Get involved in the Decade of Healthy Aging

Check Out These Resources for Encouraging Healthy Aging

OUR COVER STORY THIS WEEK represents a treasure trove of online resources, shared with us courtesy of our Italian-based contributing columnist Elisa Di Benedetto. The United Nations has declared this the “Decade of Healthy Aging.” Now that we are a good year into the effort, lots of programs and resources are emerging! There are research reports packed with facts you can share, free discussion guides, ideas for community organizers, social media graphics to share—and even a huge new database of positive images of aging courtesy of a UK-based nonprofit. In this cover story, Elisa guides us through these online treasures. This certainly is a cover story you’ll want to share with friends.

Christian Creation-Care Initiative

American Baptist leaders launch creation-care resources

IN KEEPING WITH OUR COVER-STORY THEME OF “FREE RESOURCES,” we also recommend a visit to a new online portal focused on “Christian Creation-Care”—a web page that was recommended by our author Ken Whitt, head of Traces of God Ministries. In 2017, a group of progressive Baptists (including some folks from Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches) began meeting to encourage faith-based teaching and ideas for public service that would promote creation care. (Want to know more about who they are? Here’s the group’s current Board of Directors.) Recently, this group organized and launched an online Baptist Creation-Care Initiative Resource Page. If you visit that hub, you’ll find a list of recommended curricula, newsletters, books and related nonprofits that are committed to this cause. Because ReadTheSpirit magazine is based in metro-Detroit, we were pleased to find Michigan’s Interfaith Power & Light among the recommended nonprofits this group supports. We also were pleased to find that Ken Whitt’s new book God Is Just Love is recommended in the “Books” section of this resource page. We hope that many of our readers will add a link to this new resource page to your own personal, community or congregational websites. Look around in this new web portal and you’re likely to find connections with your part of the country, as well.

Emerging Truths about Indian Boarding Schools

Listen to the Voices from our First Nations

LAST WEEK’s ReadTheSpirit cover story examined the emerging North American search for truth about children who died in the infamous, government-run Indian “boarding schools” over a century of state and federal efforts to wipe out Native American culture. This week, a chorus of voices continues to rise across Indian tribes—and through news media covering those communities—about efforts in the United States to investigate the deaths of these children. This week, we chose to publish—with her permission—a short column by Madonna Thunder Hawk of the Lakota Peoples Law Project, headlined: The Intergenerational Trauma We Live With.

And Speaking of Resiliency …

… in the Wake of Family Trauma

JOURNALIST and AUTHOR BILL TAMMEUS appears in the Miami Herald this week with a gripping personal reflection on the long wait for answers after a mass disaster like the collapse of the Surfside condominium tower. Bill lost his nephew in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Now that two decades have passed, Bill tells his family’s story of grief and resilience in the new memoir, Love, Loss and Endurance. One timeless piece of advice he shares with loved ones of the men, women and children who perished in Florida is that telling their stories is a vital part of resilient living. He writes, “Family members of the Surfside dead may not write books, but they can share stories, photos and letters. News reports say many of those caught in the collapse were Jewish, and one of the grounding articles of faith in Judaism is the importance of memory.” This Miami Herald column is inspiring to read and to share with friends.

Holidays & Festivals

Obon, Ullambana—

Ancient dances, visitations mark traditional Japanese festival

STEPHANIE FENTION previews one of the most colorful Japanese festivals each year, writing: A festival of ancient dances, intricate costumes and a celebration of Japanese culture commences, as the spirit of Obon circles the globe. Worldwide, this festival spans an entire month: “Shichigatsu Bon,” celebrated in Eastern Japan, begins in mid-July; “Hachigatsu Bon” commences in August; “Kyu Bon,” or “Old Bon,” is observed annually on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

This Summer’s Hajj Is Limited—

A Perfect Opportunity to Meet Our Muslim Neighbors

AMERICAN MUSLIMS CANNOT MAKE THE PILGRIMAGE for the second straight year in the COVID pandemic, Saudi authorities have announced (and the U.S. CDC agrees). Stephanie Fenton’s Holidays column about the Hajj begins with that news (with links to learn more from the Saudi and CDC perspectives).

Stephanie also urges our American readers to make a commitment, this year, to get to know more about our many Muslim co-workers and neighbors. In our Front Edge Publishing column this week, we recommend three fascinating books that can help non-Muslims learn more about their many connections with Muslim neighbors.

WANT TO SEE ALL THE UPCOMING HOLIDAYS & FESTIVALS?—It’s easy to find our annual calendar of global observances. Just visit InterfaithHolidays.com

Click on this image to read Ed McNulty’s review of the new film Nine Days.

Faith & Film

ED McNULTY, for decades, has published reviews, magazine articles and books exploring connections between faith and film. Most of his work is freely published. Ed supports his work by selling the Visual Parables Journal, a monthly magazine packed with discussion guides to films. This resource is used coast-to-coast by individuals who love the movies and by educators, clergy and small-group leaders.

Among Ed’s free reviews and columns:

NINE DAYS—Ed McNulty writes, “Director/writer Edson Oda’s film at first seems to be about a busy man conducting interviews over a nine day period. But as it unfolds we realize this is a metaphysical tale about birth and the appreciation of and celebration of life in all its details.”
MR. PIG—”Mexican director/writer Diego Luna tackles both animal rights and father-daughter issues in this 2016 film that NetFlix has picked up.”
FATHERHOOD—“Appropriately this new Kevin Hart film opened during this year’s Father’s Day weekend. Were it not for a brief bedroom shot it would make for ideal family viewing, with its tender depictions of a father-daughter relationship.”
JOE BELL—Ed recommends this film, “based on a true story,” written by the same team that contributed to the 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain, a writing partnership that included the late novelist Larry McMurtry.
ONE NATION, ONE KING—”French writer/director Pierre Schoeller’s epic will enlarge our truncated view of the French Revolution. Schoeller attempts to give us a view of events from the perspective of those at the bottom of society.”
DISNEY’S HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME—For the 25th anniversary of this animated feature, Ed reaches back into his vault of past faith-and-film reviews to share this thoughtful column.
DOUBTING THOMAS—”Will McFadden’s film is about trust as well as systemic racism, making it of double interest. The story involves a young white couple, Jen and Tom, and their best friend, Ron, a black bachelor who works at the same law firm as Tom.”
LUPIN—Ed McNulty writes, “The French writer George Kay has created a truly thrilling escapist adventure series with more than a touch of social commentary.”
RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT—”Miriem Pérez Riera’s sparkling documentary not only chronicles the rise of Puerto Rico’s most popular emigrant to the US but also espouses her fight against racism that limited her movie roles and the rights of survivors of sexual abuse, the latter also something she had experienced.”
IMPERIAL DREAMS—”Director/co-writer Malik Vitthal’s father-son film unfolds largely in the streets of the Los Angeles Watts neighborhood and illustrates what advocates for ex-prisoners have long been telling us: The odds for rehabilitated criminals are stacked against them.”