“Beautiful and clear-eyed, this book clears out the rubble of our culture’s baggage about motherhood to make room for a kinder, more honest account of love in all its forms.”
Is it possible to do something more meaningful than mothering? As a young Catholic girl who grew up in the American Midwest on white bread and Jesus, Erin S. Lane was given two options for a life well-lived: Mother or Mother Superior. She could marry a man and mother her own children, or she could marry God, so to speak, and mother the world’s children. Both were good outcomes for someone else’s life. Neither would fit the shape of hers. With candor and verve, Someone Other Than a Mother tears up the shaming social scripts that are bad for moms and non-moms alike and rewrites the story of a life well-lived, one in which purpose is bigger than body parts, identity is fuller than offspring, and legacy is so much more than DNA.
“One of the clearest and certainly one of the most informing pictures I have seen to date of the generation of young adults who presently are shaping the twenty-first-century church.”
Belonging to the church has become a lost art, especially among the millennial generation. But it’s not simply that we’ve chosen not to belong. It’s that we’ve forgotten how. Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe is a story about remembering how to belong to God’s people – and often failing. It’s about a search for a church home in the American south. It’s about becoming someone’s partner before becoming yourself. It’s about trying to make friends when friends are making babies. So, too, is it a story about enduring community when it’s awkward, and small talk suffocates and the preacher gives bad sermons and the suffering of strangers feels intrusive. Still, we’re called to offer our pained lives to one another like bread and say, “Take. Eat. I belong to you.”
“Talking Taboo is a groundbreaking book. This chorus of bold female voices is presenting the church with an opportunity to engage real but all to frequently avoided or unseen issues impacting countless Christian women today.”
What happens when young, American women speak the unspeakable about our experiences of faith? This anthology of 40 essays from women under 40 unearths the taboos that have stifled us, divided us, and prevented us from feeling at home in Christian communities. Perhaps the coolest part of Talking Taboo – this whole series, really – is that you get to hear women speak for themselves. This takes the pressure off having to agree with us or even “tolerate” us, and instead you get to bear witness to the people who are living in your neighborhoods, communities, churches, and home. So, pour a cup of tea. Pull up a chair. Get to know us. Get to know something of God a little better, too.