Wintering Calendar update

Hello, friends! It feels like I’ve been doing nothing for the past few months but anxiously watching the news and trying to keep up with my dishes. But I do have a few things to tell you about! First of all, there’s a new reflection up on my Wintering Calendar, which covers two milestones: Boston sunset at 5:00 pm (which happened a couple of weeks ago) and Boston sunset at 5:15 pm, which will happen today! I wrote about the birthday of all trees, pregnant ewes, and randy coyotes. You can read that here.

Publisher’s Weekly Announcement

A really fun piece of news is that the book I’m currently working, Blessings for the Long Night: Meditations and Poems to Help You Through Depression, on got an announcement in Publisher’s Weekly! Neither of my first two books were mentioned in that luminous literary magazine, so this was pretty exciting. I’ve told you about this book before, but in case you missed it, it’s a follow-up to my first book, The Long Night: Readings and Stories to Help You through Depression, and it is being published by the same publishing house, Broadleaf Books (formerly Fortress Press). It will be short poems, prayers, and meditations for people who are going through depression — sort of a cross between The Long Night and my second book, 365 Days of Peace. Publication date TBD, but it will be sometime in the first half of 2022.

The Deconstructionists Playbook

This is a really cool one: I’m honored to be one of the writers included in an incredible new anthology published by Our Bible App: The Deconstructionists Playbook.

“The Deconstructionists Playbook is a compilation of authors speaking to a wide and diverse audience all cresting the same wave: Evangelicalism. Call us backsliders, Exvies, or spiritual misfits, but we’ve exited more traditional church spaces and rhetoric and are anxious to reconstruct our ideas on God, the Bible, and religion. With the chorus of some 60 authors, journey through an anthology of devotional days that celebrate this epic churning of faith. In three sections, these authors invite you to deconstruct religion and systems of oppression, reconstruct faith principles around the elements of social justice, and step happily into liberation theology as an act of resistance against white supremacy and patriarchy. By taking part in this emulsion of ideas, you will find yourself in a movement of acceptance, self love, and finding God in mysterious places. We invite you in.”
~from the Kickstarter page

The anthology, edited by Our Bible App founder, Crystal Cheatham, and OBA Editor in Chief, Theresa Ta, includes writing from sixty authors, including me, Emily Joy Allison, Cindy Wang Brandt, Bailey Brawner, Madison Chau, Kaitlin Curtice, Lenny Duncan, Jasmin Figueroa, Kevin Garcia, Erin Green, Lura Groen, Austen Hartke, Jameelah Jones, Micky ScottBey Jones, Jes Kast, Jason Koon, Deborah Jian Lee, Jo Luehmann, Chrissy Stroop, Stephanie Tai, Laura Jean Truman, AnaYelsi Velasco-Sanchez, Jonah Venegas, and Rozella Haydée White, and covers topics such as:

• The Paradoxical Necessity of Doubt
• Church, Religion & Belief Systems
• Restoration
• Social Justice
• Purity & Sex
• LGBTQIA+
• Interfaith
• Community
• Disability Theology
• Liberation for Brown & Black People
• Liberation for All

We’re currently on day 14 of our Kickstarter Campaign, and have raised 88% of our goal! You can read more, and preorder your copy, here.

The Podluck with Megan Westra

In a fun turn of events, a podcast I did last spring, The Podluck, with Megan Westra, has just gone live! I really enjoyed this conversation with Megan, and I think you might, too. You can listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And lastly, something happening IN ONE HOUR *gulp* —

Another stick-figure party!!

If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen my Thanksgiving and Christmas/Holiday gatherings where I drew in my guests with marker and colored pencil. Well, in just about an hour, from 1-4 pm EST, I’m going to do another one, this time for Valentine’s Day. I’m pretty nervous because they’re SUPER fast-paced, and I feel bad that time and energy restraints keep me from drawing in everyone who wants to be drawn in, but I think they’re still fun, and hopefully even folks who don’t get their own stick figure will still feel welcomed and part of the gang. If you have a chance, stop by!

Thanks for reading along, everyone! I’m grateful for each one of you.

In Love and Hope,
Jessica