A Beautiful Year?

Diana Butler Bass's new book is the ideal companion for these challenging next 12 months.

I’ve know Diana Butler Bass for nearly two decades. Over that time, we’ve moved from being colleagues to fellow travelers to friends. Diana was one of the founding board members of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), back when it was more of an aspiration than the organization it has become. At the time, I invited Diana to join that intrepid group of board members because I knew she, as a historian and prolific author, had a firm sense of how we got here. But I also knew she had a keen, even uncanny ability to see what direction the currents in which we were swimming were taking us—and to help us gather what we might need for that journey.

Diana’s new book, A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance, is that book for our moment. Although Diana tells me that publisher didn’t plan it, I think it’s providential that the book will be available this Tuesday—a day that marks one year before the critical 2026 mid-term elections. If you’ve asked yourself, “How are we going to get through the next year?” this book can be your sturdy companion.

The book in intended to be read across time and with the seasons. Here’s my suggestion, Pick up the book this week, and start on page 296, “Allhallowtide,” and follow the cycle through to the 2026 midterm elections.

I encourage you all to buy the book for yourselves or friends and family members today. It’s available in hardcover, e-book, and audio book formats. One quick note about timing: If you think you might want to gift this book later, I encourage you to buy it this week. The first week of sales are vital to a book’s success.

Note: If you buy the book using the links below, a portion of the proceeds go to support my newsletter.

Book Description:

A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance offers an essay for every week in the seasons of the Christian year: From Advent and Christmas to Lent and Easter through the entire calendar.

Other than its major holidays, many people are not familiar with the rhythms of the church year, an ancient spiritual cycle of time. Yet all religions have such calendars — and they shape our understanding of faith. In the West, we live in tension with the secular calendar (mostly an inheritance from the Roman Empire) and the Christian liturgical calendar, a cycle of sacred stories that compose a larger narrative of love, hospitality, mercy, justice, and gratitude. Bass reclaims and presents fresh perspectives for every biblical text in the church year; from musing on A Wrinkle in Time in Advent, to remembering her father’s old-fashioned blue Christmas decorations, and offering a revolutionary reading of the Last Supper.

With fresh insights on familiar stories, these essays surprise and inspire, challenge and comfort, and will be savored year after year. Beautifully designed, the book is also a perfect gift.

A Beautiful Year on The Convocation Unscripted

As you know, Diana is one of four anchors of our weekly video podcast,

The Convocation

Unscripted. If you haven’t tuned in before, I invite you to watch our conversation about A Beautiful Year below and to subscribe to our weekly conversation, which we deliver to your inbox via the Convocation newsletter.

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ICYMI