Library & Online Resources
In an epigraph at the beginning of his new book, How Not To Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying (Broadleaf Books, 2021), Higgins quotes Rosa Parks, who said, "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear." Given the overlapping crises of our current context, when fear and anxiety are at a high water mark, Parks's wisdom provides a helpful launching point for Higgins's project to transform his own fear and to help others transform theirs as well.
Gareth Higgins was born in Belfast during the Troubles in northern Ireland. He holds a PhD in sociology and lectures widely about storytelling, violence reduction, the power of dreams, and connection with the earth. A frequent collaborator with Kathleen Norris and Brian McLaren, Higgins led a peacebuilding community in northern Ireland and is a co-founder of the Wild Goose Festival, the New Story Festival, and the Movies & Meaning Festival. He is the editor of The Porch Magazine and is currently teaching in the Doctor of Ministry program in Creative Writing and Public Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
Learn more about Gareth Higgins at http://www.garethhiggins.net/
Learn more about How Not To Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying at https://www.hownottobeafraid.com/
Select Bibliography
Most of the following books are not currently in the Barbour Library collection. The links below will take you to either Bookshop.org (which supports local bookstores), the author's online store, or Amazon.com, where you can purchase the book.
Higgins, Gareth. How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films. Sutton-Alpine, AK, 2013.
Higgins, Gareth. The Seventh Story: Us, Them, & the End of Violence, 2019. Self-published, Porch, 2019.
Books and Media in Barbour Library
Print books below may be checked out by PTS students, faculty, and staff, as well as local area patrons who have library accounts (requires an annual fee). Media items are indicated in parentheses. Ebooks are indicated by asterisks, and are available to current PTS students, faculty, and staff only.
Be Not Afraid: Facing fear with faith by
Does God heal? Where do I turn when my faith is fragile? How can I face my own death? Is there a gospel for the rich? In brief, to-the-point chapters, respected preacher and ethicist Samuel Wells lucidly and compassionately explores topics Christians are often reluctant to face--death, weakness, power, difference, faith, and living life to the full--and offers down-to-earth help in overcoming common fears in the life of faith. "The heart of the gospel speaks into the most numbing and terrifying moments of our lives with words of hope and joy amid fear and bewilderment," writes Wells. This book provides an intellectually rigorous but scripturally rooted and theologically accessible engagement with questions of faith.
Call Number: BV4908.5 .W438 2011ISBN: 9781587433023Publication Date: 2011-11-01
The Cloister Walk by
"Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered around a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that Kathleen Norris herself asks as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at a Benedictine monastery. Yet upon leaving the monastery, she began to feel herself transformed, and the daily events of her life on the Great Plains - from her morning walk to her going to sleep at night - gradually took on new meaning." "She found that in the monastery, time slowed down, offering a new perspective on community, family, and even small-town life. By coming to understand the Benedictine practice of celibacy, she felt her own marriage enriched; through the communal reading aloud of the psalms every day, her notion of the ancient oral tradition of poetry came to life; and even the mundane task of laundry took on new meaning through the lens of Benedictine ritual." "Writing with lyrical grace, Kathleen Norris here takes us through a liturgical year, as she experienced it both within the monastery and outside it. She shows us, from the rare perspective of someone who is both insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world - its liturgy, its rituals, its sense of community - can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. Through her masterly prose and rare insight, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Call Number: BX2435 .N57 1996ISBN: 9781573220286Publication Date: 1996-04-02
Emergent Strategy by
Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. In the framework of emergence, the whole is a mirror of the parts. Existence is fractal - the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet. Change is constant. This book is about how we can shape the changes we experience to match our intentions using strategic methods that are as adaptive, resilient decentralised, and interdependent as the patterns of flocking birds or differentiating cells. A secular spirituality based equally on science and science fiction.
Call Number: RC489.M53 B76 2017ISBN: 9781849352604Publication Date: 2017-04-18
Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear by
Through politics, marketing, news programming, and popular culture we are taught to fear, often in ways that profit others. But what does all this fear do to our moral lives as it forms (or deforms) our character and our judgment? Drawing on Christian scripture and tradition, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear articulates a response to fear that resists an ethic of security in favor of fostering an ethic of risk. The Christian virtues of hospitality, peacefulness, and generosity are presented as the way to defeat the counter-virtues of suspicion, preemption, and control. Pastors, students, and lay people will find this unique book both accessible and intriguing. EXCERPT Do not be afraid. We live in a time when this biblical refrain cannot be repeated too often. Both John Paul II in 1978 and his successor, Benedict XVI, in 2005 used these words to begin their papacies. Among all the things the church has to say to the world today, this may be the most important. No one has to be convinced that we live in fearful times, though we are not always sure what we should be afraid of and why. We suspect that our fears make us vulnerable to manipulation, but we find it hard to quell the fear long enough to analyze how it is being produced and directed for the benefit of others. One reason we are a more fearful culture today, despite the fact that the dangers are not objectively greater than in the past, is because some people have incentives and means to heighten, manipulate, and exploit our fears. Fear is a strong motivator, and so those who want and need to motivate others--politicians, advertisers, media executives, advocacy groups, even the church--turn to fear to bolster their message. I call this the "fear for profit" syndrome, and it is rampant. We have become preoccupied with unlikely dangers that take on the status of imminent threats, producing a culture where fear determines a disproportionate number of our personal and communal decisions. The sense of ever-increasing threats can overwhelm our ability to evaluate and respond proportionately to each new risk, thus we allow fear to overdetermine our actions.
Call Number: BV4908.5 .B33 2007ISBN: 9781587431920Publication Date: 2007-06-01
*How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying by
The world seems terrifying. Whether your fear is about violence, shame, illness, money, meaning, or the collapse of certainty, you are not alone. Yet the power of the fear we feel depends on the story we tell about fear. Fight, flee, or freeze: are these are only options? Growing up near the troubled city of Belfast, Gareth Higgins was schooled in suspicion, mistrust, and paranoia. Would someone be lurking behind the door? Was there a bomb under that car? Yet fear feeds on the stories we tell ourselves, Higgins claims, and in the pages of How Not to Be Afraid, he delves into the mechanisms of fear, as well as the quiet, immense strength of individuals and communities that refuse to let it reign. Grounded in personal experience and expert reflection on violence, conflict transformation, and trauma recovery, Higgins traces vulnerability as strength to address seven common fears that plague each of us at some point in our lives. By examining such topics as the fear of being alone, the fear of not having enough, and the fear of violence and death, he invites readers into habits of hope rooted in Celtic spirituality and the mysteries of love. In the rich spiritual activist, and literary tradition of Walter Wink and Kathleen Norris, Higgins points us toward tenderness, empathy, and gentle encounter with each other and with our deepest and most relentless fears. He shows us how we can replace our narratives of fear and cynicism with better stories. Peace is the way to itself, he reveals, and when we choose this path, our lives will never be the same.
Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781506469041Publication Date: 2021-04-13
Politics of Fear, Practices of Hope by
Politics of Fear, Practices of Hope is about the relationship between two hugely influential ideas in political life: fear and hope. How are cultures of resistance nurtured within an environment of paranoia and social paralysis? Stefan Skrimshire argues that grass-roots responses to a politics of fear coincide with an explosion of interest in the quasi-religious themes of apocalypse, eschatology and utopia in cultural life. Where visions of a better future are replaced by the acceptance of a fearful present - a state of 'war with no end' - this is an important examination of the beliefs that underpin our capacity to hope.
Call Number: BL65.P7 S57 2008ISBN: 9781847060754Publication Date: 2009-01-10
Redeeming Fear : a constructive theology for living into hope by
Our brains are hard-wired to experience the emotion of fear. Yet "do not be afraid" is a common refrain from the Bible, used for both comfort and chastening. Too often, we have treated fear, an emotion that helps protect us from threats, as something simply to be dismissed, ignored, or suppressed. Being afraid means so much more than simply fighting or running from a threat; to be afraid is to remember that something in life is worth living for. In fact, there may even be circumstances where fear is Gods best response to what we are experiencing. In this book, Whitehead helps us find the roots of hope in the soil of our fears so that we can form lives and communities of hope in the midst of a culture of fear.
Call Number: BF575.F2 W45 2013ISBN: 9780800699147Publication Date: 2013-06-01
Rising Strong by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending. Don't miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! Social scientist Brené Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerability--the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome--is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy. But living a brave life is not always easy: We are, inevitably, going to stumble and fall. It is the rise from falling that Brown takes as her subject in Rising Strong. As a grounded theory researcher, Brown has listened as a range of people--from leaders in Fortune 500 companies and the military to artists, couples in long-term relationships, teachers, and parents--shared their stories of being brave, falling, and getting back up. She asked herself, What do these people with strong and loving relationships, leaders nurturing creativity, artists pushing innovation, and clergy walking with people through faith and mystery have in common? The answer was clear: They recognize the power of emotion and they're not afraid to lean in to discomfort. Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we're feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness. It's the process, Brown writes, that teaches us the most about who we are. ONE OF GREATER GOOD'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR "[Brené Brown's] research and work have given us a new vocabulary, a way to talk with each other about the ideas and feelings and fears we've all had but haven't quite known how to articulate. . . . Brené empowers us each to be a little more courageous."--The Huffington Post
Call Number: BF637.S4 B8118 2015ISBN: 9780812995824Publication Date: 2015-08-25
Transforming Our Painful Emotions by
This is an exceptionally lucid and practical resource from this skilled team of psychologist and pastoral theologian. They exhort readers to live life wide awake, and help them do just that.
Call Number: BX2350.3 .W48 2010ISBN: 9781570758706Publication Date: 2010-02-01
The Witness of Religion in an Age of Fear by
We live in a world driven by fear. But should we allow fear to play such a large role in our lives? According to the religions of the world, the answer is no. In this helpful and illuminating book, Michael Kinnamon challenges readers to consider why we find ourselves in this age of fear and what we can do about it. Drawing on support from a diversity of religious traditions and teachers, Kinnamon argues that religious faith is the best way to combat a culture of fear. He explores fear in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the American political scene, and he shares courageous examples of individuals from different religions working for peace. Perfect for individuals or group study, this book helps readers understand the manipulative power of fear and how religious beliefs call us to reject fear at all costs. A study guide is included.
Call Number: BL65.F4 K56 2017ISBN: 9780664262020Publication Date: 2017-03-10
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Articles in Barbour Library
Articles that are available online have links, and are only available to current PTS students, faculty, and staff. Articles without links are in the print journal collection.
Duncan, Mick. 2019. “Jesus Is NOT All You Need in Overcoming Fear.” The Bonhoeffer Legacy 7 (1–2): 13–23.
Johnson, S Kyle. 2021. “Love Amidst Fear: Julian of Norwich, Affect, and Orthopathy.” Spiritus 21 (2): 282–301.
Martin, James. 2014. “From Fear to Calm: Spiritual Direction on Stormy Waters.” The Christian Century 131 (8): 30–34.
Pershey, Katherine Willis. 2012. “High Anxiety.” Christian Century 129 (5): 26–29.
Rishmawy Derek. 2020. “God Works Within Us and Beyond Us.” Christianity Today 64 (1): 40.
Snook, Lee E. 1983. “Interpreting Luke’s Theodicy for Fearful Christians.” Word & World 3 (3): 303–11.
Love, Children, Planet: Frank Schaeffer In Conversation with Irish writer Gareth Higgins
Articles
Other Links
- Gareth Higgins: Sojourners Magazine Browse and read various articles written by Gareth at this online periodical.
- Ireland Retreats Ireland Retreats are led by northern Irish writer and peace activist Gareth Higgins, with guest co-facilitators.
- Movies & Meaning Movies & Meaning builds a better world through telling better stories, gathering around art and activism.
- The Porch Magazine An online publication featuring "a slow conversation about beautiful and difficult things"
- Wild Goose Festival Wild Goose Festival is an art, music, and story-driven festival grounded in faith-inspired social justice.