages.

Yes, there is violence throughout this novel, because that’s the quest on which this TV correspondent finds himself. But this also is a novel that leaves readers with a sense of fulfillment and reassurance as we reach the final pages. I wouldn’t call it a happy ending. I would call it an authentically aware and very satisfying conclusion, which is rare in fiction today.