Writings & Resources
REWILDING THE WAY: BREAK FREE TO FOLLOW AN UNTAMED GOD
“A wild and exhilarating idea for running counter to dominant culture!—Bill McKibben
When did we become so tame? How has "the good life" come to mean addiction to screens and status, fossil fuels and financial fitness? Can we break free to become the joyful and prophetic people God calls us to be? Trek along with wilderness guide Todd Wynward as he "rewilds" the Jesus Way. Seek the feral foundations of Scripture and the lessons that the prophets and disciples gleaned from wilderness testing.
Packed with inspiring stories of how contemporary people and groups are caring for the land and each other, Rewilding the Way issues a call to action. Read about how reskilling and local food covenants are transforming churches, and how place-based activism and creative housing are nurturing communities. Learn from those who are recovering from affluenza, replacing visions of personal wealth with the commonwealth of the earth and restoring their humble place in the community of creation. Do you despair about life on our changing planet? Join the hopeful band of seekers of God and makers of change who are rewilding the Way.
You can order a copy at Amazon here.
THE SECRETS OF LEAVEN
"A delicious mystery exploring deep questions."—Patheos.com
“A wild hope for a tame world.” —Richard Rohr
A zealous preacher bent on destroying the bones of Jesus’ brother. A lost ancestor trapped in an insane asylum, holding the key to happiness. A wild-haired prophet living in the Cave of John the Baptist. Are these the normal associates of a sheltered California boy? They are if you’re Thomas Whidman, a seminarian who’s stopped believing in God. 30-year-old Thomas Whidman has life where he wants it: a fascinating new girlfriend, a scholarship for excellence in ancient Greek, and a year left in seminary before a bright future as a progressive pastor. But life has other plans. Soon dark questions plague Thomas that can’t be explained by the religion he’s grown up with. A horrible tragedy in Guatemala makes Thomas doubt a loving God, and his faith in family crumbles when he discovers his trusted uncle has been hiding a disturbing ancestor for years. Confused and despairing, Thomas is catapulted into a new reality when he encounters the Society of Leaven, an ancient sect of Jesus-loving radicals who’ve been subverting Empire and making holy mischief for two thousand years. Trusting his guide Paloma—a Zen meditation teacher who is far more than he seems—Thomas jumps in with these desert hermits, savvy ex-cons and joyful anarchists, all irresistible revolutionaries who practice a Way he never heard about in Sunday School. The Secrets of Leaven is a wild hope for a tame world--a spiritual roller-coaster that skewers everything we think we know about authentic Christianity, social change, and human potential. Join Thomas on a post-modern quest for truth that leads him to crash a beggar’s banquet in Portland, hunt for a damned priest through the barrios of South Tucson, and wrest new life from a dead madman convinced about the end of the world.
You can order a copy on Amazon here.
BELIEVERS: MAKING A LIFE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, BY LISA WELLS
“We find ourselves at the end of the world,” Wells writes. “How, then, shall we live?” In search of answers and action, the award-winning poet and essayist Lisa Wells brings us in Believers a diverse group of trailblazers and outliers from across the globe who have found radically new ways to live and reconnect to the Earth in the face of climate change.
Todd Wynward and TiLT feature prominently in Wells’ book. Of her visit with us, she writes: “I was inspired by the human efforts I’d seen at TiLT, by the human poetry embedded in their gospel.” And later she muses: “It occurred to me that the TiLT house [is] also a kind of halfway house: a place where a person might escape captivity, admit powerlessness, and purge dependencies to live again in ‘right relationship’ with creation.”
You can order a copy on Amazon here.
incendiary readings
Wynward is compiling & curating a canon of what he calls“incendiary readings”—hundreds of distilled one-pagers from authors that have rocked his world, and that might rock yours, too. Categories include: Welcome to Adulthood; Why Most People Shouldn’t Read the Bible; Understanding Our Place in History; Inspiration for these Times; Creative Resistance to Empire; Prophetic Imagination; and much more. Write him at toddwynward@gmail.com to learn more.