Rise Up, Shepherd!


Book Description

Valuable not only for their sublime musical expression, the African American spirituals give us profound insights into the human condition and the Christian life. Many focus on an essential scene of the Christian drama: the coming of God as the child in Bethlehem and as the hope of the world and the liberator of God's oppressed people. In these devotions for the season of Advent, Luke Powery leads the reader through the spirituals as they confront the mystery of incarnation and redemption. In Rise Up, Shepherd! each devotion features the lyrics of the spiritual, a reflection on the spiritual's meaning, a Scripture verse, and a brief prayer.




The Shepherd of Hermas


Book Description







Mary Had a Baby


Book Description

Mary Had a Baby: An Advent Bible Study Based on African American Spirituals, written by Marilyn E. Thornton with material from the first edition by Cheryl Kirk-Duggan. Mary Had a Babyhas four sessions, one for each week of Advent, and is perfect for small groups, Sunday school, midweek sessions, and choir workshops. Each lesson includes Scripture, song lyrics, devotional and contextual information, and discussion questions to stimulate deepening faith and a sense of community. The book includes leader helps. The four spirituals featured in Mary Had a Baby are “Mary Had a Baby,” “Rise Up Shepherd and Follow,” “Children, Go Where I Send Thee, “ and “Go, Tell It on the Mountain.” A mp3 file of the four songs is available free with purchase of the study.




May the Road Rise Up to Meet You


Book Description

An engrossing, epic American drama told from four distinct perspectives, spanning the first major wave of Irish immigration to New York through the end of the Civil War. Four unique voices; two parallel love stories; one sweeping novel rich in the history of nineteenth-century America. This remarkable debut draws from the great themes of literature—famine, war, love, and family—as it introduces four unforgettable characters. Ethan McOwen is an Irish immigrant whose endurance is tested in Brooklyn and the Five Points at the height of its urban destitution; he is among the first to join the famed Irish Brigade and becomes a celebrated war photographer. Marcella, a society girl from Spain, defies her father to become a passionate abolitionist. Mary and Micah are slaves of varying circumstances, who form an instant connection and embark on a tumultuous path to freedom. All four lives unfold in two beautiful love stories, which eventually collide. Written in gorgeous language that subtly captures the diverse backgrounds of the characters, and interspersed with letters, journals, and dreams, this unforgettable story, rendered in cinematic detail, is about having faith in life's great meaning amidst its various tangles.




Hinds Feet on High Places


Book Description

Much-Afraid had been in the service of the Chief Shepherd, whose great flocks were pastured down in the Valley of Humiliation. She lived with her friends and fellow workers Mercy and Peace in a tranquil little white cottage in the village of Much-Trembling. She loved her work and desired intensely to please the Chief Shepherd, but happy as she was in most ways, she was conscious of several things which hindered her in her work and caused her much secret distress and shame. Here is the allegorical tale of Much-Afraid, an every-woman searching for guidance from God to lead her to a higher place.




Lift Every Voice and Sing II Accompaniment Edition


Book Description

This popular collection of 280 musical pieces from both the African American and Gospel traditions has been compiled under the supervision of the Office of Black Ministries of the Episcopal Church. It includes service music and several psalm settings in addition to the Negro spirituals, Gospel songs, and hymns.




The Book of M


Book Description

Brad Thor's Summer 2018 Fiction Pick for THE TODAY SHOW! NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Elle • Refinery29 • PopSugar • Verge Author of LA Times Prize finalist The Cartographers “The Book of M is devastating and inventive as Shepherd examines the value of memory, packing in imaginative twists as she goes.” —USA Today "Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage and Station Eleven." —Booklist WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER? Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself. One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless. As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure. Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down. Don't miss the latest captivating novel by Peng Shepherd: The Cartographers




Church Leadership


Book Description




The New Oxford Book of Carols


Book Description

Edited by early music experts Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, this anthology of Christmas carols is the most comprehensive collection ever made, spanning seven centuries of caroling in Britain, continental Europe, and North America. Containing music and text of 201 carols, many in more than one setting, the book is organized in two sections: composed carols, ranging from medieval Gregorian chants to modern compositions, and folk carols, including not only traditional Anglo-American songs but Irish, Welsh, German, Czech, Polish, French, Basque, Catalan, Sicilian, and West Indian songs as well. Each carol is set in four-part harmony, with lyrics in both the original language and English. Accompanying each song are detailed scholarly notes on the history of the carol and on performance of the setting presented. The introduction to the volume offers a general history of carols and caroling, and appendices provide scholarly essays on such topics as fifteenth-century pronunciation, English country and United States primitive traditions, and the revival of the English folk carol. The Oxford Book of Carols, published in 1928, is still one of Oxford's best-loved books among scholars, church choristers, and the vast number of people who enjoy singing carols. This volume is not intended to replace this classic but to supplement it. Reflecting significant developments in musicology over the past sixty years, it embodies a radical reappraisal of the repertory and a fresh approach to it. The wealth of information it contains will make it essential for musicologists and other scholars, while the beauty of the carols themselves will enchant general readers and amateur songsters alike.