How do we hold on to our deepest convictions without losing relationships with the people we love?

In this new book, Barron illuminates the challenges and hope for these relationships, showing that the best research points toward humility, self-awareness, an openness to learning, and remembering that others can learn too.

She understands that those people who hurt us with their bigotry and ignorance . . . they’re often the people we love: They’re our friends, our parents, our grandparents, and even our religious leaders. Barron shows that the way forward is to create a gracious and risky space for people to learn and evolve. We need to form the sorts of relationships where we can tell difficult truths, set boundaries, forgive, and share stories of our own failings. And this starts with examining ourselves.

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Do I Stay Christian? addresses in public the powerful question that surprising numbers of people―including pastors, priests, and other religious leaders―are asking in private. Picking up where Faith After Doubt leaves off, Do I Stay Christian? is not McLaren's attempt to persuade Christians to dig in their heels or run for the exit. Instead, he combines his own experience with that of thousands of people who have confided in him over the years to help readers make a responsible, honest, ethical decision about their religious identity.

In Dusk, Night, Dawn, Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad newspiles up—from climate crises to daily assaults on civility—how can we cope? Where, she asks, “do we start to get our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . . . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?”

We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.

Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life’s dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us.

Is there just one “you”? We’ve been taught to believe we have a single identity, and to feel fear or shame when we can’t control the inner voices that don’t match the ideal of who we think we should be. Yet Dr. Richard Schwartz’s research now challenges this “mono-mind” theory. “All of us are born with many sub-minds―or parts,” says Dr. Schwartz. “These parts are not imaginary or symbolic. They are individuals who exist as an internal family within us―and the key to health and happiness is to honor, understand, and love every part.”

Way Collective is connected to all sorts of folks who have had this experience of trying to find a way forward in your Christian spirituality in a time when so much is shifting. Especially in our times of division, many of us can't find a clear vision of how contemplation can play a role in keeping us grounded and tethered to Love. Dr. Holmes unpacks through story, practices, and practical reflection questions what it looks like to find our way, together -- and not only for us as individuals, but so we can know what healing our communities looks like through the contemplative path.

We are excited to announce our next Sophia Reading Group around this hot-off-the-press book by Brian McLaren, Faith After Doubt. Brian will be joining us LIVE for Q&R on the night of our wrap-up conversation on 4/25.

Way Collective is connected to all sorts of folks who have had this experience of trying to navigate the waters of faith after a season of doubt, and Brian's new book brilliantly addresses this journey through highlighting four stages: simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony. You won't want to miss this series of conversations led by Tim and Karen as we explore the waters of faith after doubt.

We are so excited to invite you to sign-up for our next Sophia Reading Group on Layla Saad's book Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor that begins on Sunday, June 28th at 8PM.

I would like to personally invite everyone in our Santa Barbara community and beyond to participate in this important study together. Whether you've been a part of the Way Collective community for some time or are a member of the wider SB community, or whether you are just on our e-mail list or just heard about it through a friend, we'd like to invite you to join this significant conversation! If your initial reaction to this invitation or to the title of this book is either hesitation or a sense that this work does not apply to you, we'd like you to please reconsider joining these dialogues. This work is for all of us, no matter where we are on our journey toward antiracism.

This 8-week series entitled "Living Well" will be the next step of communal preparation as we move toward a more official launch of the Way Collective at the beginning of Advent. This book is one of the best books we’ve read in the last 10 years, and almost no resource speaks so directly to the changes that are afoot in translating Christianity and religion for our time. Krista’s insight and depth of wisdom will inform a study through 5 main topics: Words, Flesh (Body), Love, Faith, and Hope. These conversations will be a more in-depth look at the Jesus Way we are all being invited into: a way of artful living committed to connection, contemplation, critical thinking, creativity, and compassionate action for the 21st century.

In preparation for Rob Bell's visit to SB, join us for the Sophia reading group on Thursday evenings at 8pm at Third Window Brewing Co.  We will meet on July 19, Aug 2, 16, 23 to discuss Rob Bell's What is the Bible?, a book about reading scripture with new potentials for Christianity in the 21st century. You can grab a copy of Rob's latest book off Amazon and join us, and we'll be meeting this Wednesday, July 19th for our first conversation on the book's first section: There's Something More Going on Here...We hope you'll join us!

In preparation for Pete's visit to SB, join us for the Sophia reading group on Thursday evenings at 8pm at Third Window Brewing Co.For the next couple of months we will be reading through Peter Rollins' Insurrection, a book about faith and doubt and new potentials for Christianity in the 21st century. If you grabbed a copy of Insurrection at the LIVE Podcast last week, or you'd like to grab one off Amazon and join us, we'll be meeting this Thursday, March 9th for our first conversation on the book's Introduction and Chapter 1!