Restful Finds, February
a collection of what I am reading to help me practice the restful way of Jesus this month
Welcome to the mid-February edition of Restful, a new and improved version of the weekend pause newsletter. My hope for 2025 is to publish a free newsletter every other week: a contemplative prompt at the beginning of each month and a curation of my favorite finds mid-month. As always, I am celebrating the gift of beginning again and welcome your encouragement for this updated Substack project. Below, you’ll find my favorite restful resources to help us practice rest with Jesus, others, and our own hearts this month!
Restfully,
Tamara
p.s. If you have forgotten who I am, here's the About Me section on my website. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for free posts either at my old-timey blog or at Restful, my Substack site.
The Bookshop: What I’m Reading
My Currently Reading shelf
at Bookshop
Check out this eclectic book list to inspire you across genres. My current reads bookshelf includes titles I am reading for seminary, church, work, and fun. Bookshop supports indie bookstores, and when you purchase one of the titles from my collection, I get a little extra change toward buying my next read! Please keep reading for a bit more about a couple of the titles on my list.
The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection
by Richard Plass and James Cofield
We have added this book to the curriculum for our small groups that meet for prayer and teaching on relational healing. I am so thankful for the recommendation from a sister church, especially for the accessible language on attachment patterns, implicit memory, and learned levels of intimacy. I highly recommend it!
“Every relational connection, even our relationship with God, flows out of our learned level of comfortable closeness. And…the capacity to be appropriately close in relationships flows out of our capacity to trust others and ourselves well.”
Everything Could Be a Prayer: One Hundred Portraits of Saints and Mystics
by Kreg Yingst
My friend gave me this excellent book for Christmas, and Brian and I have been reading through one each night. It’s honestly a lovely way to head to sleep!
Pray and meditate along with mystics and saints through this luminous collection of more than one hundred block prints by artist Kreg Yingst, curator of the beloved Instagram account @psalmprayers.
10+ links helping me practice the restful way of Jesus this month
Pause with me to enjoy good words being written to encourage us to worship God, love people, and enjoy beauty wherever we find ourselves right now.
⏸️ The Fruit of the Spirit in Times of Political Chaos with
⏸️ Ungainly Goodness: Learning from Degas's Awkward Dancers with
⏸️ God’s Worshipful Design: An Invitation to Churches and Artists with Heidy Sumei Chuang for A Rocha USA
⏸️ “Restless is our heart until it comes to rest in Thee.” Listen to a free audiobook version of Augustine’s Confessions.
⏸️ Why I can't just stick to recipes and prayers: a reflection, a prayer, and a recipe to start your week with
+ Lent Sourdough⏸️ [The Bookshelf #96] Chasing Me to My Grave: Painting on leather, and other strategies for resisting dehumanization with
⏸️ Helping Children Walk Through Lent: The Power of A Good Book with
⏸️ Pro-Lifers for PEPFAR: This is what makes America great with
⏸️ Every soul a cosmos; every other infinite: Musings with Josh Ritter, Howard Thurman, and Emmanuel Levinas with
⏸️ This is a hard read, but important for us as we discern counterfeits to the restful way of Jesus. Mother to Son: The Killing of Blackness in America with
What restful things are you enjoying lately?
Do you have any recommendations for me?
Tell me about something restful you’ve enjoyed lately, and I’ll curate some resources for you.
A Moment of Rest
I hope just reading the word “rest” will evoke a spacious, welcoming invitation to drop your guard, put your feet up, and stay awhile. And like genuinely restful experiences, you will find yourself refreshed and wanting to offer the gift of your loving presence to others. And you’ll be able to do this in the restful way of Jesus.
Pause, breathe, and rest with this image for a moment.
Stability says that where I am is where God is for me. More than that, stability teaches that whatever the depth of the dullness or the difficulties around me, I can, if I will simply stay still enough of heart, find God there in the midst of them.
Mobility tempts interior stillness to the breaking point, however... Every new place and new person and new possibility tempts me to try again, to try over, to try once more to find the perfect place or at least the place perfectly suited to me. But centeredness is an antidote to the fragmentation that comes from never settling in to where I am or what I'm doing or what I'm meant to learn.
When the monastic makes a vow of stability it is a vow designed to still the wandering heart.... There comes a period in life when I regret every major decision I've ever made. That is precisely the time when the spirituality of stability offers its greatest gift. Stability enables me to outlast the dark, cold places of life until the thaw comes and I can see new life in this uninhabitable place again. But for that to happen, I must learn to wait through the winters of life.
Joan Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p. 151
Ah, The Relational Soul! I bet I know who recommended it. 😉
That Joan Chittister quote was water for my weary soul this morning. Thank you, Tamara 💛