One of the hardest things about living with lifelong illness is desperately wanting to make a difference in the world, but knowing the many ways your body might rebel if you even try. That’s why I’ve been looking into examples of creative resistance, and I invite you to join the Graceful Punks Book Club for a virtual discussion about ways to take action, making the best use of our time and talents while honoring our own needs and limits.

World Water Day is March 22, and as people seeking shalom in the world, creation care is part of our calling. How are peacebuilding and water conservation related, you ask? Read the full post, and consider how you might change your individual habits and work to influence corporate patterns that result in harm to our world and our societies.

Today, on Earth Day, I think about how caring about social problems and caring about ecological impacts are intertwined. A consumerist mindset that prizes accumulation above all else results in the devastation of environments that nurture not only flora and fauna, but provide food and water to human creatures as well. And when humans are without food and water, they encroach on other environments, pushing out the plants and animals residing there. The pattern keeps repeating and expanding, resulting in things like fires and floods, climate migration, and species extinction.

What if we reimagine peacebuilding as a spiritual practice that we implement in our ordinary lives? If we see it as a Christian discipline to be lived out, as a natural response to our love for God, a direct action stemming from our love of neighbor?