2025 Favorites

Happy New Year!

I have not done a favorites list for the last several years, and I miss having the record for myself, especially as I’ve quit using the platforms that keep up with these records for me. So in addition to some favorites from 2025, I will throw in a highlight or two from the years I’ve missed, where I can remember them.

Ok, let’s go…

2025 Favorites: Books 

Fiction

My Friends by Frederik Backman

The Girl with the Louding Voice Abi Daré (audiobook is the move here)

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

The Most Fun We Ever Had Claire Lombardo

The Names by Florence Knapp

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The Women of The Copper Country by Maria Doria Russell

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny (I have never been a mystery series girl, but I started this series in 2024 and I am ALL IN. I’d move to Three Pines if there weren’t so many murders there.)

Nonfiction

To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donahue

Consolations by David Whyte

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism by George Monbiot (also a documentary)

Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Emergent Strategies by adrienne maree brown

Quick Highlights from the years I missed:

2024: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

2023: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

2022: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

2025 Favorites: Songs 

We shut down our family Spotify account this fall because they were recruiting for the devil. In the search for a new streaming service, my daughter, Mary Polly, turned us on to Qobuz, which (supposedly) is a more ethical streaming choice because they publish what they pay artists per stream. The kids have all gone back to physical media, listening to records and CDs, bought mostly from thrift stores, which is just WILD. But I do love hearing what they have found when I hop in their cars.

If you want to give Qobuz a try, here is a Qobuz playlist of the 95 songs I listened to the most in 2025.

But here are the highlights: the 5 songs that I listened to nonstop in 2025:

Dear Maria Joy Oladokun

Looks Like The End Of The Road Alison Krauss & Union Station (The whole album is delightful, but this track is my fav.)

Haven Hill Sierra Hull (From another album I listened to on repeat.)

Lost Woman’s Prayer Emily Scott Robinson (I feel pretty sure her upcoming album, Appalachia, will be on my 2026 favorites playlist!)

Nice To Each Other Olivia Dean (She played the Forwards Festival in Bristol this year which happens right around the corner from where we live.)

Quick Highlights from the years I missed:

2024: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter (the whole album)

2023: To The Mountains Lizzy McAlpine (This has been my theme song for more than a few walking trips.)

2022: Portas do Sol Nena (I heard this song in a cab in Porto in June 2022 and I still listen to it regularly. It reminds me of being in Portugal and motivates me to figure out how to get back there as soon as possible.)

2025 Favorites: Movies + Documentaries

I have a very short list of movies I loved from this year. And no hope of remembering from years past.

Bob Trevino Likes It (Randomly watched this on an airplane and have been begging people to watch it ever since. Small cast. Slow burn. The two main performances by Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo are a WONDER!  Based on a true story from a time before Facebook algorithms ruled our lives, this film will restore your faith in humanity.)

A Complete Unknown (I’m pretty sure I was still in the womb when my dad introduced me to Bob Dylan, so this film was made for me and I ate it up. I could re-watch it weekly for the MUSIC ALONE.)

Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery (Speaking of things that were made for me, this documentary captures all the music that played in the background of my early married years. I had my first two babies during Lilith Fair summers. What a time!)

Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All (Yes please to music documentaries from all my favorite artists! I first heard Closer to Fine when I was working at summer camp in 1990. Rites of Passage was playing nonstop the year that Taido and I fell in love. We got married the year Galileo came out (1994). So of course, of course, I loved this story of the Indigo Girls. Pure nostalgia watch.)

2025 Favorites: TV 

Andor: Season 1 (I’m late to the party here but my son, Ben, talked me into watching the first season while I was home for Christmas. Now I’m ready for the rest. I’ve already re-watched Episode 10.)

Pachinko (LOVED this book, and I’m mesmerized by the series! I still have about 6 episodes left to watch.)

2025 Favorites: Podcasts 

On Being (Always brings me back to the light)

Scene On Radio (Season 7 on Capitalism and Season 5 on Climate Change)

Maintenance Phase (De-bunking diet culture, yes please)

If Books Could Kill (De-bunking popular books that we’ve let make opinions for us)

2025 Favorites: Experiences 

Celebrating our 30th anniversary over New Year’s in Lisboa with family. I’m still amazed that we’ve been married for that long.

Hiking with friends and family: the GR7 in Spain with old and new friends! Hiking a new Camino: The Camino del Norte from San Sebastian through Bilbao and on to Santander. Planning the perfect trip to Wales! A Hut-to-Hut hike in the Dolomites with my family. (Sleeping at Santnerpass, which is the hut in the photo for this post.) Returning to Switzerland. Reviving a canceled 2020 itinerary to walk the Way of Saint Francis to Assisi with friends. Doing walks in and around Bristol with my friends! I’m so grateful for the folks who travel year after year to come and walk with me! What a delight!

Swimming. I started swimming reluctantly in 2024 because I hurt my knee. There are a lot of things that I don’t love about it that kept me away from year-round swimming for a long time: paying for it, smelling like chlorine, exercising in a gym instead of out in the woods, awkward lane sharing with other swimmers of varying speeds, squeezing my wet thighs into warm fleece leggings afterwards. But in spite of all I don’t love about it, I have found swimming laps to be one of the most meditative and healing acts of kindness I can do for my body and soul.

Ashtanga Yoga. I’ve done a lot of yoga over the years, so it’s always with amazement that I find ways that yoga can be new to me. I had never done Ashtanga before 2024. Ashtanga is a set series, where the motions are the same every time. Like swimming, the repetitive nature of this yoga style has been comforting to me. Maybe in a world that feels out of control, it’s been a relief to have a season of knowing what to expect when I show up for yoga.

Live Music with Taido. I don’t even know how many sets of concert tickets Taido Chino has bought since we moved to Bristol. But here’s the way it always goes when I realize there is a concert on the calendar: I see it and think…dang, I’m going to have to stay up late for that.  Then the day arrives and I don’t really want to go, and I wonder if someone else can go with him so I can stay at home in my sweats. About a half hour before it’s time to leave, I change out of my leggings into jeans and something slightly cuter than the dirty t-shirt I’ve been wearing for three days. Maybe I put on a sweater or a flannel button down shirt. I might even smear on lip gloss instead of chapstick. Then I leave the house AFTER DARK. We walk into the city and it’s always wild to me that there are so many people out and about. Then we go to the concert venue and find our seats and wait for the music to start. The band comes out and starts to play and all of a sudden I’m enjoying myself. I LOVE IT! I’m so glad I came. We walk home talking about our favorite parts and we make playlists out of the set lists to listen to on repeat.

Cheers to getting out of the house after dark! And to all the walks, artists, authors, musicians and fellow travelers who make this wild world more beautiful to me!

Want to see more favorites (mostly books) from past years? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019 , 2020, and 2021.

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2021 Favorites

Happy New Year from our new home!

We ended 2021 by moving back to the UK. It’s been a bit of a flurry, but now we are in our new home in Bristol, quarantining and waiting for our shipment of stuff to arrive.

Our house is currently empty except for a couple of mattresses on which we are sitting, reading, hanging out and sleeping. It’s a strange time, waiting to be “free” from isolating and wondering what our life will be like here in our new town.

It feels both entirely new and strangely familiar.

More to come from Bristol, but for now,

I’m recording my favorite reads and round-ups from 2021.

As always I have so much gratitude for the artists, writers, musicians and poets who make my world more beautiful (and bearable) by their presence!

2021 Favorites: Books 

How The Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (re-read)

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Faith After Doubt by Brian McClaren

Christian Meditation by James Finley

Merton’s Palace of Nowhere by James Finley

First, We Make The Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (audiobook)

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (audiobook)

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlisle (audiobook)

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey (audiobook)

2021 Favorites: Songs 

Jubilee by The War and Treaty

To Hell & Back by Maren Morris

A Change Is Gonna Come by Leslie Odom, Jr

Getting Older by Billie Eilish

The Secret Garden by AURORA

Sapling by Foy Vance

Infant Holy, Infant Lowly by The Potter’s House

2021 Favorites: Movies

Shang-Chi

Your Name

Judas and The Black Messiah

Promising Young Woman

The Trial of the Chicago 7

2021 Favorites: Podcasts 

Poetry Unbound

Eckhart Tolle Podcast

DuoLingo Podcast

Turning to the Mystics

2021 Favorites: Experiences 

Slowly regaining strength all spring from having COVID.

Spring break road trip with Simon + meeting my mom at the beach.

Watching Simon blaze the trail as we hiked in the Shenandoah with friends.

Summer camping with family in Michigan’s UP.

Meeting online with a group of women to slowly work through two books on race: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee.

Returning to the Camino.

Walking in Arkansas over Christmas, getting some trail time with my dad.

Ending our time in Illinois with grace and landing in Bristol on our 27th anniversary.

Want to see more favorites (mostly books) from past years? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

The post 2021 Favorites appeared first on Alison Chino.

Happy New Year from Castle Bluff! We are staying at a cabin in the woods where the mood outside is matching all my feels about the year we just finished.

I am happy to join in the collective sigh of relief that 2020 is officially over.

For the final month of 2020, I managed to cram in both my very favorite experience of the year (walking the Ouachita Trail) and my very worst moments (getting COVID and passing it around my family).

So that feels about par for the course for this very strange year.

I did read quite a lot this year, so I’m recording my favorite reads. And I’ve added a few other round-ups below, as is my custom at this time of year.

I am super grateful to the artists, writers, musicians and poets who made 2020 just a little bit brighter for me.

2020 Favorites: Books 

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

The Water Dancer by Ta-nehisi Coates

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

How to Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi

Eager to Love by Richard Rohr

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Evidence by Mary Oliver

Talking to Strangers Malcolm Gladwell

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem (re-read)

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (half-way through)

2020 Favorites: Songs 

Resilient by Rising Appalachia (which they sing during this Tiny Desk concert). This song has been my “theme song” for 2020.

If I Ruled The World by MILCK Taido introduced me to this artist and I have listened to the whole album a lot this year, but I especially wore out this song.

Just Be by LVDY This song has been like a meditation. I use it in yoga all the time.

Like the rest of the world, I have had Taylor Swift’s folklore on repeat this year. And I’m equally loving evermore since its release. It’s hard to choose a favorite from each one but I think My Tears Ricochet is way up there for me.

We had sort of a sad Christmas. Taido and I both had COVID and the kids couldn’t come. So I don’t know if ‘Tis The Damn Season is really my favorite song off of evermore, or if it just matched my Christmas mood so much that it won the day. Either way, I’ve listened to it A LOT.

2020 Favorites: Movies

Except for maybe Soul, these aren’t necessarily the award-winning movies from this year. But I’ve watched them on repeat because they made me smile.

Blind Date (French: Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément)

We Are Family (French: C’est Quoi, Cette Famille)

Onward

Eurovision

Rebecca

Soul

2020 Favorites: TV

Most years, I don’t watch much TV, but this year was different. I think we watched more TV than we ever have before. And while I’m not really proud of that fact, I do feel like watching TV was a quarantine balm for us. Simon and I watched an episode of The Good Place together every day when he finished online school. And then we all watched an episode of something after dinner every night.

The Good Place

Derry Girls

Cobra Kai

Stateless

The Good Lord Bird

The Queen’s Gambit

Kim’s Convenience

Baskets

2020 Favorites: Podcasts 

On Being

Poetry Unbound

Cosmic Connection

Ear Hustle

DuoLingo Podcast

Unfinished

2020 Favorites: Experiences 

Hiking and being at Castle Bluff with my dad just before we realized how serious the pandemic was.

Having all three of my boys home with me for a short time during the first lockdown.

Doing a virtual walk with my friend Kandace during the time we were supposed to be walking the Way of St Francis. And listening to Richard Rohr talk about following St. Francis while I walked.

Camping and climbing mountains in Colorado with friends.

Being a part of a very small (and very special) family wedding in Colorado.

Meeting once a week for a couple of months on Zoom with a group of ladies to work through the practices from My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem.

Walking the Ouachita Trail.

Want to see more favorites (mostly books) from past years? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

The post 2020 Favorites appeared first on Alison Chino.

Hello sweet friends.

I’m locked down in quarantine just like most everyone else.

But last week I was in Arkansas and I spent a couple of days hiking with my dad, and while I was in one of my favorite places, I sat down and recorded this meditation for you.

It’s a meditation from Richard Rohr called “A Conversation with the Crucified Christ,” featured in his latest book, The Universal Christ.

I read this book twice last fall, and I wrote out this mediation in my journal and have been using it often. I read it in front of this tiny little crucifix that I purchased in Assisi last year. It’s a replica of the cross before which Saint Francis spent hours praying.

I cannot overstate how helpful these words have been to me over the last several months, so I wanted to share them with you.

So….

Find a quiet corner of your house.

Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Maybe even close your eyes.

Then imagine that Jesus is speaking to you from the Cross and then that you are speaking back to him.

If you enjoy this meditation or you find it helpful, you would probably love receiving Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations or his books. Right now I’m on my second read-through of Eager to Love.

Whatever you’re doing or wherever you are right now, I wish you peace and love.

The post A Gift For You: My Current Favorite Meditation appeared first on Alison Chino.

Y’all recently I have started making Moon Milk, also sometimes called Golden Milk.

I have been loving the addition of turmeric to All The Things lately.

I enjoy a turmeric tea and a turmeric latte,

but I am even more delighted with the discovery of Moon Milk because of its de-stressing properties.

I have a growing sensitivity to caffeine and I am always looking for the path to being less amped up.

Plus I have been eating less sugar, so this honey-sweetened drink feels like a treat.

I first heard about Moon Milk from Alexandra Franzen while she was promoting her latest book, The Checklist Book.

One of her recommendations in the book is to make a checklist for your day where you begin and end it with the moments you want to have in your day. For example, at the top of your checklist you write something like “First Moment of the Day” and then at the bottom you write “Last Moment of the Day.”

I’ve been surprised at how this simple practice enables me to set an intention for how I want to start and end my day.

I start every day with my coffee and my journal. Before I look at my phone or my email or anything else, I sit and drink my coffee and write in my journal. (I actually usually do this in my bed, because I have the most wonderful husband who brings me my coffee in bed almost every day.) So I pretty much have my “First Moment” down.

But writing down my “Last Moment” has created all kinds of new ideas for me.

I have been trying out different creative “Last Moments.”

Gratitude Meditation with Essential Oils

Get in bed with my novel at 9:30pm

Tea + Books with Simon

Meditate on a quote or verse for ten minutes

Hot soak in the tub with Eucalyptus bath salts

One of the “Last Moment” suggestions from Alexandra was to try something called Moon Milk. So I started trying recipes. Most of the ones I found use almond milk or regular cow’s milk. And we’re on an oat milk kick at the moment. We’ve been making our oatmeal with it and using it in most recipes, so now I’ve created an oat milk version of this lovely late-in-the-day calming drink. I’ve also included the adaptogen ashwagandha, which is the true calming element in the drink, but it has many other possible benefits.

My recipe is below. Hope you enjoy!

Moon Milk

Ingredients:

1 cup oat milk

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/4 teaspoon ashwagandha root powder

3-4 cardamom pads

2-3 grands of pepper

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1/2 – 1 tablespoon raw honey (adjust for desired sweetness)

Directions:

Heat up milk in a saucepan on a stove until warm but not boiling.

Drop in the cardamom pods and whisk in the spices and ashwagandha.

Allow five minutes for the flavors to meld.

Then add the coconut oil and turn off the heat.

Allow mixture to cool for a few minutes before adding the honey.

Stir in the honey, strain out the cardamom pods and enjoy warm.

The post Moon Milk appeared first on Alison Chino.

I am already pumped for all that’s coming in 2020.

It’s going to be an AMAZING year, I can feel it.

But before we get too far into 2020, I want to  I want to take a minute to record some favorites from 2019.

So here are some of the books, movies, songs and moments that captured my heart and widened my thinking in 2019.

2019 Favorites: Books 

Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Rabbit: A Memoir by Patricia Williams

On The Come Up by Angie Thomas

Educated by Tara Westover

Freckled: A Memoir of Growing Up Wild in Hawaii by T.W. Neal

Leaving Church by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Holy Envy by Barbara Taylor Bradford

The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

2019 Favorites: Songs 

2019 Favorites: Movies

The Sun is Also A Star

This Beautiful Fantastic

Avengers: Endgame (Obviously)

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Little Women

2019 Favorites: Podcasts 

White Lies

The 1619 Podcast

Dolly Parton’s America

Ear Hustle

DuoLingo Podcast

2019 Favorites: Experiences 

Helping to Lead a Hike + Yoga Retreat

Returning to Italy

Honoring My Mother-in-Law’s Life

Living Near My Sister

Walking from Logrono to Burgos

Want to see more favorites (mostly books) from past years? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017, and 2018.

The post 2019 Favorites appeared first on Alison Chino.

Hello 2019. I’m grateful you’re here. There are so many things I am already hoping and praying for in the year ahead. But before I get ahead of myself, I want to take a minute to be grateful for what 2018 brought into my life.

So here are some of the books, movies, songs and moments that captured my heart and widened my thinking in 2018.

Favorites of 2018: My Favorite Books I read in 2018

I usually limit my year-end book list to 5 books. But I’m making an exception this year because I read so many books that blew my mind.

Novels

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Memoirs

The Color of Water by James McBride

Heavy by Kiese Lamon

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah (This was so good that after I read it, I listened to the audio version.)

In The Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Redemption by Wilbert Rideau

Nonfiction

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction by Gabor Mate

Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie

The Yamas and Niyamas by Deborah Adele

How To Be Less Stupid About Race by Dr. Crystal Fleming

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

It would not be an exaggeration to say that reading changed my life this year. These books challenged the way I think about addiction, trauma, incarceration, laws, housing, drugs, parenting, racial reconciliation and the church. I look forward to several of these books coming with me into groups and conversations in the coming year.

Favorites of 2018: 10 Songs I Listened To Over and Over Again in 2018

Goodbye Road by JOHNNYSWIM, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors

My friend Carol played this album on a road trip to Florida and I have listened to it many times since!

Stand Up For Something by Andra Day (feat. Common)

This was on the soundtrack for Marshall (a favorite movie from 2017) and it’s been on almost every playlist I made in 2018.

La Bicicleta by Carlos Vives, Shakira

This is one of MANY favorite songs I dance to in Zumba class. Zumba definitely makes my list of things I am thankful for from 2018. It’s a little spot of happy in my week!

Our God Reigns by Israel Houghton (feat. BJ Putnam)

We sang this in choir this past summer and now I listen to it all the time. It just puts a little jump in my step.

Here In The Presence by Elevation Worship.

Another choir fav.

Seven by Sleeping at Last.

This is the latest in a series of songs dedicated to the Enneagram numbers. I have loved all these songs and the podcasts that accompany them.

Magic by Sia (from A Wrinkle in Time)

I Am Here by Pink

Found/Tonight A beautiful mash-up of two songs from two musicals (Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen, both of which I LOVE) sung by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Benjamin Platt, which they did to benefit March for Our Lives, because DEAR LORD PLEASE TAKE THE GUNS OFF OUR STREETS.

Andante, Andante by Abba, from Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

This movie was just delightful from beginning to end. The soundtrack has been on repeat since the movie came out, but I think this song in particular is so much fun.

One Of Them Days by Kiana Ledé

We went to hear a local artist (Crissy P!) back in November and the theme of the evening was 90s R&B. Later I was searching the songs and found this fun new take on Monica’s classic.

Favorites of 2018: Five Favorite Movies I Watched in 2018

Black Panther (I saw this movie 3X in the theater. Simon and I watched it again on New Year’s Eve. It’s so beautiful.)

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Just delightful! And also Let’s go to Greece!)

The Hate U Give (I was worried I wouldn’t like the movie as much as the book. Both were brilliant!)

On The Edge of 17 (Maybe it’s because I have so many teenagers in my life, but this movie just spoke to me. I know it came out earlier than last year, but I just saw it this year.)

Coco (Also didn’t see this until 2018. I watched it several times with Simon. So sweet.)

Favorites of 2018: 3 Experiences I Especially Want to Remember from 2018

Number 1: Being Silent. In February, I attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat (Vipassana). This is easily the most important thing I did this year. I love to talk about it and I wrote all about it when I got home so I could remember everything, so if you want to know more, email me and I’ll try to convince you to go. Then I bookended the year with a few days of silence out at Michael and Sandy Boultinghouse’s farm while they were away.

Number 2: Hiking with my family around Arkansas. (above: on top of Pinnacle Mountain on Thanksgiving Day).

Autumn colors in Arkansas while hiking Lake Sylvia with my boys.

Lake Sylvia.

More Lake Sylvia.

Early Fall hiking around Heber Springs, Arkansas.

Watching the boys climb rocks.

Also playing with my real camera again in the woods. (also in Heber Springs, Arkansas)

Number 3: Completing Yoga Teacher Training!

Doing yoga training has been a long time dream! I’m super grateful for these gals, and for the many, many things we learned together. And also for the laughs.

I celebrated completing training with my first ever yoga retreat in Hot Springs.

I’m so thankful for each person who came and to Whitney for cooking and hosting!

Look at this gorgeous lunch, just one of many beautiful meals.

PS. I’m helping to teach yoga on a beautiful retreat in Italy in 2019. Wanna go?

Lots more amazing things happened this year. I started making Kombucha and stopped eating meat. I spent more time in the sun than I have in a long time. I joined a gym for the first time in my life. I went to therapy. I participated in the Poor People’s Campaign. I visited The National Memorial For Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum. I worked on my biggest ever copyediting project,  a beautiful book by my client and friend, Jane Reeves. I walked with dear friends in familiar places that I love. I sang in the choir. I made homemade rolls in my sister’s restaurant. I watched my kids grow and do new and wonderful things.

It was also a hard year in many ways. There were great losses near to me. I deeply grieved settling back in a country (and a state) so rooted and steeped in white supremacy, the reality of which I see played out every day: on the news and in my community. Violence abounds in the world. The poor are criminalized instead of cared for. Also, Taido lived back in Germany until July. We survived living apart from one another and were grateful to be reunited in the summer. However, our path remains uncertain, much as it has for a while now. But as I look to 2019, I feel certain that He who has carried me along for so many years will continue to do so. I look around me in wonder at what God is doing while trying to find my small part in it, so that I can say with St Francis one day:

I have done what was mine to do, may Christ now teach you what you are to do.

Want to see more favorites (mostly books) from past years? Here’s 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017.

The post Favorites of 2018 appeared first on Alison Chino.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About The American Church’s Complicity in Racism

A new book by Jemar Tisby

I have been following Jemar Tisby’s work for a couple of years now and have been eagerly anticipating the release of his new book The Color of Compromise, so when calls went out for advance readers, I raised my hand high.

I’ve been digesting the book slowly for a few weeks and here is what most amazes me: I have been reading and studying America’s deeply racist history for a while now, but this specific history of how the American church had a leading role in both establishing and maintaining racism was, for the most part, previously unknown to me.

I think that there is a part of my heart that felt that all true followers of Jesus during the colonial era were abolitionists. (Not true.)

And I certainly thought that all abolitionists believed in racial equality. (Also not true.)

I thought that white churches during the Civil Rights Movement were either supportive or silent, but I was surprised to discover that segregation was actually preached from the pulpit.  Tisby argues that the Religious Right was initially galvanized by an effort to put forth laws and practices that would reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. (It was not abortion that initially bound Fundamentalists together, but rather the move to establish tax-exempt status for private schools which provided a means of fleeing integrated schools.)

These are just a couple of examples of the many revelations that were part of reading the history of the way the American church helped build our nation on white supremacy.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that understanding the ways that racism has evolved since slavery has repeatedly brought me to my knees in lament.

Reading that the American church and many Christian leaders have lent their overwhelming support to that evolution is a whole other level of devastating.

The History of the American Church Matters.

I read A LOT of history because I think that it’s important. The parts of our history that we don’t know or the stories we sweep under the carpet are the bits that come back to bite us. Also reading history keeps me from naively believing the many false narratives that pervade our thinking about “The Land of the Free” (where people are imprisoned at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world).

And so it follows that for a Christian, reading and knowing the history of the American church’s complicity in maintaining a racist society is the only way to begin to break the cycle of that complicity.

It’s been a long, sad slog of complicity, but Jemar Tisby graciously tells it under 300 pages, stating himself that it is “a historical survey” rather than “a comprehensive treatment.” Also, he reminds us from the very beginning that it is his love of the church that compels him to tell this truth. He is not writing from the perspective of someone who written off the church, but as someone who wants to see a better day in the American church. He maintains hope that we can still seek unity across racial and ethnic lines, that we can still see God’s kingdom come.

But first, like the people of Israel who mourned when Ezra read them the word they had forgotten and forsaken, we have some reckoning to do. We cannot gloss over the sins of the past or we will continue to allow them (and their more subtle forms) in the present.

“The Fierce Urgency of Now”

Jemar closes the book with a chapter full of practical ways to address current racial injustice in America, because when we know how hard those who have gone before us have worked to erect racial barriers, surely we will want to know how to do the work of taking them down.

Here’s a paragraph from the book that will continue to inspire and admonish me in the days ahead:

Although our eternal peace is secure, a diverse but unified body of Christ will only come through struggle in this life. A survey of the history of racism and the church shows that the story is worse than most imagine. Christianity in America has been tied to the fallacy of white supremacy for hundreds of years. European colonists brought with them the ideas of white superiority and paternalism toward darker-skinned people. On this sandy foundation, they erected a society and religion that could only survive through the subjugation of people of color. Minor repairs by the weekend-warrior racial reconcilers won’t fix a flawed foundation. The church needs the Carpenter from Nazareth to deconstruct the house that racism built and remake it into a house for all nations. 

Amen to this!

I hope you’ll make a point of getting your hands on Jemar Tisby’s powerful book, The Color of Compromise. It releases on January 22, 2019, but you can pre-order it today. I also recommend following him on Twitter @JemarTisby.

PS. I’m for sure adding this book to my ongoing list of resources for growing awareness of systematic racism.

The post The Color of Compromise: The Truth About The American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby appeared first on Alison Chino.

Dear White People (including myself),

As Black History Month wraps up, I want to make a plea that we all choose not be done with Black History for the year.

Current events are daily revealing how necessary it is that all Americans learn Black History all year long.

For how long?

For as long as it takes for us to unwrite the rules we wrote when our brothers and sisters were enslaved and we did not count them as people.

For as long as it takes to unmake a system that has its roots planted deeply in white supremacy.

For as long as it takes for us to consider Black History as an integral part of American History, embedded in our lives and national stories, just like The Mayflower, The Pilgrims and Independence Day.

Extensive reading is my preferred (and maybe too easy) method of becoming awake to how the decks are stacked against our black and brown brothers and sisters in this country. But I am committing this year not to just reading about racism, but also to talking about it, to writing about it regularly and to calling it out in myself.

Let me say that again.

I am committed to calling out racism in myself.

Lamenting it.

Confessing it.

Repenting of it.

I like to say that I am about 67% woke. (That’s probably generous.)

Woke refers to a state of being aware of racial injustice in the world.

So if I am 67% woke, that still leaves like 33% of me that is asleep, that is ruled by racism.

I was raised in a country that was founded on white supremacy, so I am going to have a natural bent towards participating in racism that is both underlying and overt.

I am repenting of being complicit in a system that has sold itself out in a grab for power. I am so sad that I am a part of tradition that was meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world and instead seems to be the second coming of the Pharisees. I cannot make it right by saying I am not a part of the group, or I am not one of those kind of Christians. Somehow I stood by while we were seduced by the empire and so I participated.

For years and years, I was content to sit in a church on Sunday morning filled with people who looked like me, to fill the seats at my table with people who looked like me. I was content to read only books about people who looked like me, and I studied history that was missing the pieces that explain why life is so different for people who did not look like me.

I am lamenting that I did not notice how wrong this was. I am lamenting that my unwillingness to cross racial lines has contributed to walls that exist today, and to the rhetoric that is adding more bricks every day to those very walls, causing them to be thicker and harder to break down.

I confess that I have contributed to an atmosphere where we need to say out loud that Black Lives Matter, because the blood on the streets shows that these words are not a given. We must say that Black Lives Matter so that maybe one day we will live in a country where that is true to everyone. In fact, I believe that if we had made it true that Black Lives Matter then we would also have solved the problem of welcoming refugees, because if we raise up and value the lives of those who are different from us, then we will continue to do it with refugees, with Muslims, and with anyone we have designated as “other.”

And so I repent that I personally have not always shown with my actions in the world that Black Lives Matter.

I repent that I have acted as though I am owed the privilege that I was born with. I pass through borders and drive by police cars without fear. I walk into stores and restaurants and never doubt that I will be treated with respect. I expect to have the very best possible schools for my children, without regard for the effect my school choices have on the districts and towns in which we have lived.

If I live to be 100 I cannot undo what I have done to uphold the standard of white supremacy in the US, and this fact overwhelms me. It overwhelms me so much that I considered not writing this letter. But even if I cannot undo all the things or do all that must be done, I can try.

I can do the little that I know how to do today. And tomorrow I can try to learn about another thing. I can work towards another half percent of being woke.

And I would be so honored if you would join me.

That’s why I am making this page into a Resource List, a page that I can add to whenever I come across something that contributes to my awareness of racial injustice. You can come back to it and read again and again because this journey towards racial reconciliation is long.

But I think the long journeys are the ones worth taking.

And I think that God is with us on the long journeys.

And when I think about Martin Luther King Jr, and I listen to his speeches, I remember how bravely he stood in the face of a long uphill climb that he knew would probably end in death.

And so how dare I grow tired?

If I ever say I am tired of hearing about racism, I will call myself out and repent.

Because, friends, think of how weary our black and brown brothers and sisters are of this battle.

So very weary. I hear it in their words. Laments for hard won changes that are given only to be revoked again or never enforced.

Let us not grow weary in doing good. Let us each find the part we have to do and do it. Let us lament. Let us confess. Let us repent.

Then maybe we can rise together.

In solidarity,

Alison

Reading Resource List

This is just a start on this list. I will continue to add to it. If you know of something I should add, feel free to send me an email (alison AT alisonchino DOT com) or tell me on Twitter.

Children’s Books 

Black History Children’s Books

Sit In by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Let Freedom Sing by Vanessa Newton

The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

The Great Migration with paintings by Jacob Lawrence

God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

March by John Lewis 

Children’s Books for Talking About Race

All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color by Katie Kissinger

The Skin I’m In by Pat Thomas

Shades of People by Sheila M. Kelly

Children’s Books with Black or Brown Protagonists

Chocolate Me by Taye Diggs

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

The Snowy Day  by Ezra Jack Keats

The Barber’s Cutting Edge by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert

Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Concrete Rose (forthcoming) by Angie Thomas

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

Another great resource for children’s books is the website We Need Diverse Books.

Books (nonfiction)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beales

The Long Shadow of Little Rock by Daisy Bates

Walking With The Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by  Ibram X. Kendi

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Just Mercy Brian Stevenson

The New Jim Crow by Michelle WIlliams

Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackman

America’s Original Sin Jim Wallis

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Awake by Daniel Hill

Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation by David P. Leong

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores by Dominique DuBois Gilliard

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

How to be Less Stupid About Race by Dr. Crystal M. Fleming

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris

They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones-Rogers

So You Wanna Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in A World Made For Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David E Swanson

May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry

Books (Fiction)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (anything by Toni Morrison)

Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (anything by James Baldwin)

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom

The Water Dancer Ta-Nehisi Coates

Memoirs by Black Authors

Thick by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

Heavy by Dr. Kiese Laymon

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Becoming Ms Burton by Susan Burton

Rabbit by Patricia Williams

When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Color of Water by James McBride

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. Moore

Movies

Malcolm X

Selma

13th

Twelve Years A Slave

Ruby Bridges

Mississippi Burning

The Color Purple

The Hate U Give

Marshall

If Beale Street Could Talk

Just Mercy

When They See Us (series)

Articles 

Anything on the website Black Perspectives

The Racism of Good Intentions by Carlos Lozada

This is the best explanation I’ve ever seen of White Privilege by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

White Debt by Eula Bliss (first line: “The Word for debt in German also means guilt.”)

White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves. by Ijeoma Oluo

This is what an antiracist America would look like. How do we get there?
Ibram X Kendi

Southern Baptist Seminary Documents History of Racial Injustice

The Cost of the Confederacy by Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler

1619 Series in the NY Times

Punishment by Pandemic

Racism is Terrible. Blackness is not. by Imani Perry

Literary Quilt: A Covering for George Floyd: 15 Black authors give voice to the current unrest and movement for Black lives

Podcasts

On Being consistently has great content regarding race. Here are a few of my favorite episodes:

Love in Action with John Lewis

Let’s Talk about Whiteness with Eula Bliss

The Heart is the Last Frontier with Isabel Wilkerson

Where Does It Hurt? with Ruby Sales

Who We Want To Become: Beyond The New Jim Crow with Michelle Alexander

W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul with Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander and Arnold Rampersad

Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence with Resmaa Menakem

Pass The Mic is another podcast I appreciate for discussions concerning a diverse church. It is the podcast of the website The Witness (a Black Christian Collective), a great resource for Christians who want to explore more diverse perspectives. They also have a great episode on the use of term “woke.” One of my favorite episodes is their interview with Bryan Stevenson.

Truth’s Table. 

How Not To Accidentally Raise A Racist (The Longest Shortest Time)

Shots Fired Part 1 and Part 2 (Radiolab)

Object Anyway (More Perfect)

Poverty Myth Busters (On The Media)

Seeing White (series by Scene on Radio)

Monumental Lies (Reveal)

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done (On The Media)

1619 Podcast

White Lies

Ear Hustle

Brene Brown with Austin Channing Brown

Brene Brown with Ibram X Kendi

 Videos

This video of Adam Thomason explaining racial preference.

A short documentary about this reign of terror by lynching in the US put out by the Equal Justice Initiative.

MTV’s Documentary White People

Ruby Sales on “How we can start to heal the pain of racial division”

Clint Hill Smith on Raising a Black Son in America

The post A Letter to White People (including Myself) + Reading and Resource List appeared first on Alison Chino.

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

(That’s me waving to you from across the pond!)

Since I am not cooking a turkey or even baking making Grandmother’s rolls today, I thought I would take a few minutes to share a collection of the thoughts of my heart from the past week or so.

Because I am just a little sad that Black Friday has become such big business that we have managed to export it to the UK, I am framing my musings today with a title that is just my tiny little drop-in-the-bucket protest of my favorite holiday of all time (Thanksgiving) being co-opted into the start of consumer holiday frenzy.

Five Things I Wish We Would Do On Black Friday Instead Of Shopping. 

1. Continue Giving Thanks.

If you’ve made a giant meal today, you don’t have to cook tomorrow, so you have more time for practicing thanksgiving.

O give thanks to the Lord for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

1 Chronicles 16:34

Once upon a time I began a practice of gratefulness.

A simple ritual of writing down things for which I am thankful.

And friends, it is not an exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

Five years ago, I wrote these words about this practice:

One of the ways I know God is real is that when I ask at the end of a weary day that He would show me what to thank Him for,

He reveals to my heart the gifts I don’t have the eyes to see.

Need a little help. You can make this thanksgiving tree with your family! We’re doing this at our house today and throughout the weekend.

2. Prepare For Christmas.

There are so many other ways to get ready for Christmas than to shop. It seems like it becomes harder every year to make time for the practices that bring our hearts the most peace, hope and joy during this season.

Maybe ask the people around you how they are planning to let the light in to their Christmas season. I have a sheet of paper I’ve been using to brainstorm ideas for the holidays for the last several weeks. Anytime I think, “Oh I wish we would do that this year!” I write down whatever “that” is (ice skating, making cookies for neighbors, reading a family Christmas devotional every day, etc). This weekend I’m going to take that list and put the items on the calendar that I feel like we can fit in this year.

And if you must shop to prepare for Christmas, maybe think about how to shop mindfully? I think it would be lovely to set a challenge of only buying items that bring hope and love to others. Items from a Heifer or World Vision catalog. Or only buying fair trade. It may seem like such a small thing to hand someone a handmade trinket for Christmas instead of a new electronic, but it’s no small thing to the hands that made it.

3. Do Justice.

I have spent a lot of time this season reading about refugees and I’ve discovered something that I am having trouble understanding.

Just before WWII, when both the UK and the US were experiencing food and housing shortages, these two great nations together took in almost 200,000 Jewish refugees.

Today, when both of these countries are radically wealthy, they have committed to taking only 10,000 refugees each, and even that number is consistently facing reduction by legislation.

The crazy bit is that I think if any of us could go back in time and take more Jewish refugees (Anne Frank’s family was denied access to the US), we absolutely would. We would say, YES! Let them come. 200,000 was not enough. 

I can’t work out in my heart what the difference is between then and now.

During WWII, the messages posted all around our nations were about saving and stretching what we have to make it work.

Since 9/11, we have been bombarded with the falsehood that the most patriotic action we can take for our country is to spend more money.

It’s as if I am holding the two times in my two hands and wondering how we got from:

Save all you can and share with the refugee.

to

Spend even what you don’t have, but we have no room for the refugee.

Here’s a paragraph from the most recent briefing I received from World Vision UK about Syrian refugees:

2 million children have become refugees and 5.6 million children in Syria need life-saving assistance. As the crisis drags on, the situation is getting more desperate for families. Families are running out of savings and struggle to provide food, shelter or warm clothing. Many refugees now live on food rations worth only £9 a month, with the cost of living in Syria response countries similar to many Western countries. Many families can no longer afford to send their children to school. Outside refugee camps, only 6% of Syrian school age children in Lebanon, 44% in Jordan and 14% in Turkey attend school. Youth unemployment in Lebanon has reached 78%. Families are marrying off their girls early to help them survive, as well as risking dangerous migration opportunities to survive. Without further action, we risk losing a generation to unemployment, poverty, lack of education and hopelessness.

As the rhetoric in America increases about blocking entrance to refugees, I suppose I wish that at the very least, if we’re going to make it impossible to leave the country (that we ourselves are bombing), could we at least take all that money we were going to spend on a new XBOX, TV, iPhone and give it to improve the dire circumstances in countries like Lebanon, where there are now 1.5 million refugees.

4. Love Mercy.

Last week I read a book that rocked my world.

As is often the case when I read a book that takes me to a place I did not know existed and proceeds to break my heart, I can’t stop talking about it and and I want everyone I know to read it.

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who has spent his life seeking justice for those most desperate: “the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system.”

Just Mercy is a collection of stories from his years of doing this incredibly gut-wrenching work.

This may not be an incentive to read, but sometimes I would have to set the book down after I finished one of the stories just to take a deep breath through my tears.

Trina Garnett’s story was one of those. Her story was also told in a news article almost three years ago. And she took part in this powerful video from Muncy State Prison. She’s the one in the wheelchair who speaks at the end of the video. She’s been in prison for over forty years, after being sentenced to life without parole at the age of fourteen for starting a fire that resulted in the deaths of two children.

I walked away from reading Just Mercy with a sense that I need a greater understanding of what Stevenson describes as the four institutions that have shaped the lives of people of color in America:

The first three are: Slavery, A Reign of Terror, and Jim Crow.

The fourth is Mass Incarceration.

I’ll leave you with a quote about prison growth in America that I found wildly disturbing:

In the 1990s, America was opening prisons at a pace never before seen in human history. Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days. Prison growth and the resulting ‘prison-industrial complex’ -the business interests that capitalize on prison construction- made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem. Incarceration became the answer to everything–health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavior disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor, even immigration issues generated responses from legislators that involved sending people to prison. Never before had so much lobbying money been spent to expand America’s prison population, block sentencing reforms, create new crime categories, and sustain the fear and anger that fuel mass incarceration than during the last twenty-five years in the United States.

5. Walk Humbly.

Of course, I can’t let the opportunity pass to include going for a walk on any list of activities.

But I’ve shared some heavy things.

When my heart is heavy, the best place for me to take it is outside.

To lift my eyes to the heavens and ask the Lord when He is going to come back?

To cry out to God for the brokenness in our world, but then to stand at the shore and wonder at how there is still so much beauty in it.

To Chase the Daylight even when the darkness is closing in.

Wishing you love, mercy, grace and peace today wherever you are! I’m thankful for everyone who reads my ramblings from my little corner of the internet.

XO

Alison

The post In The Pipeline: Black Friday Edition appeared first on Alison Chino.